The Medici

by Paul Strathern

Overview

A vivid, dramatic, and authoritative account of perhaps the most influential family in Italian history: the Medici.

A dazzling history of the modest family that rose to become one of the most powerful in Europe, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money, and ambition. Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage.

Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Médicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681774084
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Series:	Italian Histories
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	151,165
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Paul Strathern’s narrative nonfiction includes The Other Renaissance, The Venetians, Death in Florence, The Medici, Mendeleyev's Dream, The Florentines, Empire, and The Borgias, all available from Pegasus Books. He is also a Somerset Maugham Award-winning novelist. Paul lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

A compelling multigenerational history of the family whose enlightened patronage gave the world that timeless art. Rich in incident and character, this engrossing narrative offers impressive portraits of dynastic figures who usher in a new era aflame with individualistic ambition. Lineal history pulsing with epoch-making energy.

Booklist

The Medici highlights [the family’s] literary accomplishments in detail, as well as the story of how the Medici became the Renaissance’s most influential family.

The New York Times

An excellent history. An entertaining tale of the rise and fall of an ambitious banking family.

The Sunday Times (London)

A compelling multigenerational history of the family whose enlightened patronage gave the world that timeless art. Rich in incident and character, this engrossing narrative offers impressive portraits of dynastic figures who usher in a new era aflame with individualistic ambition. Lineal history pulsing with epoch-making energy.

Booklist

The Medici highlights [the family’s] literary accomplishments in detail, as well as the story of how the Medici became the Renaissance’s most influential family.

The New York Times

Strathern has done his research thoroughly, and tells a good story well.

The Sunday Telegraph

02/22/2016
In this absorbing follow-up to his beautiful Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonorola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City, Strathern chronicles the legendarily farsighted banking family, offering a cautionary tale of arrogant and greedy heirs who bankrupted themselves and their city, thus destroying a largely symbiotic relationship. Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance, with the clever and powerful de Medici family serving as its midwives through various acts of patronage and their elevation of artists such as Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sandro Botticelli. Strathern opens with a thrilling account of an assassination attempt on Lorenzo the Magnificent, allowing this fast-paced vignette of skill, luck, and treachery to color the family's astonishing rise and fall. Many historians concentrate on the figures of Cosimo and Lorenzo; both are well rendered here, as are the viewpoints of Pope Leo X, the family's unlikely war hero, and his relative and successor, Clement VII, who wrestled with Henry VIII's "great matter." Most of Strathern's portrayals are sympathetic in their context, though odd suggestions occur, particularly the implication that strong female influences led to several Medici men being gay. Nevertheless, this gratifying and comprehensive family saga sheds light on both the internal workings of a remarkable family and on how a singular family irrevocably influenced Western civilization. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Strathern has a novelist's eye and a historian's sweep.

The Washington Post

"A fantastically comprehensive history covering the breadth of the great learning, art, politics, and religion of the period." —Kirkus Starred Review

From the Publisher

01/01/2016
As bankers and statesmen, cardinals and scholars, reprobates and royalty, the Medici family left an indelible mark on European history and culture. With financial power deriving from a vast banking empire, Medici descendants at various times were among the richest people in the Western world. It is a lineage that produced two popes and two queens of France, along with a fair share of degenerates and schemers. Whether in power or in exile, the Medicis were at the heart of the golden age of Florence and the Italian Renaissance, as well as the regional squabbles, maneuvering, and political instability that characterized the period. Strathern (Death in Florence) succeeds in tracing the history of this intriguing clan from its unexceptional beginnings to an ignoble end in a compelling and readable style. VERDICT What might have been a bewildering string of names, places, and dates is instead a page-turning popular history of an ambitious and influential family. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in history.—Linda Frederiksen, Washington State Univ. Lib., Vancouver

Library Journal

★ 2015-11-19
The prolific author continues to do what he does best—bring history to wondrous life—with this thorough history of the Medici family, the stimulus and backbone of the Renaissance. Strathern (Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City, 2015, etc.) begins this bright, novelistic history with the 14th-century banker Giovanni di Bicci, who laid the groundwork for his family's wealth. The Italians invented banking and double-entry bookkeeping, and to avoid accusations of usury, Giovanni charged only a percentage for "risk." Eschewing politics, he concentrated on building wealth. It was his son Cosimo who took advantage of the erudite refugees from the fall of Constantinople to promote ancient Greek and Roman writings. He supported the arts and began dominating Florentine politics. Cosimo ruled without appearing to rule, with the family always supporting the working class. In addition to economics lessons, Strathern provides wonderful thumbnail sketches of the great artists and writers of the time. One of the Medici's best moves was supporting the papal candidates, realizing that having the popes' backing, as well as their lucrative banking, would provide strength. Through unrest, church schisms, invasion by the Holy Roman Empire and France, the Medici flourished, none more so than the flamboyant Lorenzo. This was the time of Savonarola, the fiery anti-humanist, but also Botticelli, Brunelleschi, and Machiavelli. The strength of the Medici continued with the papacies of Leo X and Clement VII. The author dubs the Medici godfathers to the Renaissance, but it was Clement's dawdling over the divorce of England's Henry VIII that unwittingly led to the final break with the church and the Reformation. The ladies of the family played their own parts, with Catherine de Medici dominating the Valois of France, followed to the throne by her cousin Marie. A fantastically comprehensive history covering the breadth of the great learning, art, politics, and religion of the period.

Kirkus Reviews