Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Showing 1 - 4 of 4 matches in All Departments
Few philosophers are more often referred to and more often misunderstood than Machiavelli. He was truly a product of the Renaissance, and he was as much a revolutionary in the field of political philosophy as Leonardo or Michelangelo were in painting and sculpture. He watched his native Florence lose its independence to the French, thanks to poor leadership from the Medici successors to the great Lorenzo (Il Magnifico). Machiavelli was a keen observer of people, and he spent years studying events and people before writing his famous books. Descended from minor nobility, Machiavelli grew up in a household that was run by a vacillating and incompetent father. He was well educated and smart, and he entered government service as a clerk. He eventually became an important figure in the Florentine state but was defeated by the deposed Medici and Pope Julius II. He was tortured but eventually freed by the restored Medici. No longer employed, he retired to his home to write the books for which he is remembered. Machiavelli had seen the best and the worst of human nature, and he understood how the world operated. He drew his observations from life, and he was appropriately cynical in his writing, given what he had personally experienced. He was an outstanding writer, and his work remains fascinating nearly 500 years later.
"Magnifico" is a vividly colorful portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici,
the uncrowned ruler of Florence during its golden age. A true
"Renaissance man," Lorenzo dazzled contemporaries with his
prodigious talents and magnetic personality. Known to history as
"Il Magnifico" (the Magnificent), Lorenzo was not only the foremost
patron of his day but also a renowned poet, equally adept at
composing philosophical verses and obscene rhymes to be sung at
Carnival. He befriended the greatest artists and writers of the
time -- Leonardo, Botticelli, Poliziano, and, especially,
Michelangelo, whom he discovered as a young boy and invited to live
at his palace -- turning Florence into the cultural capital of
Europe. He was the leading statesman of the age, the fulcrum of
Italy, but also a cunning and ruthless political operative. Miles
Unger's biography of this complex figure draws on primary research
in Italian sources and on his intimate knowledge of Florence, where
he lived for several years.
Among the immortals-Leonardo, Rembrandt, Picasso-Michelangelo stands alone as a master of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was not only the greatest artist in an age of giants, but a man who reinvented the practice of art itself. Throughout his long career he clashed with patrons by insisting that he had no master but his own demanding muse and promoting the novel idea that it was the artist, rather than the lord who paid for it, who was creative force behind the work. Miles Unger narrates the astonishing life of this driven and difficult man through six of his greatest masterpieces. Each work expanded the expressive range of the medium, from the Pieta Michelangelo carved as a brash young man, to the apocalyptic Last Judgment, the work of an old man tested by personal trials. Throughout the course of his career he explored the full range of human possibility. In the gargantuan David he depicts Man in the glory of his youth, while in the tombs he carved for the Medici he offers a sustained meditation on death and the afterlife. In the Sistine Chapel ceiling he tells the epic story of Creation, from the perfection of God's initial procreative act to the corruption introduced by His imperfect children. In the final decades of his life, his hands too unsteady to wield the brush and chisel, he exercised his mind by raising the soaring vaults and dome of St. Peter's in a final tribute to his God. A work of deep artistic understanding, Miles Unger's Michelangelobrings to life the irascible, egotistical, and undeniably brilliant man whose artistry continues to amaze and inspire us after 500 years.
|
You may like...
Autism Spectrum Disorder in the…
Barbara L Boroson, Barbara Boroson
Paperback
Nonfiction Reading Practice, Grade 4…
Evan-Moor Corporation
Paperback
|