A Renaissance Court
A Renaissance Court

Author: Gregory Lubkin

Publisher: University of California Presson Demand

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 9780520081468

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"A vivid portrait of the arguably most brilliant court in early Renaissance Europe, which will be used by medieval/Renaissance historians and by musicologists, art historians, and social historians."--Vincent Ilardi, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Ippolita Maria Sforza
Ippolita Maria Sforza

Author: Jeryldene M. Wood

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-06-26

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1476680477

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In April 1455, ten-year-old Ippolita Maria Sforza, a daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Milan, was betrothed to the seven-year-old crown prince of the Kingdom of Naples as a symbol of peace and reconciliation between the two rival states. This first full-scale biography of Ippolita Maria follows her life as it unfolds at the rival courts of Milan and Naples amid a cast of characters whose political intrigues too often provoked assassinations, insurrections, and wars. She was conscious of her duty to preserve peace despite the strains created by her husband's arrogance, her father-in-law's duplicity, and her Milanese brothers' contentiousness. The duchess's intelligence and charm calmed the habitual discord between her families, and in time, her diplomatic savvy and her great friendship with Lorenzo de' Medici of Florence made her a key player in the volatile politics of the peninsula for almost 20 years. Drawing on her letters and contemporary chronicles, memoirs, and texts, this biography offers a rare look into the private life of a Renaissance woman who attempted to preserve a sense of self while coping with a tempestuous marriage, dutifully giving birth to three children, and supervising a large household under trying political circumstances.

The Duke and the Stars
The Duke and the Stars

Author: Monica Azzolini

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-02-11

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0674067916

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The Duke and the Stars explores science and medicine as studied and practiced in fifteenth-century Italy, including how astrology was taught in relation to astronomy. It illustrates how the “predictive art” of astrology was often a critical, secretive source of information for Italian Renaissance rulers, particularly in times of crisis.

Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan
Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan

Author: Evelyn S. Welch

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780300063516

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Milan was one of the largest and most important cities in Renaissance Italy. Controlled by the Visconti and Sforza dynasties from 1277 until 1500, its rulers were generous patrons of the arts, responsible for commissioning major monuments throughout the city and for supporting artists such as Giovanni di Balduccio, Filarete, Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci. But the city was much more than its dukes. Milan had a distinct civic identity, one that was expressed, above all, through its neighbourhood, religious and charitable associations. This book moves beyond standard interpretations of ducal patronage to explore the often overlooked city itself, showing how the allegiances of the town hall and the parish related to those of the servants and aristocrats who frequented the Visconti and Sforza court. In this original and stimulating interdisciplinary study, Evelyn Welch illustrates the ways in which the myths of Visconti and Sforza supremacy were created. Newly discovered material for major projects such as the cathedral, hospital and castle of Milan permits a greater understanding of the political, economic and architectural forces that shaped these extraordinary buildings. The book also explores the wider social networks of the artists themselves. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, is de-mythologised: far from being an isolated, highly prized court artist, he spent his almost eighteen years in the city working within the wider Milanese community of painters, sculptors, goldsmiths and embroiderers. The broad perspective of the book ensures that any future study of the Renaissance will have to re-evaluate the place of Milan in Italian cultural history.

The Montefeltro Conspiracy
The Montefeltro Conspiracy

Author: Marcello Simonetta

Publisher: Doubleday

Published: 2008-06-03

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0385526806

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A brutal murder, a nefarious plot, a coded letter. After five hundred years, the most notorious mystery of the Renaissance is finally solved. The Italian Renaissance is remembered as much for intrigue as it is for art, with papal politics and infighting among Italy’s many city-states providing the grist for Machiavelli’s classic work on take-no-prisoners politics, The Prince. The attempted assassination of the Medici brothers in the Duomo in Florence in 1478 is one of the best-known examples of the machinations endemic to the age. While the assailants were the Medici’s rivals, the Pazzi family, questions have always lingered about who really orchestrated the attack, which has come to be known as the Pazzi Conspiracy. More than five hundred years later, Marcello Simonetta, working in a private archive in Italy, stumbled upon a coded letter written by Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, to Pope Sixtus IV. Using a codebook written by his own ancestor to crack its secrets, Simonetta unearthed proof of an all-out power grab by the Pope for control of Florence. Montefeltro, long believed to be a close friend of Lorenzo de Medici, was in fact conspiring with the Pope to unseat the Medici and put the more malleable Pazzi in their place. In The Montefeltro Conspiracy, Simonetta unravels this plot, showing not only how the plot came together but how its failure (only one of the Medici brothers, Giuliano, was killed; Lorenzo survived) changed the course of Italian and papal history for generations. In the course of his gripping narrative, we encounter the period’s most colorful characters, relive its tumultuous politics, and discover that two famous paintings, including one in the Sistine Chapel, contain the Medici’s astounding revenge.

Milan Undone
Milan Undone

Author: John Gagné

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2021-01-01

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0674248724

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A new history of how one of the Renaissance’s preeminent cities lost its independence in the Italian Wars. In 1499, the duchy of Milan had known independence for one hundred years. But the turn of the sixteenth century saw the city battered by the Italian Wars. As the major powers of Europe battled for supremacy, Milan, viewed by contemporaries as the “key to Italy,” found itself wracked by a tug-of-war between French claimants and its ruling Sforza family. In just thirty years, the city endured nine changes of government before falling under three centuries of Habsburg dominion. John Gagné offers a new history of Milan’s demise as a sovereign state. His focus is not on the successive wars themselves but on the social disruption that resulted. Amid the political whiplash, the structures of not only government but also daily life broke down. The very meanings of time, space, and dynasty—and their importance to political authority—were rewritten. While the feudal relationships that formed the basis of property rights and the rule of law were shattered, refugees spread across the region. Exiles plotted to claw back what they had lost. Milan Undone is a rich and detailed story of harrowing events, but it is more than that. Gagné asks us to rethink the political legacy of the Renaissance: the cradle of the modern nation-state was also the deathbed of one of its most sophisticated precursors. In its wake came a kind of reversion—not self-rule but chaos and empire.

Leonardo Da Vinci and the Book of Doom
Leonardo Da Vinci and the Book of Doom

Author: Simon Hewitt

Publisher: Unicorn

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781912690572

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This in-depth investigation into the art, politics and murderous cynicism of Renaissance Milan is is an academic detective story sketched out with erudition and journalistic panache. Debunking the outrageous claim by the notorious Lancashire forger Shaun Greenhalgh that he produced the mesmerizing portrait of a young girl that zoomed into the art world limelight in 2009, Hewitt proves that Leonardo was on intimate terms with both the sitter - Bianca Sforza, teenage daughter of the Duke of Milan - and her husband, Galeazzo Sanseverino, the Duke's Army Captain, effective Number Two and, as Hewitt convincingly demonstrates, the subject of Leonardo's enigmatic portrait The Musician. Hewitt brings the tragic Bianca to life, suggests why and by whom she was likely murdered,and explains why her Leonardo portrait was included in one of the most lavish books ever produced - whose co-illustrator, Giovan Pietro Birago, was paid even more than Leonardo. Finally, in one of the most significant artistic discoveries of recent times, Hewitt shows how Birago's artistic colleagues had no hesitation in lampooning the venerable Leonardo as a Ginger-Haired Gay. 'A remarkable book and a work of impressive scholarship yeteminently readable, helped along by the author's characteristic light touch,the snapshots of the major players and the quality of the illustrations. As adetective story it takes some beating. Chronicling Simon's discoveries, thefascinating people he met on his journey, and the exotic locations he ended upin, his role in piecing it all together is a story in itself' - JOHNFALDING formerly Arts Reporter, Financial Times 'A magnificent journey through time. An amazing book fromfirst page to last' - FRANÇOISE JOULIE Curator of Drawings, Musée du Louvre,Paris