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The Medici – Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance

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The Medici series is billed as a fictionalized depiction of the powerful Medici family who ruled Florence for almost a century. If you’re looking for historical accuracy, you’ll find gaps and inconsistencies. These can be maddening if you are a history buff. However, once I gave up focusing on what was real versus what was fiction, I thoroughly enjoyed Medici.

If you want to know who the Medici really were, these are the books you should start with.They are filled with vivid details and well-told stories and are indispensable reads for fans of the Medici family. They also paint a picture of Renaissance life in Florence which is interesting if you’re planning a visit to the city. 3 Top Books about the Medici family Perfektná kniha, nielen pre milovníkov histórie (ale rozhodne neuškodí milovať históriu, najmä tú "obyčajnejšiu" bez bojov, zato s množstvom detailov týkajúcich sa každodennosti). Pre tých, čo sa zaujímajú o Florenciu samotnú, o ľudí, ktorí v nej žili - či už to boli Medici alebo nie, dozviete sa vážne mnoho.Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence built by Brunelleschi Domed ceiling of the Pantheon in Rome completed in 126 AD Whilst the Medici are fêted for their patronage of the arts none of this would have been possible without them first having the money to spend on the projects for which Florence is famous. They achieved this wealth by means of money lending, first on a small scale and then by increasing the amount they leant and also by guaranteeing funds in various locations around Europe for travellers who would otherwise have to carry the money on them. They did this by establishing branches of the Medici bank in places like London, Paris and Rome as well as other cities. Along with double entry book keeping, the Medici are credited with inventing what we understand today to be the modern banking system. The Intellectual Struggle for Florence is an analysis of the ideology that developed in Florence with the rise of the Medici, during the early fifteenth century, the period long recognized as the most formative of the early Renaissance. Instead of simply describing early Renaissance ideas, this volume attempts to relate these ideas to specific social and political conflicts of the fifteenth century, and specifically to the development of the Medici regime.

Florence is a very noir city,” a film-maker once told me 10 years ago, on learning that I wrote thrillers set there. (The sixth in my Florentine detective series, The Viper, is out now.) We were looking down on lovely Piazza Santa Croce, scene of a thousand years of bloody jousts and tournaments and the staggeringly violent Florentine football, Calcio Storico, and the words made perfect sense to me. It is with his descendant Cosimo the First (really the second) that they acquire the extra paraphernalia and become this:

Two of the most influential Medicis, Cosimo and Lorenzo, were at some point expelled from Florence. Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2003 However, I do think the book felt formulaic after a while. Each chapter was, "Here's this generation's patriarch. This is how he made his money. He married this woman. He arranged these marriages for his sisters and children. These are the wars he got involved in. He patronized the arts in this way. He died." I wanted more. A deeper delve. Which I realize isn't really possible with this much history and that it would serve me better to discover if there are books out there just about the specific Medicis I found most interesting. Born in 1414, Piero was not a particularly distinguished Medici. He didn’t achieve anything terribly significant. Yet he maintained and defended the Medici’s dominance, once defeating an attempted Pitti family coup.

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