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Foreword by Gene Brucker
Preface: “Why another book on the Italian Renaissance?”
Chapter One: Out of the Ashes: The rise of the communes and Florence in the age of Dante
The End of the Roman Empire
The Rise of Christianity
Europe desperately seeks order
The Empire returns?
Europe bounces back: the Commercial Revolution
A new form of government - communes
Tensions within the communes: magnates and popolo
The age of the popular commune 1200-1290
The Florentine primo popolo of 1250
A “pullulation of little powers”
Guelfs and Ghibellines
Florentines, the “fifth element of the world”
Florence, the city of Dante
The first masterpiece of Italian literature
The structure of the Divine Comedy
“Those brand new people and their sudden earnings”
The mendicant orders
Dante’s views on the powers of Church and State
The growth of naturalism in art - Giotto
Developments in sculpture and architecture
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Two: The Crisis of the fourteenth century: Climatic, epidemic, demographic disaster
Climate change — “global cooling”
The Hundred Years’ War
The Black Death
Boccaccio’s account of the Black Death
The life of Boccaccio
The Decameron
The Decameron and society in the wake of the Black Death
Government and medicine respond
Social mobility and unrest
The Revolt of the Ciompi
Town and country
The “motionless history” in the countryside
Hard times in the contado
An “age of new men”
Painting in the early fourteenth century — The Sienese school
Painting in the wake of the Black Death
Recovery and renewal
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Three: Back to the Future: Italian humanists recover the classical past
Humanism — a cultural revolution led by notaries
The medieval scholastic heritage
Italian humanists restore the freshness to ancient texts
The life of Petrarch, a passionate humanist
“Carried away by the fire of youth…”
Petrarch’s interiority — it’s all about “me”
“Scattered rhymes”
An “educational surge”- Latin and vernacular education in Italian cities
The flowering of Florentine vernacular culture
Classical rhetoric and the Florentine citizen
Humanism in the generation after Petrarch: the active versus the contemplative life
Salutati, Bruni and civic humanism
Developments in the arts — Donatello, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti
Ghiberti
Donatello
Brunelleschi
Masaccio
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Four: Caput mundi again? Rome from Cola di Rienzo to Pius II
Rome, the city of popes
The Roman papacy, a precarious rock
Roman communal politics, a “monstrous thing”
The Two Swords clash: Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair duel to the death
Unam sanctam: a manifesto of papal absolutism
Rome, the widow
The meteoric rise and fall of Cola di Rienzo
The Babylonian Captivity of the Church 1309-1378
The popes return to Rome
Antipopes and Western Schism (1378-1417)
The Conciliar movement 1409-1439
The birth of the Renaissance “papal prince”
Physical renewal of Rome under three popes: Martin V (1417-31), Eugenius IV (1431-47), Nicholas V (1447-55)
“Noble buildings…seemingly made by the hand of God”
The Amazing Leon Battista Alberti
Reinventing the role of the architect
Pius II, the humanist pope
Pius II’s Commentaries
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Five: Hearth and Home: Lay piety, women, and the family
Religion, a family affair
The saints — “Christ’s special friends”
Lay piety in a group setting — confraternities
Lay people imitating the mendicants — the tertiary orders
Lay people imitating the saints
Female holiness 1200 — 1550, the age of “living saints”
Religion in the lives of everyday women
Women’s lives in the Renaissance — who were Laura and Beatrice really?
‘What’s love got to do with it?’ — marriage among Renaissance elites
“Governing” the household — the woman’s realm
A woman’s voice from the patrician class: Alessandra Strozzi
Widows
Nuns
Working women — domestic servants, wet nurses
Social outcasts — prostitutes, outsiders, slaves
Images of women in Renaissance art
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Six: Lords of the Renaissance: The Medici, Visconti, and Sforza dynasties through 1466
The transition from commune to signoria
Dissatisfaction within the communes
Life under the signore
Milan — in the middle of it all
The Visconti — the clan of vipers
Giangaleazzo Visconti — a prince among tyrants?
An intermission between two Milanese dynasties: the Ambrosian Republic 1447-50
Francesco Sforza — from soldier of fortune to statesman
The Medici — where did they come from?
Giovanni di Bicci (1360-1429) lays the foundations of the Medici banking fortune
Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464) son of a moneychanger, father of his country
Cosimo’s strategy: “Do not draw attention to yourself”
1433 Cosimo’s exile
Cosimo’s triumphant return in 1434
1455 - Soldier and banker broker an end to incessant war in Italy
Art, politics, and money: The Patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici
“Having so much on his conscience…” Vespasiano da Bisticci describes Cosimo’s rebuilding of the Monastery of San Marco
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Seven: The Mezzogiorno: The ‘other Renaissance’ in Naples and Sicily
The South — land of myth and midday sun
Sicily, bread-basket and lumber yard for Rome
Campania felix — Naples and surroundings under the Roman Empire
Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Arabs — 5th to 9th century invasions
The South bounces back as an economic powerhouse, cultural melting pot 9th-11th centuries
Norman domination of the south 1059-1130
Frederick II (1194-1250) — an emperor who was the wonder of the world
The Sicilian Vespers 1282
Aragon and Anjou fight over the Two Sicilies — 1282-1442
The Two Sicilies reunited under Alfonso of Aragon in 1442
Ferrante I
The Renaissance in Naples 1443-1494
Antonello da Messina
Alfonso’s patronage of humanism
Lorenzo Valla, humanist scholar and freethinker
Declamation on the Donation of Constantine
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Eight: La Serenissima: When Venice ruled the seas
“You live like sea birds, your homes scattered over the water…”
The Venetians’ battle for survival
Inventing a Venetian identity- the city of Saint Mark takes wing 810 - 1000
From the “Venetian Gulf” to “Beyond-the-Sea” 1000-1204
The Venetian commune comes of age 1032-1297
The Great Council, the keystone of the Venetian Republic
1297 - The “aristocratic commune” closes ranks
The Council of Ten — the vigilant lion
The Doge of Venice — prince or primus inter pares?
“Lords of the Sea”
Expansion of the Venetian empire into the terraferma
Daily life in early Renaissance Venice
Festivals, scuole, and venezianità
Humanism, printing, the sciences
Venetian painting of the early Renaissance - Bellini and Carpaccio
The Renaissance comes to Venetian architecture - Sansovino
Gasparo Contarini’s The Commonwealth and Government of Venice
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Nine: Magnificent Florence 1469-1492
The restlessness of the Florentine elites 1464-69
Lorenzo takes control 1469-1477
Lorenzo and Giuliano 1469-1478, the brothers’ “brigades” of poets and jousts for love
Marsilio Ficino and Neoplatonism
Vernacular magnificence: Lorenzo and literature
Luigi Pulci’s Il Morgante
Angelo Poliziano’s Stanzas for Giuliano de’ Medici
The Renaissance on the streets: Popular entertainments and festivals in Quattrocento Florence
Lorenzo and Pope Sixtus IV collide
The Pazzi Conspiracy — murder in the cathedral
War with Pope Sixtus IV
Lorenzo as “boss of the shop”
Money and art in Renaissance Florence
Competition and innovation in the arts
The realism of Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio
The idealism of Botticelli
Representing the here and now - Ghirlandaio
Building for posterity
The spiritual mood in late Quattrocento Florence
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Ten: 1494 — the beginning of the calamities of Italy
1492-1494 The Italian League unravels
A new pope — Rodrigo Borgia becomes Pope Alexander VI
Charles VIII invades Italy Sept 1494- July 1495
Savonarola — the rise of the “little friar” from Ferrara
The “New Jerusalem”- the Florentine Republic renewed
“Weepers”, “Angry Men” and “Ugly Companions”
The end of Savonarola
Louis XII and the French Invasion of 1499
The meteoric career of Cesare Borgia 1499-1503
Julius II the “terrible” pope takes on Venice
The Holy League — a brief alliance born of mutual enmity
The Florentine Republic under Soderini gives way to Medici rule in 1512
Niccolò Machiavelli out of work
The Prince
When virtù is not necessarily virtuous and fortuna is not always fortunate
Interpreting The Prince
The role of morality and religion in The Prince
Does Machiavelli advocate tyranny?
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Eleven: Paradoxes of the High Renaissance: Art in a time of turmoil
Leonardo — the pacifist artist who designed weapons for a prince
Mantua, Ferrara, Urbino - small courts, big ambitions
The Venetian innovators - Giorgione and Titian - painters in a watery city dream of idyllic pastures
Titian’s bold colors, sensuality, triumphant images
The explosive genius of Michelangelo — extreme piety and extreme paganism
The David — triumphant symbol of the Florentine Republic
Pope Julius II — a second Caesar
Bramante tears down St. Peter’s
Michelangelo paints a “terrible” ceiling
Raphael in Rome - regal rooms for a pope and erotic rooms for a banker
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Twelve: The 1527 Sack of Rome and its aftermath: Courtiers and courtesans in High Renaissance literature
A new world order in the sixteenth century
Italy under the papacy of Leo X 1513- 1521
Francesco Guicciardini’s career as papal governor in the Romagna
The tragically indecisive Pope Clement VII
On the brink of disaster - 1526
The Sack
Response to the Sack
Castiglione’s The Courtier — an instant bestseller
Contradictions and tensions within The Courtier
The Machiavellian Courtier?
Gender-bending at court and the changing role of women
Courtiers, court ladies, and courtesans
Ariosto and Sannazaro’s escapist fantasies
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Thirteen: Reformations, political, religious, and artistic 1530-1563
1527-1530 The Last Florentine Republic
1532 The Medici principate established
Michelangelo and the Medici 1516 - 1534
Martin Luther - a German monk protests papal abuses
Humanist origins of the Reformation - “Christian Humanism”
Catholic reformations before The Reformation
The Church responds — Catholic versus Protestant
The Council of Trent 1545-1563
Michelangelo in Rome 1534-64
Mannerism — avant-garde art
The artist as courtier
The Lives of the Artists - Vasari invents art history
Benvenuto Cellini’s Autobiography - The artist as genius and enfant terrible
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Fourteen: The ‘Imperial Renaissance’: Italy during the Spanish peace 1559-1598
Pax hispanica
Learning that was not strictly academic
Print culture — read all about it
Crusaders and courtesans - poetry in the late Cinquecento
Buffoons, faithful shepherds and prima donnas: the birth of Renaissance theater
Italian words and music come together: madrigals, motets, and masses
Architecture: perfection of classical forms and experimentation
Painting: Aged masters and young mavericks
The Michelangelo from Caravaggio
Conclusion
Resources
Chapter Fifteen: Celestial revolutions and earthly discoveries at the turn of the seventeenth century”
Inquistions
The Roman Inquisition — myth and reality
Jews and witches
The Index of Prohibited Books
Missionaries to the mezzogiorno, “the Indies down here”
The “new philosophy” — natural philosophers explore the “book of nature”
Italian scientific revolutions
A flowering of the natural sciences
The sciences put to work — the genius of engineers and artists
Anatomy - physicians and artists look inside the human body
Astrology, astronomy, cosmology - the sixteenth-century view from earth
Measuring the heavens - mathematicians invade outer space
Galileo and the “new science”
Galileo and his telescope
The Starry Messenger - the Medici become moons and the scientist becomes a star
The conflict between the new science and religion
1633 Science on trial
Conclusion
Resources
Epilogue.: The End of the Renaissance?
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
John Distaulo, Jr.
reviewed A Short History of Renaissance Italy on January 29, 2015
A Short History of Renaissance Italy
The author very sensibly uses BCE and CE for the dating system in this book, rather than the antiquated BC and AD system that many modern historians still very embarrassingly use.
This book is clearly written for students, but that doesn't detract from the work. As the title rather strongly suggests, this is meant to be little more than an introduction to the complex subject of Renaissance Italy. Instead of having a single bibliography listed at the back of the book, the author has a bibliography listed at the end of each chapter. The reason is that each chapter targets specific aspects or Renaissance Italy, so the bibliographies are relevant to the topics covered in each chapter. To be honest, though, I would have still liked an overall bibliography at the end of the book.
The author has a bit of an odd habit of sometimes writing the Italian for the century instead of simple English; for example, Duecento instead of thirteenth century. What makes it odd is that it's not consistent, so sometimes she uses Italian, sometimes English. Since this book was never meant to be an Italian language guide, I would have preferred that she simply stuck to the English for the sake of ease and simplicity, especially since this was aimed especially at students.
But even though it was indeed primarily written with students in mind, there's absolutely no reason why non-students like me can't read it. It's a very good introduction to the subject.
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Add A Short History of Renaissance Italy, The book follows an interdisciplinary approach and covers the origins of the Italian Renaissance through the Baroque period. It is comprised of fifteen chapters, organized chronologically, along with an introduction and conclusion., A Short History of Renaissance Italy to your collection on WonderClub |
