Tuesday
Started a nonfiction book, THE MEDICI: Rise of a Parvenu Dynasty 1360-1537 by Danny Chaplin.
In the affluent but militarily weak city of fifteenth and sixteenth-century Florence, an ambitious family of financiers from a modest provincial country background rose through shrewdness and wealth to ultimate command of the state. Eventually, the House of Medici would lend its Tuscan mercantile bloodline to the royal dynasties of France, Spain, Austria and England. Their astonishing story is inextricably intertwined with that of Florence itself. Using their artistic patronage of such geniuses as Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to legitimize and propagandize their regime, they inadvertently triggered the Florentine Renaissance in Italy which later spread throughout the whole of Europe and dragged the world out of the middle ages. This epic new narrative history of the Medici, which covers the crucial period from 1360 to 1537, charts the family’s meteoric rise from the humble, unassuming beginnings of Giovanni di Bicci, to the 'Pater Patriae', Cosimo de’ Medici, and his battle with Rinaldo degli Albizzi. It progresses to Cosimo's son Piero ‘the Gouty’, his grandson Lorenzo ‘il Magnifico’ and the golden age of Laurentian Renaissance Florence, touching upon the treachery of the Pazzi Conspiracy, the family’s expulsion and exile from Florence under Piero ‘the Unfortunate’ and the Medici’s subsequent restoration to power under the two notable but deeply flawed Medici popes: Leo X and Clement VII. Ultimately this grand narrative culminates in the brutal assassination of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici and the ascendancy of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who would establish total Medici hegemony over Florence for the ensuing 168 years.
Published 2016; 649 pages.
More of the same stuff this evening. Walk and feed Keo. Feed Steve. Hopefully read and then sleep soundly.
Have a good day
PK the Bookeemonster
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