The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee

The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee

The Ugly Renaissance is a delightfully debauched tour of the sordid, gritty reality behind some of the most celebrated artworks and cultural innovations of all time.

Tourists today flock to Italy by the millions to admire the stunning achievements of the Renaissance--paintings, statues, and buildings that are the legacy of one of the greatest periods of cultural rebirth and artistic beauty the world has ever seen. But beneath the elegant surface lurked a seamy, vicious world of power politics, perversity, and corruption. In this meticulously researched and lively portrait, Renaissance scholar Alexander Lee illuminates the dark and titillating contradictions that existed alongside the enlightened spirit of the time: the scheming bankers, greedy politicians, bloody rivalries, murderous artists, religious conflicts, rampant disease, and indulgent excess without which many of the most beautiful monuments of the Renaissance would never have come into being.

ALEXANDER LEE is a Stipendiary Lecturer in Early Modern History at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. A prize-winning specialist in the history of the Italian Renaissance, he holds degrees from the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, and is the author of numerous academic works on the Renaissance.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780345802927
ISBN 10	0345802926
Title	The Ugly Renaissance
Author	Alexander Lee
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2015-10-27
Number of pages	448
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.