Sprezzatura: 50 Ways That Italian Genius Shaped the World

by Peter D'Epiro, Mary Desmond Pinkowish

Overview

A witty, erudite celebration of fifty great Italian cultural achievements that have significantly influenced Western civilization from the authors of What Are the Seven Wonders of the World?

“Sprezzatura,” or the art of effortless mastery, was coined in 1528 by Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier. No one has demonstrated effortless mastery throughout history quite like the Italians. From the Roman calendar and the creator of the modern orchestra (Claudio Monteverdi) to the beginnings of ballet and the creator of modern political science (Niccolò Machiavelli), Sprezzatura highlights fifty great Italian cultural achievements in a series of fifty information-packed essays in chronological order.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385720199
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/02/2001
Edition description:	First Anchor Books Edition
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	1,046,918
Product dimensions:	5.29(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish are the authors of What are the Seven Wonders of the World?: And 100 Other Great Cultural Lists—Fully Explicated. Peter D'Epiro is also the author of The Book of Firsts: 150 World-Changing People and Events from Caesar Augustus to the Internet. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Queens College and his M. Phil. and PH.D. in English from Yale University. He has taught English at the secondary and college levels and worked as an editor and writer for thirty years. He lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey.  Mary Desmond Pinkowish is the author of numerous articles on medicine and general science for physician and lay audiences.  A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she studied biology and art history, she also earned a master's degree in public health from Yale University.  She works for Patient Care magazine and lives in Larchmont, New York.

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Excerpted from "Sprezzatura"
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Copyright © 2001 Peter D'Epiro.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface

1 Rome gives the world a calendar—twice
2 The Roman Republic and our own
3 Julius Caesar and the imperial purple
4 Catullus revolutionizes love poetry
5 Master builders of the ancient world
6 “Satire is wholly ours”
7 Ovid’s treasure hoard of myth and fable
8 The Roman legacy of law
9 St. Benedict: Father of Western monasticism, preserver of the Roman heritage
10 Salerno and Bologna: The earliest medical school and university
11 St. Francis of Assisi, “alter Christus”
12 “Stupor mundi”: Emperor Frederick II, King of Sicily and Jerusalem
13 St. Thomas Aquinas: Titan of theology
14 Dante’s incomparable Comedy
15 Banks, bookkeeping, and the rise of commercial capitalism
16 Petrarch: Creator of the modern lyric
17 Boccaccio and the development of Western literary realism
18 The mystic as activist: St. Catherine of Siena
19 Inventors of the visual language of the Renaissance: Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio
20 Lorenzo Ghiberti and the “Gates of Paradise”
21 Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, grand patrons of art and learning
22 Sigismondo Malatesta: The condottiere with a vision
23 Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance man, eternal enigma
24 A new world beckons: Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, Verrazano
25 Machiavelli and the dawn of modern political science
26 Michelangelo: Epitome of human artistry
27 Sprezzatura and Castiglione’s concept of the gentleman
28 Aretino: Self-publicist, pornographer, “secretary of the world”
29 Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo: Etiquette book par excellence
30 Andrea Palladio and his “bible” of building
31 Catherine de’ Medici: Godmother of French cuisine
32 Peri’s Euridice: The birth of opera from the spirit of tragedy
33 Galileo frames the foundations of modern science
34 Two sonorous gifts: The violin and the piano
35 Claudio Monteverdi, father of modern music
36 The Baroque splendors of Bernini
37 Pioneers of modern anatomy: Eustachio, Fallopio, Malpighi, Morgagni, et al.
38 Founder of modern penology: Cesare Beccaria
39 Trailblazers in electricity: Galvani and Volta
40 Venice: Rhapsody in stone, water, melody, and color
41 Europe’s premier poet of pessimism: Giacomo Leopardi
42 Giuseppe Garibaldi: A united Italy emerges
43 The last “Renaissance” prince—D’Annunzio at Fiume
44 La Dottoressa: Maria Montessori and a new era in early childhood education
45 Marconi invents the radio
46 Enrico Fermi: Father of the atomic age
47 Roberto Rossellini: Neorealist cinema and beyond
48 An unlikely international bestseller: Lampedusa’s The Leopard
49 Ferrari—on the road to perfection
50 La moda italiana: The art of apparel

Suggested Reading
Index
About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

In the early 16th century, Count Baldassare Castiglione penned his famous Book of the Courtier, synthesizing the ideals of the medieval courtly gentleman with the new "Renaissance man." Above all, the courtier should exhibit the qualities of grace and sprezzatura, which D'Epiro and Pinkowish accurately describe as "an assumed air of doing difficult things with an effortless mastery and an air of nonchalance." In 50 bite-sized chapters that are as delicious as they are short, D'Epiro and Pinkowish (What Are the Seven Wonders of the World?) take readers through a whirlwind tour of 25 centuries of culture and history on the Italian peninsula. From the calendar and Roman law to the Montessori method and Enrico Fermi, readers can delight in the defeats and accomplishments of a most varied group of men and women. Most books extolling the Italians conveniently delete the dark side of Italian history; this one honestly leaves in many of the more brutal details. The writing is engaging, and the authors' lively and descriptive style almost compensates for a lack of illustrations. One of the book's great merits is that it will surely stimulate readers to return to their Ovid, Livy, Dante and Boccaccio; in addition, one can gain greater appreciation for such masterpieces as Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Giuseppe Di Lampedusa's The Leopard. Although the authors only hint at it, sprezzatura is anything but effortless: mastery of any skill requires more perspiration than inspiration. Or, as D'Epiro and Pinkowish point out, the "social mask," or the "disjunction between appearance and reality," is "the very patina of civilization." (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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