Murder of a Medici Princess

Murder of a Medici Princess PDF Author: Caroline Murphy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195385837
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Murphy illuminates the brilliant life and tragic death of Isabella de Medici, one of the brightest stars in the dazzling world of Renaissance Italy. The author's fast-paced narrative captures the intrigue, scandal, romantic affairs, and the violence that were commonplace in the Florentine court.

Murder of a Medici Princess

Murder of a Medici Princess PDF Author: Caroline Murphy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195385837
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Get Book Here

Book Description
Murphy illuminates the brilliant life and tragic death of Isabella de Medici, one of the brightest stars in the dazzling world of Renaissance Italy. The author's fast-paced narrative captures the intrigue, scandal, romantic affairs, and the violence that were commonplace in the Florentine court.

Murder of a Medici Princess

Murder of a Medici Princess PDF Author: Caroline P. Murphy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199839891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
In Murder of a Medici Princess, Caroline Murphy illuminates the brilliant life and tragic death of Isabella de Medici, one of the brightest stars in the dazzling world of Renaissance Italy, the daughter of Duke Cosimo I, ruler of Florence and Tuscany. Murphy is a superb storyteller, and her fast-paced narrative captures the intrigue, the scandal, the romantic affairs, and the violence that were commonplace in the Florentine court. She brings to life an extraordinary woman, fluent in five languages, a free-spirited patron of the arts, a daredevil, a practical joker, and a passionate lover. Isabella, in fact, conducted numerous affairs, including a ten-year relationship with the cousin of her violent and possessive husband. Her permissive lifestyle, however, came to an end upon the death of her father, who was succeeded by her disapproving older brother Francesco. Considering Isabella's ways to be licentious and a disgrace upon the family, he permitted her increasingly enraged husband to murder her in a remote Medici villa. To tell this dramatic story, Murphy draws on a vast trove of newly discovered and unpublished documents, ranging from Isabella's own letters, to the loose-tongued dispatches of ambassadors to Florence, to contemporary descriptions of the opulent parties and balls, salons and hunts in which Isabella and her associates participated. Murphy resurrects the exciting atmosphere of Renaissance Florence, weaving Isabella's beloved city into her story, evoking the intellectual and artistic community that thrived during her time. Palaces and gardens in the city become places of creativity and intrigue, sites of seduction, and grounds for betrayal. Here then is a narrative of compelling and epic proportions, magnificent and alluring, decadent and ultimately tragic.

Isabella De' Medici

Isabella De' Medici PDF Author: Caroline Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Isabella de' Medici's affair with her husband's cousin - and her very success as First Lady of Florence - led to her death at the hands of her husband at the age of just thirty-four. She left behind as her legacy a son who became the best of the Orsini Dukes. This title presents her story.

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici PDF Author: C. W. Gortner
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0345501861
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Leaving her native Florence to marry Henry II of France, Catherine de Medici embarks on an unanticipated destiny of religious warfare, thwarted leadership and psychologically charged royal machinations. By the author of The Last Queen.

Medici Women

Medici Women PDF Author: Gabrielle Langdon
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802038255
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
The ducal court of Cosimo I de' Medici in sixteenth-century Florence was one of absolutist, rule-bound order. Portraiture especially served the dynastic pretensions of the absolutist ruler, Duke Cosimo and his consort, Eleonora di Toledo, and was part of a Herculean programme of propaganda to establish legitimacy and prestige for the new sixteenth-century Florentine court. In this engaging and original study, Gabrielle Langdon analyses selected portraits of women by Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Alessandro Allori, and other masters. She defines their function as works of art, as dynastic declarations, and as encoded documents of court culture and propaganda, illuminating Cosimo's conscious fashioning of his court portraiture in imitation of the great courts of Europe. Langdon explores the use of portraiture as a vehicle to express Medici political policy, such as with Cosimo's Hapsburg and Papal alliances in his bid to be made Grand Duke with hegemony over rival Italian princes. Stories from archives, letters, diaries, chronicles, and secret ambassadorial briefs, open up a world of fascinating, personalities, personal triumphs, human frailty, rumour, intrigue, and appalling tragedies. Lavishly illustrated, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I is an indispensable work for anyone with a passion for Italian renaissance history, art, and court culture.

The Identities of Catherine de' Medici

The Identities of Catherine de' Medici PDF Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004461817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
An innovative analysis of the representational strategies that constructed Catherine de’ Medici and sought to explain her behaviour and motivations.

Madame Serpent

Madame Serpent PDF Author: Jean Plaidy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 145168620X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
A fictional account of Catherine de' Medici, the fourteen-year-old reluctant Italian bride to the second son of the King of France, Henry, during the sixteenth-century.

The Rival Queens

The Rival Queens PDF Author: Nancy Goldstone
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316409677
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
The riveting true story of mother-and-daughter queens Catherine de' Medici and Marguerite de Valois, whose wildly divergent personalities and turbulent relationship changed the shape of their tempestuous and dangerous century. Set in magnificent Renaissance France, this is the story of two remarkable women, a mother and daughter driven into opposition by a terrible betrayal that threatened to destroy the realm. Catherine de' Medici was a ruthless pragmatist and powerbroker who dominated the throne for thirty years. Her youngest daughter Marguerite, the glamorous "Queen Margot," was a passionate free spirit, the only adversary whom her mother could neither intimidate nor control. When Catherine forces the Catholic Marguerite to marry her Protestant cousin Henry of Navarre against her will, and then uses her opulent Parisian wedding as a means of luring his followers to their deaths, she creates not only savage conflict within France but also a potent rival within her own family. Rich in detail and vivid prose, Goldstone's narrative unfolds as a thrilling historical epic. Treacherous court politics, poisonings, international espionage, and adultery form the background to a story that includes such celebrated figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Nostradamus. The Rival Queens is a dangerous tale of love, betrayal, ambition, and the true nature of courage, the echoes of which still resonate.

The Pope's Daughter:The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere

The Pope's Daughter:The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere PDF Author: Caroline P. Murphy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195182685
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The illegitimate daughter of Pope Julius II, Felice della Rovere became one of the most powerful and accomplished women of the Italian Renaissance. Now, Caroline Murphy vividly captures the untold story of a rare woman who moved with confidence through a world of popes and princes.Using a wide variety of sources, including Felice's personal correspondence, as well as diaries, account books, and chronicles of Renaissance Rome, Murphy skillfully weaves a compelling portrait of this remarkable woman. Felice della Rovere was to witness Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel, watch her father Pope Julius II lay the foundation stone for the new Saint Peter's, and see herself immortalized by Raphael in his Vatican frescos. With her marriage to Gian Giordano Orsini--arranged, though not attended, by her father the Pope--she came to possess great wealth and power, assets which she turned to her advantage. While her father lived, Felice exercised much influence in the affairs of Rome--even negotiating for peace with the Queen of France--and after his death, Felice persevered, making allies of the cardinals and clerics of St. Peter's and maintaining her control of the Orsini land through tenacity, ingenuity, and carefully cultivated political savvy. She survived the Sack of Rome in 1527, but her greatest enemy proved to be her own stepson Napoleone. The rivalry between him and her son Girolamo had a sudden and violent end, and brought her perilously close to losing everything she had spent her life acquiring.With a marvelous cast of characters, this is a spellbinding biography set against the brilliant backdrop of Renaissance Rome.

Murder in the Garden of God

Murder in the Garden of God PDF Author: Eleanor Herman
Publisher: Crux Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1909979651
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description