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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.
In the 18th century Italian theatre and its artists became vital to Russian rulers, who employed Italian musico-dramatic works to advance their political agendas and emphasize Russia’s cultural uniqueness and its cosmopolitan character. Innumerable playwrights and composers, actors and singers were active at the Russian court. Usually considered at best peripheral to Europe, the faraway Russian Empire represents a particularly powerful example of the mobility of theatre agents and the circulation of artistic practices. This book sets a new regional accent on imperial Russia, thus mitigating the traditional historiographical emphasis on Western Europe, and adopts a transnational approach to...
In the midst of the religious ferment, foreign invasions, and internal political strife that beset Italy before the full effects of the Counter-Reformation, the powerful and humble alike turned to popular prophecy for guidance and solace. Ottavia Niccoli examines here the forms of these prophecies--including interpretations of natural disasters, abnormal births, floods, and planetary conjunctions--and gives examples of how they were transmitted from the lower classes to the elite through street singers, apocalyptic preachers, astrologers, and printers. By tracing the ongoing revision of the prophecies, Niccoli reveals them as an indication of how various levels of society viewed events of th...
Futurism began as an artistic and social movement in early twentieth-century Italy. Until now, much of the scholarship available in English has focused only on a single individual or art form. This volume seeks to present a more complete picture of the movement by exploring the history of the movement, the events leading up to the movement, and the lasting impact it has had as well as the individuals involved in it. The History of Futurism: The Precursors, Protagonists, and Legacies addresses the history and legacy of what is generally seen as the founding avante-garde movement of the twentieth century. Geert Buelens, Harald Hendrix, and Monica Jansen have brought together scholarship from an international team of specialists to explore the Futurism movement as a multidisciplinary movement mixing aesthetics, politics, and science with a particular focus on the literature of the movement.
In the middle decades of the sixteenth century, the republican city-state of Florence--birthplace of the Renaissance--failed. In its place the Medici family created a principality, becoming first dukes of Florence and then grand dukes of Tuscany. The Fruit of Liberty examines how this transition occurred from the perspective of the Florentine patricians who had dominated and controlled the republic. The book analyzes the long, slow social and cultural transformations that predated, accompanied, and facilitated the institutional shift from republic to principality, from citizen to subject. More than a chronological narrative, this analysis covers a wide range of contributing factors to this t...
Based on three hundred civil and criminal cases over four centuries, Elizabeth W. Mellyn reconstructs the myriad ways families, communities, and civic and medical authorities met in the dynamic arena of Tuscan law courts to forge pragmatic solutions to the problems that madness brought to their households and streets. In some of these cases, solutions were protective and palliative; in others, they were predatory or abusive. The goals of families were sometimes at odds with those of the courts, but for the most part families and judges worked together to order households and communities in ways that served public and private interests. For most of the period Mellyn examines, Tuscan communiti...
The Italian Pragmatists were a group of philosophers in the early 20th century. They gathered around the journal Leonardo, which was published in Florence. This volume emphasizes what they all shared, as well as their value for philosophy and culture.
Mussolini&’s bold claims upon the monuments and rhetoric of ancient Rome have been the subject of a number of recent books. D. Medina Lasansky shows us a much less familiar side of the cultural politics of Italian Fascism, tracing its wide-ranging efforts to adapt the nation&’s medieval and Renaissance heritage to satisfy the regime&’s programs of national regeneration. Anyone acquainted with the beauties of Tuscany will be surprised to learn that architects, planners, and administrators working within Fascist programs fabricated much of what today&’s tourists admire as authentic. Public squares, town halls, palaces, gardens, and civic rituals (including the famed Palio of Siena) wer...
This volume offers the first comprehensive survey of regime change in Italy in the period c.1494–c.1559. Far from being a purely modern phenomenon, regime change was a common feature of life in Renaissance Italy – no more so than during the Italian Wars (1494–1559). During those turbulent years, governments rose and fell with dizzying regularity. Some changes of regime were peaceful; others were more violent. But whenever a new reggimento took power, old social tensions were laid bare and new challenges emerged – any of which could easily threaten its survival. This provoked a variety of responses, both from newly established regimes and from their opponents. Constitutional reforms w...
This book explores the decision of Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici to create a ghetto in Florence, and explains how a Jewish community developed out of that forced population transfer.