A fascinating and counterintuitive portrait of the sordid, hidden world behind the dazzling artwork of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and more
Renowned as a period of cultural rebirth and artistic innovation, the Renaissance is cloaked in a unique aura of beauty and brilliance. Its very name conjures up awe-inspiring images of an age of lofty ideals in which life imitated the fantastic artworks for which it has become famous. But behind the vast explosion of new art and culture lurked a seamy, vicious world of power politics, perversity, and corruption that has more in common with the present day than anyone dares to admit.
In this lively and meticulously researched portrait, Renaissance scholar Alexander Lee illuminates the dark and titillating contradictions that were hidden beneath the surface of the period’s best-known artworks. Rife with tales of scheming bankers, greedy politicians, sex-crazed priests, bloody rivalries, vicious intolerance, rampant disease, and lives of extravagance and excess, this gripping exploration of the underbelly of Renaissance Italy shows that, far from being the product of high-minded ideals, the sublime monuments of the Renaissance were created by flawed and tormented artists who lived in an ever-expanding world of inequality, dark sexuality, bigotry, and hatred.
The Ugly Renaissance is a delightfully debauched journey through the surprising contradictions of Italy’s past and shows that were it not for the profusion of depravity and degradation, history’s greatest masterpieces might never have come into being.
Includes a bonus PDF of art and images referenced in the audiobook
At its height, Renaissance Florence was a center of enormous wealth, power, and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by rich mercantile families, the most famous of which were...
Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the fifteenth century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Among their number...
Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art ...
The first major biography of the Borgias in thirty years, Christopher Hibbert's latest history brings to life the family and the world they lived in: the glittering Rome of the Italian Renaissance. The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, ...
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe history books have cast Katherine of Aragon, the first queen of King Henry VIII of England, as the ultimate symbol of the Betrayed Woman, cruelly tossed aside in favor of her husband’s seductive mistress, Anne Bole...
The fifth in the new Naxos Audiobooks series ‘In a Nutshell’, The Renaissance is a short and accessible introduction to the era that gave us Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Palestrina. The Renaissance swept across Europe between the ...
From the inimitable bestselling author Thomas Cahill, another popular history—this one focusing on how the innovations of the Renaissance and the Reformation changed the Western world. A truly revolutionary book. In Volume VI of his accla...
The startling truth behind one of the most notorious dynasties in history is revealed in a remarkable new account by the acclaimed author of The Tudors and A World Undone. Sweeping aside the gossip, slander, and distortion that have shrouded the Bor...
Named a Best Book of the Year by: * Financial Times * New Statesman * History Today * The Spectator * “Like a Renaissance wonder cabinet, full of surprises and opening up into a lost world.” —Stephen Greenblatt The impeccably resea...
{"id":"602499","ean":"9780804191135","abr":"Unabridged","title":"The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty","subtitle":"Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty","author":"Alexander Lee","rating_average":"0","narrator":"Arthur Morey","ubr_id":"602499","abr_id":"0","ubr_price":"25.00","abr_price":"0.00","ubr_memprice":"16.25","abr_memprice":"0.00","ubr_narrator":"Arthur Morey","abr_narrator":"","ubr_length":"Unabridged: 15 hr 40 min","abr_length":"Abridged: "}
