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This book provides a broad overview of the main features of Spanish Milan and their transformations during the 16th and 17th centuries. At the same time, it addresses an important and long-lasting historiographical debate that traditionally interpreted the Spanish period as one of decline for Italian cities in general and Milan in particular.
The Court Cities of Northern Italy examines painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and architecture produced within the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
A new history of how one of the Renaissance’s preeminent cities lost its independence in the Italian Wars. In 1499, the duchy of Milan had known independence for one hundred years. But the turn of the sixteenth century saw the city battered by the Italian Wars. As the major powers of Europe battled for supremacy, Milan, viewed by contemporaries as the “key to Italy,” found itself wracked by a tug-of-war between French claimants and its ruling Sforza family. In just thirty years, the city endured nine changes of government before falling under three centuries of Habsburg dominion. John Gagné offers a new history of Milan’s demise as a sovereign state. His focus is not on the successi...
Ambitious, extravagant, progressive, and sexually notorious, Galeazzo Maria Sforza inherited the ducal throne of Milan in 1466, at the age of twenty-two. Although his reign ended tragically only ten years later, the young prince's court was a dynamic community where arts, policy making, and the panoply of state were integrated with the rhythms and preoccupations of daily life. Gregory Lubkin explores this vital but overlooked center of power, allowing the members of the Milanese court to speak for themselves and showing how dramatically Milan and its ruler exemplified the political, cultural, religious, and economic aspirations of Renaissance Italy.
Renaissance music, like its sister arts, was most often experienced collectively. While it was possible to read Renaissance polyphony silently from a music manuscript or print, improvise alone, or perform as a soloist, the very practical nature of Renaissance music defied individualism. The reading and improvisation of polyphony was most frequently achieved through close co-operation, and this mutual endeavour extended beyond the musicians to include the society to which it is addressed. In sixteenth-century Milan, music, an art traditionally associated with the court and cathedral, came to be appropriated by the old nobility and the new aristocracy alike as a means of demonstrating social p...
Historians have long understood the period 1100 to 1500 to be the key phase in the genesis of the modern state. In this innovative work, Andrea Gamberini examines the case of late medieval Lombardy to show that the advent of the state did not extinguish the traditional values and principles of political cohabitation that had long been in place.
Examines the cultural contexts of music in early-modern Milan. This book describes the buildings that served as performance spaces in Milan, analyses the power structures in the city and discusses the devotional rites of the Milanese.
Absolutism in Renaissance Milan shows how authority above the law, once the preserve of pope and emperor, was claimed by the ruling Milanese dynasties, the Visconti and the Sforza, and why this privilege was finally abandoned by Francesco II Sforza (d. 1535), the last duke. As new rulers, the Visconti and the Sforza had had to impose their regime by rewarding supporters at the expense of opponents. That process required absolute power, also known as 'plenitude of power', meaning the capacity to overrule even fundamental laws and rights, including titles to property. The basis for such power reflected the changing status of Milanese rulers, first as signori and then as dukes. Contemporary law...
Milan was one of the largest and most important cities in Renaissance Italy. Controlled by the Visconti and Sforza dynasties from 1277 until 1500, its rulers were generous patrons of the arts, responsible for commissioning major monuments throughout the city and for supporting artists such as Giovanni di Balduccio, Filarete, Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci. But the city was much more than its dukes. Milan had a distinct civic identity, one that was expressed, above all, through its neighbourhood, religious and charitable associations. This book moves beyond standard interpretations of ducal patronage to explore the often overlooked city itself, showing how the allegiances of the town hall and...