Princes of the Renaissance
Ebook
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Overview
A beautifully illustrated history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most important and influential patrons.
‘Exceptionally sumptuous... This vivid history brings to life the vices and virtues of the feuding ruling families of Italy.’ Michael Prodger, The Times
‘Full of treasures to be uncovered... A chance to visit a glittering, at times rather gory, world that is different and yet dreamily familiar to our own.’ BBC History Revealed
From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city-states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy immersed themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers.
Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held society together but whose tensions sometimes threatened to tear it apart; thus were their lives dominated as much by the waging of war as the nurture of artistic talent.
In a narrative that is as rigorous and closely researched as it is accessible and informative, Mary Hollingsworth sets the princes’ aesthetic achievements in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of a tumultuous period of history.
A beautifully illustrated history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most important and influential patrons – the princely rulers of Italy’s dynastic states and their families.
A beautifully illustrated edition showing the best of Italian renaissance art and architecture.
THE MEDICI was a Sunday Times book of the week and a Telegraph book of the year.
Mary Hollingsworth’s writing is meticulously researched, yet accessible and informative.
MARKET: Catherine Fletcher; Helen Castor; Tracy Borman.
Exceptionally sumptuous... This vivid history brings to life the vices and virtues of the feuding ruling families of Italy’
Full of treasures to be uncovered... A glittering, at times rather gory, world that is different and yet dreamily familiar to our own’
Dense politics relieved by dazzling art
An accessible and entertaining introduction to a groundbreaking period in world and art history
A significant addition to Renaissance studies, and a delicious deep dive for those fascinated by the era
[A] sweeping tour of Renaissance century Italy... Princes of the Renaissance [is] a celebration of this fascinating moment in Italian history that is both beautifully designed and bursting with incredible colour images’
This beautifully illustrated history tries to make sense of the many rulers and governing dynasties of Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries, a squabbling, treacherous bunch who through their patronage and hunger for grandeur powered the artistic efflorescence of the Renaissance
A head-scrambling epoch that Mary Hollingsworth, the author of books on the Medici and the Borgias, has done wonders to make comprehensible
- Title: Princes of the Renaissance
- Author: Mary Hollingsworth
- Publisher: Apollo
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 512
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781788547826, 1788547829
- Resource ID: LLS:9781788547826
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T10:00:37Z
Mary Hollingsworth is a scholar of the Italian Renaissance and the author of The Medici, which was widely praised on its publication by Head of Zeus in 2017, and Princes of the Renaissance, published in 2021. Her other books include The Cardinal's Hat, The Borgias: History's Most Notorious Dynasty and Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century.
Mary Hollingsworth is a scholar of the Italian Renaissance and the author of The Medici, which was widely praised on its publication by Head of Zeus in 2017, and Princes of the Renaissance, published in 2021. Her other books include The Cardinal's Hat, The Borgias: History's Most Notorious Dynasty and Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century.