The Montefeltro Conspiracy
The Montefeltro Conspiracy

Author: Marcello Simonetta

Publisher: Doubleday

Published: 2008-06-03

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0385526806

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Napoleon and the Rebel
Napoleon and the Rebel

Author: Marcello Simonetta

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2011-06-07

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0230120520

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Lucien was the most talented of the Bonaparte brothers, who not only can be credited for helping Napoleon seize power, but who also had a promising political career of his own. He was a romantic, an idealist, and an anti-monarchist whose love for Alexandrine, the woman he married in spite of Napoleon's objections, caused him to fall out of favor with his powerful brother. In Napoleon and the Rebel: A Story of Brotherhood, Passion, and Power, authors Simonetta and Arikha draw from a massive trove of first-hand documents, allowing them to present a rare, detailed portrait of this remarkable dynasty that reveals Emperor Napoleon and his family at their most intimate and vulnerable moments. The turbulent relationship between Napoleon and his favorite brother, Lucien, of whom the emperor said, "of all my siblings, he was the most gifted, and the one who hurt me most," creates the perfect springboard to illustrate the bloody power struggles, romantic idealism, and corruption that characterized nineteenth-century Europe, as well as the rise and fall of the French empire.

April Blood
April Blood

Author: Lauro Martines

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-04-24

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0195348435

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Apostle
Apostle

Author: Tom Bissell

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2017-02-07

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 030727845X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The story of Twelve Apostles is the story of early Christianity: its competing versions of Jesus’s ministry, its countless schisms, and its ultimate evolution from an obscure Jewish sect to the global faith we know today in all its forms and permutations. In his quest to understand the underpinnings of the world’s largest religion, Tom Bissell embarks on a years-long pilgrimage to the apostles’ supposed tombs, traveling from Jerusalem and Rome to Turkey, Greece, Spain, France, India, and Kyrgyzstan. Along the way, Bissell uncovers the mysterious and often paradoxical lives of these twelve men and how their identities have taken shape over the course of two millennia. Written with empathy and a rare acumen—and often extremely funny—Apostle is an intellectual, spiritual, and personal adventure fit for believers, scholars, and wanderers alike.

The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art
The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art

Author: Noah Charney

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0393248399

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Readers curious about the making of Renaissance art, its cast of characters and political intrigue, will find much to relish in these pages.” —Wall Street Journal Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was a man of many talents—a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar—but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari’s extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari’s visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift. Lauded by Sarah Bakewell as “insightful, gripping, and thoroughly enjoyable,” The Collector of Lives reveals how one Renaissance scholar completely redefined how we look at art.

A Short History of the Italian Renaissance
A Short History of the Italian Renaissance

Author: Kenneth R. Bartlett

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1442600144

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Award-winning lecturer Kenneth R. Bartlett applies his decades of experience teaching the Italian Renaissance to this beautifully illustrated overview. In his introductory Note to the Reader, Bartlett first explains why he chose Jacob Burckhardt's classic narrative to guide students through the complex history of the Renaissance and then provides his own contemporary interpretation of that narrative. Over seventy color illustrations, genealogies of important Renaissance families, eight maps, a list of popes, a timeline of events, a bibliography, and an index are included.

Sprezzatura
Sprezzatura

Author: Peter D'Epiro

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2001-10-02

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 038572019X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A witty, erudite celebration of fifty great Italian cultural achievements that have significantly influenced Western civilization from the authors of What Are the Seven Wonders of the World? “Sprezzatura,” or the art of effortless mastery, was coined in 1528 by Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier. No one has demonstrated effortless mastery throughout history quite like the Italians. From the Roman calendar and the creator of the modern orchestra (Claudio Monteverdi) to the beginnings of ballet and the creator of modern political science (Niccolò Machiavelli), Sprezzatura highlights fifty great Italian cultural achievements in a series of fifty information-packed essays in chronological order.

Casanova
Casanova

Author: Ian Kelly

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-10-16

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 1440642516

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Casanova, noted author Ian Kelly traces the life of Giacomo Casanova, a man whose very name is synonymous with sensuality, seduction and sexual prowess. But Casanova was more than just a great lover. A businessman, diplomat, spy, and philosopher, he authored more than twenty books, including a translation of The Iliad. Confidant to many infamous characters—including Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Catherine the Great—Casanova was undoubtedly charismatic. But how exactly did he seduce himself into infamy? In this richly drawn portrait, Casanova emerges as very much a product of eighteenth-century Venice. He reveled in its commedia del arte and Kelly posits that his successes as both a libertine and a libertarian grew from his careful study of its artifice and illusion. Food, travel, sex: Casanova’s great passions are timeless ones and Kelly brings to life in full flavor the grandeur of his exploits. He also articulates the fascinating personal philosophy that inspired Casanova’s quest to bed all manner of women. A riveting look at the life of the most legendary lover of all time, this is destined to become the definitive biography of Giacomo Casanova.

Magnifico
Magnifico

Author: Miles Unger

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0743254341

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.