The Florentine Renaissance

Fülszöveg

Also by VINCENT CRONIN
LOUIS XIV
' He commands an eloquent style, as we know from his previous works, and this biography is based upon wide reading. The result seems to me highly enjoyable it does not contain one dull page.' Raymond Mortimer, Sunday Times
' Written with crisp, firm style and admirably organized the best-balanced account of the whole reign to appear in recent years.' The Times
' Mr Cronin has joined that select band of historians who write history as literature.' Sir Charles Petrie, Illustrated London News
' Vincent Cronin's pleasingly cool, clear and simple style throws a sharp light, contrasting and revealing, on the warm and heavy baroque of the Court and its fascinating denizens.'
Christopher Hibbert, Evening Standard
' This is an exemplary biography for the general reader, written elegantly and evocatively, and based soundly but without ostentation on the sources.' Church Times
' In many ways this is a model biography. It is popular without ever... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Also by VINCENT CRONIN
LOUIS XIV
' He commands an eloquent style, as we know from his previous works, and this biography is based upon wide reading. The result seems to me highly enjoyable it does not contain one dull page.' Raymond Mortimer, Sunday Times
' Written with crisp, firm style and admirably organized the best-balanced account of the whole reign to appear in recent years.' The Times
' Mr Cronin has joined that select band of historians who write history as literature.' Sir Charles Petrie, Illustrated London News
' Vincent Cronin's pleasingly cool, clear and simple style throws a sharp light, contrasting and revealing, on the warm and heavy baroque of the Court and its fascinating denizens.'
Christopher Hibbert, Evening Standard
' This is an exemplary biography for the general reader, written elegantly and evocatively, and based soundly but without ostentation on the sources.' Church Times
' In many ways this is a model biography. It is popular without ever descending to the trivial, and a wide knowledge of the grand siecle in all its manifestations is conveyed with considerable literary grace.' The Times Educational Supplement
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Florence in the fifteenth century was the undisputed centre of the Itahan Renaissance : one of four exemplary ages in human history, according to Voltaire. What we have been derives largely from Jerusalem, Athens, Rome—and it was in Florence that these inheritances were blended to make us what we now are. Our Christianity, our learning, literature and art, our civic liberties and our very conception of what constitutes a gentleman, are all in high degree the result of ancient thought and practice re-moulded by Florentine mind and deed.
Vincent Cronin has presented this thesis with brilliant insight. He has studied the original sources with a fresh eye and laid bare the elements of this wonderful amalgam, into which entered not only those elements from the past already mentioned, but others of Florentine origin. For Florentine ingenuity in the invention of new techniques and the development of new hypotheses has been of enduring benefit to science, medicine, geography and cartography, as well as to the older arts of painting and calligraphy. A remarkable thematic choice of illustrations, some of them little known, helps greatly to bring to life the achievements of this immensely fruitful epoch in human history. Vissza