History – my copy (paperback; 1985) bought for the staggeringly low price of 50p from Music & Goods Exchange, Notting Hill, sometime in 2008
- 3 nods out of 5 -
Earlier this summer the Worm walked on the very same streets as did Cosimo Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent. Do these names mean nothing to you, dear reader? Then, perhaps it is time to immerse yourself in the dramatic house of Medici, only of Florence’s premier historic families.
The Medicis were a banking family who obtained bigger depths of wealth and a greater hold of power. In the 1400s Cosimo took control – somewhat ostensibly – in Florence, while his grandson Lorenzo became a patron of the arts, even giving a home to a young Michelangelo. In the 1500s the Medicis became popes in Rome and dukes of Tuscany. Many a-time they were chased out of Florence by ardent republicans, only to return to heal wounds and silence squabbling factions. It was amongst one of these incidents that led Machiavelli to write his world famous The Prince; a book that was to earn his enduring – perhaps unwanted – legacy.
In the 1700s the house was to finally cease: it was one usurpation too many. But it was not the final end of a name that has proven its strength with historians and readers throughout the generations of time; in Florence, one of the world’s great cultural cities, Medici is seen on every street corner. Such fame prompted the historian Christopher Hibbert to write an enlightening and entertaining narrative of this illustrious clan.
Never jaw-dropping, Hibbert proceeds to put in a work-man like performance in his treatment of the Medicis; a poor history was not be expected by the man who has brought countless biographies to the bookshelves, concentrating on English figures in history from the Duke of Wellington to Disraeli. Concentrating primarily on the golden generations of the first Cosimo and Lorenzo (who each have a whole section to themselves), the last two centuries (1537-1743) are crammed into fifty pages. Perhaps the author himself knew too well that usurpation after usurpation was too much for the reader to maintain across three hundred pages of death, plotting and plunder. Yet it is with the earlier Medicis in which the legend lies; after all, Michelangelo didn’t dine with the likes of Cosimo III.
Other books upon the Medicis have come and gone; but Hibbert’s treatment remains a gold standard – in the English language, anyhow – of these characters and their descendents. For anyone who wishes to delve further into Italian history, and wish to understand the city of Florence, Hibbert’s history is a welcome read.
Buy it here on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Fall-House-Medici/dp/0140050906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313784866&sr=8-1
Read more about the author here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hibbert
