Download Free Cosimo I Duke Of Florence Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Cosimo I Duke Of Florence and write the review.

Family tree -- Glossary of names -- Timeline -- Map -- A note on money -- Prologue -- Book one: The bastard son -- Book two: The obedient nephew -- Book three: The prince alone -- Afterword: Alessandro's ethnicity.
When he suddenly came to power in Italy in 1537, the young Duke Cosimo I de' Medici amazed friends and foes alike with his ability to extricate himself from mortal danger, affirm his authority and revive a dying state. He doubled the size of his duchy and established a dynasty that ruled unchallenged for 200 years. This volume is the first book-length study in any language to approach the figure of Duke Cosimo I from the point of view of his cultural agenda. The contributors examine the political, economic, cultural and linguistic strategies that made Cosimo a successful leader, and in the process illuminate the cultural world of mid-sixteenth-century Tuscany.
"This study increases the sum of knowledge about a major Italian collection of antiquities of the sixteenth century. It also shows that Cosimo's antiquities were objects of study to Cinquecento artists and scholars. As such the collection exercised a significant influence on the history and development of archaeology in early modern Florence."--Introduction, page xxv.
Mining the rich documentary sources housed in Tuscan archives and taking advantage of the breadth and depth of scholarship produced in recent years, the seventeen essays in this Companion to Cosimo I de' Medici provide a fresh and systematic overview of the life and career of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, with special emphasis on Cosimo I's education and intellectual interests, cultural policies, political vision, institutional reforms, diplomatic relations, religious beliefs, military entrepreneurship, and dynastic concerns. Contributors: Maurizio Arfaioli, Alessio Assonitis, Nicholas Scott Baker, Sheila Barker, Stefano Calonaci, Brendan Dooley, Daniele Edigati, Sheila ffolliott, Catherine Fletcher, Andrea Gáldy, Fernando Loffredo, Piergabriele Mancuso, Jessica Maratsos, Carmen Menchini, Oscar Schiavone, Marcello Simonetta, and Henk Th. van Veen.
Cosimo dei Medici stabilized ducal finances, secured his borders, doubled his territory, attracted scholars and artists to his court, academy, and universities, and dissipated fractious Florentine politics. These triumphs were far from a foregone conclusion, as Gregory Murry shows in this study of how Cosimo crafted his image as a sacral monarch.
Excerpt from Cosimo I: Duke of Florence In the pages that follow I have tried to let Cosimo speak for himself and vindicate his character, endeavouring to avoid any appearance of partisanship. Yet, now that I take leave of him, I may perhaps confess that, the more I have studied his life, the more it has surprised me that the popular verdict on him has been so unfavourable. The general reader is left far too much under the impression that, after the fall of the Republic, there is not a good word to be said for the rulers of Florence, and I am tempted to protest that Cosimo, in spite of many defects, was a reformer, and on the whole a better governor than Florence deserved. We are nowadays apt to say glibly that it is better to have liberty, however bad the consequent government may be, than to be well ruled under an autocrat. But, though this is no doubt true in the main, the history of the Italian republics does suggest that a limit should be set to the existence of a rule which was seldom peaceful and invariably partisan, and such a limit had undoubtedly been reached in the case both of Florence and Siena. Cosimo may fairly be said to have disciplined two hopelessly factious states; a necessary preliminary to their eventually attaining a greater degree of freedom and order than was ever possible when the Arti Maggiori in Florence strove for the mastery with the Arti Minori, or when Siena incessantly varied the numbers of her councillors. As a man, Cosimo, if not a genial figure, is on the whole far more attractive than his contemporaries in Italy, and undoubtedly his qualities of concentration and steadfastness are pleasing in such an age of haste, half-work and disarray. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The ducal court of Cosimo I de' Medici in sixteenth-century Florence was one of absolutist, rule-bound order. Portraiture especially served the dynastic pretensions of the absolutist ruler, Duke Cosimo and his consort, Eleonora di Toledo, and was part of a Herculean programme of propaganda to establish legitimacy and prestige for the new sixteenth-century Florentine court. In this engaging and original study, Gabrielle Langdon analyses selected portraits of women by Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Alessandro Allori, and other masters. She defines their function as works of art, as dynastic declarations, and as encoded documents of court culture and propaganda, illuminating Cosimo's conscious fashioning of his court portraiture in imitation of the great courts of Europe. Langdon explores the use of portraiture as a vehicle to express Medici political policy, such as with Cosimo's Hapsburg and Papal alliances in his bid to be made Grand Duke with hegemony over rival Italian princes. Stories from archives, letters, diaries, chronicles, and secret ambassadorial briefs, open up a world of fascinating, personalities, personal triumphs, human frailty, rumour, intrigue, and appalling tragedies. Lavishly illustrated, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I is an indispensable work for anyone with a passion for Italian renaissance history, art, and court culture.
In this study, Henk Th. van Veen reassesses how Cosimo de' Medici represented himself in images during the course of his rule. The text examines not only art and architecture, but also literature, historiography, religion, and festive culture.