
The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Hardback)
Catherine Fletcher (author)- 10+ in stock
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Catherine Fletcher reveals the murky underbelly of Renaissance Italy, populated by mercenaries, prostitutes, murderers, soldiers as well as ordinary merchants and farmers who all played their part in shaping the period that transformed the Western world.
'Brilliant and gripping, here is the full true Renaissance in a history of compelling originality and freshness' - Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Italian Renaissance shaped western culture - but it was far stranger and darker than many of us realise.
We revere Leonardo da Vinci for his art but few now appreciate his ingenious designs for weaponry. We know the Mona Lisa for her smile but not that she was married to a slave-trader. We visit Florence to see Michelangelo's David but hear nothing of the massacre that forced the republic's surrender. In focusing on the Medici in Florence and the Borgias in Rome, we miss the vital importance of the Genoese and Neapolitans, the courts of Urbino and Mantua. Rarely do we hear of the women writers, Jewish merchants, the mercenaries, engineers, prostitutes, farmers and citizens who lived the Renaissance every day.
In fact, many of the most celebrated artists and thinkers that have come to define the Renaissance - Leonardo and Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, Machiavelli and Castiglione - emerged not during the celebrated 'rebirth' of the fifteenth century but amidst the death and destruction of the sixteenth century. For decades, a series of savage wars dominated Italy's political, economic and daily life, generating fortunes and new technologies, but also ravaging populations with famine, disease and slaughter. In this same short time, the birth of Protestantism, Spain's colonisation of the Americas and the rise of the Ottoman Empire all posed grave threats to Italian power, while sparking debates about the ethics of government and enslavement, religious belief and sexual morality.
In The Beauty and the Terror, Catherine Fletcher provides an enrapturing narrative history that brings all of this and more into view. Brimming with life, it takes us closer than ever before to the lived reality of this astonishing era and its meaning for today.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781847925091
Number of pages: 432
Weight: 816 g
Dimensions: 240 x 162 x 162 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Terrifying and fascinating ... If you thought the Renaissance was all about beautiful pictures and the 'rediscovery' of Classical writing, you are quite wrong ... The Beauty and the Terror dismantles our assumptions about the Renaissance with the precision of a wheellock arquebus ... an ambitious, multifocal book, encompassing more than 150 years [that] shine[s] a light on figures often forgotten in conventional histories' - Mary Wellesley, The Sunday Times
'Impressive and lucid ... Fletcher's narration excels in such colourful details ... a scholarly, but vivid history that shows the impact that the machinations of the great, good and not so good had on the insignificant ... a persuasive account of how Italy was brought low even as the culture floated high' - Michael Prodger, The Times
'Richly well-informed and admirably well-written, containing material of real interest on every page ... has added a wealth of information that will be new to most of us' - Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph
Leading us into the world of the high Italian Renaissance in all its rich, blood-soaked glory, Catherine Fletcher shows us how the violent energies of war gave birth to some of the greatest art ever seen. Devastating in its detail, The Beauty and the Terror is a powerful, intimate and deeply humane portrait of this age of extreme destruction and exceptional creativity -- Thomas Penn, author of Winter King and Brothers York
A wonderfully dark, gritty, hard-edged tour behind the scenes of the Italian Renaissance. Catherine Fletcher is an expert and eloquent guide through the fire, blood and steel that inspired some of the greatest art in the world -- Jessie Childs, author of God's Traitors
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“Lively 'popular' history but nothing 'alternative' here (unless your only knowledge of the period is from Burkhardt and Rowse!)”
This is a lively popular history of the Renaissance from 1492 through the sixteenth century, focusing primarily on Italy but not ignoring exploration, imperial colonialisation and the impact of, for example, the fall... More
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