Medici Money

Medici Money PDF Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847656870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power derived from the family bank, and this book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank (from Cosimo who took it over in 1419 to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent who presided over its precipitous decline). The Medici faced two apparently insuperable problems: how did a banker deal with the fact that the Church regarded interest as a sin and had made it illegal? How in a small republic like Florence could he avoid having his wealth taken away by taxation? But the bank became indispensable to the Church. And the family completely subverted Florence's claims to being democratic. They ran the city. Medici Money explores a crucial moment in the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern world, a moment when our own attitudes to money and morals were being formed. To read this book is to understand how much the Renaissance has to tell us about our own world. Medici Money is one of the launch titles in a new series, Atlas Books, edited by James Atlas. Atlas Books pairs fine writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the world, in a new genre - the business book as literature.

Medici Money

Medici Money PDF Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847656870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power derived from the family bank, and this book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank (from Cosimo who took it over in 1419 to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent who presided over its precipitous decline). The Medici faced two apparently insuperable problems: how did a banker deal with the fact that the Church regarded interest as a sin and had made it illegal? How in a small republic like Florence could he avoid having his wealth taken away by taxation? But the bank became indispensable to the Church. And the family completely subverted Florence's claims to being democratic. They ran the city. Medici Money explores a crucial moment in the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern world, a moment when our own attitudes to money and morals were being formed. To read this book is to understand how much the Renaissance has to tell us about our own world. Medici Money is one of the launch titles in a new series, Atlas Books, edited by James Atlas. Atlas Books pairs fine writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the world, in a new genre - the business book as literature.

With and Without the Medici

With and Without the Medici PDF Author: Eckart Marchand
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : Art patronage
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medici dominance in the political and cultural life of Italy, and of Florence in particular has been well explored. Previous patronage studies have shown how the Medici invested great wealth in both private and public art and how the skills of Florentine artists and their products were an important part of the self-representation of Florence and the Medici in Italy and abroad. The six studies in this volume investigate the evidence for patronal interests expressed in a variety of commissions by different social groups and consider how far Medici activity as patrons can be considered paradigmatic. In examining the language in which the work was commissioned and received, the scholars explore the way the work of art reflects the patron's needs, interests or allegiance. New evidence is presented of aspects of the relationship between the patron and artists. Topics covered include commissions for the religious and secular decoration of Florentine villas, the activities and aspirations of Florentine nuns, the early practice of collecting, and the artist's response to the patron's needs through the formal qualities of the works of art. The volume is introduced by Eckart Marchand and Alison Wright who provide an invaluable historical overview of the present state of studies in Italian and especially Tuscan Renaissance art patronage.

Lorenzo De' Medici and the Art of Magnificence

Lorenzo De' Medici and the Art of Magnificence PDF Author: F. W. Kent
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801886270
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Historian F.W. Kent offers a new look at Lorenzo's relationship to the arts, aesthetics, collecting, and building - especially in the context of his role as the political boss (maestro della bottega) of republican Florence and a leading player in Renaissance Italian diplomacy. Kent's approach reveals Lorenzo's activities as an art patron as far more extensive and creative than previously thought. Known as "the Magnificent," Lorenzo was broadly interested in the arts and supported efforts to beautify Florence and the many Medici lands and palaces. His expertise was well regarded by guildsmen and artists, who often turned to him for advice as well as for patronage.

The Medici Boy

The Medici Boy PDF Author: John L'Heureux
Publisher: House of Stratus
ISBN: 1938231481
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
While creating his famous bronze of David and Goliath, Donatello’s passion for his beautiful model and part time rent boy, Agnolo, ignites a dangerous jealousy that ultimately leads to murder. Luca, the complex and conflicted assistant, will sacrifice all to save Donatello, even his master’s friend--the great patron of art, Cosimo de’ Medici.

Lorenzo De' Medici at Home

Lorenzo De' Medici at Home PDF Author: Richard Stapleford
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027105641X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
"An inventory of the private possessions of Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici, head of the ruling Medici family during the apogee of the Florentine Renaissance"--Provided by publisher.

Medici ~ Legacy

Medici ~ Legacy PDF Author: Matteo Strukul
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786692163
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
The third instalment in a prize-winning series charting the rise of the House of Medici as they become Masters of Florence and progenitors of the Renaissance. Fontainebleau, 1536. Francis II, Dauphin and heir to the French throne, is dead. Poisoned. And the royal court believe Catherine de' Medici to be the murderer. Catherine's husband Henry will now be the next King of France – and the Medici are known to stop at nothing in the pursuit of power. But not yet queen and without an heir of her own, seventeen-year-old Catherine cannot be sure of securing her family's legacy. To ensure the conception of an heir, she will need to seek help from an unexpected ally: Nostradamus, the reclusive astronomer and purported seer. Dismissed by most as a charlatan and a heretic, Catherine knows he will be her only hope in becoming a mother to the future king. Amid court intrigues, betrayals, and humiliations, Catherine waits. She awaits the death of her father-in-law, King Francis, and the birth of a son to carry her name. For once she is queen, Catherine de' Medici's power will only grow. But that power comes at a heavy cost, one she might ever regret. 'Strukul has a brilliant style and a rare imagination' Tim Willocks 'Matteo Strukul has arrived with a bang. His historical saga, Medici, is a worldwide success' Il Venerdì

The Golden Age of Marie De' Medici

The Golden Age of Marie De' Medici PDF Author: Susan Saward
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description


April Blood

April Blood PDF Author: Lauro Martines
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195348435
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the world's leading historians of Renaissance Italy brings to life here the vibrant--and violent--society of fifteenth-century Florence. His disturbing narrative opens up an entire culture, revealing the dark side of Renaissance man and politician Lorenzo de' Medici. On a Sunday in April 1478, assassins attacked Lorenzo and his brother as they attended Mass in the cathedral of Florence. Lorenzo scrambled to safety as Giuliano bled to death on the cathedral floor. April Blood moves outward in time and space from that murderous event, unfolding a story of tangled passions, ambition, treachery, and revenge. The conspiracy was led by one of the city's most noble clans, the Pazzi, financiers who feared and resented the Medici's swaggering new role as political bosses--but the web of intrigue spread through all of Italy. Bankers, mercenaries, the Duke of Urbino, the King of Naples, and Pope Sixtus IV entered secretly into the plot. Florence was plunged into a peninsular war, and Lorenzo was soon fighting for his own and his family's survival. The failed assassination doomed the Pazzi. Medici revenge was swift and brutal--plotters were hanged or beheaded, innocents were hacked to pieces, and bodies were put out to dangle from the windows of the government palace. All remaining members of the larger Pazzi clan were forced to change their surname, and every public sign or symbol of the family was expunged or destroyed. April Blood offers us a fresh portrait of Renaissance Florence, where dazzling artistic achievements went side by side with violence, craft, and bare-knuckle politics. At the center of the canvas is the figure of Lorenzo the Magnificent--poet, statesman, connoisseur, patron of the arts, and ruthless "boss of bosses." This extraordinarily vivid account of a turning point in the Italian Renaissance is bound to become a lasting work of history.

Death in Florence

Death in Florence PDF Author: Paul Strathern
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1605988278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Get Book Here

Book Description
By the end of the fifteenth century, Florence was well established as the home of the Renaissance. As generous patrons to the likes of Botticelli and Michelangelo, the ruling Medici embodied the progressive humanist spirit of the age, and in Lorenzo de' Medici they possessed a diplomat capable of guarding the militarily weak city in a climate of constantly shifting allegiances. In Savonarola, an unprepossessing provincial monk, Lorenzo found his nemesis. Filled with Old Testament fury, Savonarola's sermons reverberated among a disenfranchised population, who preferred medieval Biblical certainties to the philosophical interrogations and intoxicating surface glitter of the Renaissance. The battle between these two men would be a fight to the death, a series of sensational events—invasions, trials by fire, the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', terrible executions and mysterious deaths—featuring a cast of the most important and charismatic Renaissance figures.In an exhilaratingly rich and deeply researched story, Paul Strathern reveals the paradoxes, self-doubts, and political compromises that made the battle for the soul of the Renaissance city one of the most complex and important moments in Western history.

Magnifico

Magnifico PDF Author: Miles Unger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743254341
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Get Book Here

Book Description
Miles Unger's biography of this complex figure draws on primary research in Italian sources and on his intimate knowledge of Florence, where he lived for several years."--BOOK JACKET.