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The Borgia Portrait
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Book Synopsis The Borgia Portrait by : David Hewson
Download or read book The Borgia Portrait written by David Hewson and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2024-05-02 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noble family, a legendary painting, a cursed palazzo. When Arnold Clover is recruited by Lizzie Hawker to help her look into her family inheritance, he cannot begin to guess the journey he is about to embark on. Lizzie's mother, an Italian countess, disappeared thirty years ago, presumed dead. Her father has just died and now the family home, a leaning palazzo in Dorsoduro that is full of secrets, has fallen to Lizzie. When her mother vanished so too did a priceless painting of Lucrezia Borgia - but it quickly becomes apparent that Lizzie and Arnold are not the only ones interested in finding it. The search for the lost Lucrezia quickly becomes a race through the secret history of Venice, one with potentially deadly consequences.
Download or read book Lucrezia Borgia written by Sarah Bradford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-11-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance—incest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs. Yet, as bestselling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth. Neither a vicious monster nor a seductive pawn, Lucrezia Borgia was a shrewd, determined woman who used her beauty and intelligence to secure a key role in the political struggles of her day. Drawing from a trove of contemporary documents and fascinating firsthand accounts, Bradford brings to life the art, the pageantry, and the dangerous politics of the Renaissance world Lucrezia Borgia helped to create.
Book Synopsis The Borgias and Their Enemies, 1431–1519 by : Christopher Hibbert
Download or read book The Borgias and Their Enemies, 1431–1519 written by Christopher Hibbert and published by HMH. This book was released on 2009-09-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This colorful history of a powerful family brings the world they lived in—the glittering Rome of the Italian Renaissance—to life. The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, nepotism, and greed that were rife in Renaissance Italy. The powerful, voracious Rodrigo Borgia, better known to history as Pope Alexander VI, was the central figure of the dynasty. Two of his seven papal offspring also rose to power and fame—Lucrezia Borgia, his daughter, whose husband was famously murdered by her brother, and that brother, Cesare, who inspired Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. Notorious for seizing power, wealth, land, and titles through bribery, marriage, and murder, the dynasty’s dramatic rise from its Spanish roots to its occupation of the highest position in Renaissance society forms a gripping tale. From the author of The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici and other acclaimed works, The Borgias and Their Enemies is “a fascinating read” (Library Journal).
Download or read book The Borgias written by G. J. Meyer and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2013 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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." Meyer offers an unprecedented portrait of the infamous Renaissance family and their storied milieu.
Book Synopsis The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior by : Paul Strathern
Download or read book The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior written by Paul Strathern and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Cesare Borgia—three iconic figures whose intersecting lives provide the basis for this astonishing work of narrative history. They could not have been more different, and they would meet only for a short time in 1502, but the events that transpired when they did would significantly alter each man’s perceptions—and the course of Western history. In 1502, Italy was riven by conflict, with the city of Florence as the ultimate prize. Machiavelli, the consummate political manipulator, attempted to placate the savage Borgia by volunteering Leonardo to be Borgia’s chief military engineer. That autumn, the three men embarked together on a brief, perilous, and fateful journey through the mountains, remote villages, and hill towns of the Italian Romagna—the details of which were revealed in Machiavelli’s frequent dispatches and Leonardo’s meticulous notebooks. Superbly written and thoroughly researched, The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior is a work of narrative genius—whose subject is the nature of genius itself.
Download or read book The Borgias written by Paul Strathern and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice and vicious cruelty—all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history.This is but one of several paradoxes associated with the Borgia family. For the family which produced corrupt popes, depraved princes and poisoners, would also produce a saint. Previously history has tended to condemn, or attempt in part to exonerate, this remarkable family. Yet in order to understand the Borgias, the Borgias must be related to their time, together with the world which enabled them to flourish. Within this context the Renaissance itself takes on a very different aspect. Was the corruption part of the creation, or vice versa? Would one have been possible without the other?The powerful forces which first played out in the amphitheaters of ancient Greece: hubris, incest, murder, rivalries and doomed families, treacheries of political power, twists of fate—they are all here. Along with the final, tragic downfall. All these elements are played out in full in the glorious and infamous history of the Borgia family.
Book Synopsis Lucrezia Borgia by : Ferdinand Gregorovius
Download or read book Lucrezia Borgia written by Ferdinand Gregorovius and published by Vita Histria. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucrezia Borgia is among the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the Renaissance. The daughter of Pope Alexander VI, she was intensely involved in the political life of Italy during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. While her marriage alliances helped advance the political objectives of the papacy, she also held the office of Governor of Spoleto, a role normally reserved for Cardinals, making her one of the most powerful and dynamic female figures of the Renaissance. Among the first books to employ historical method to move beyond myth and romance that had obscured the fascinating story of Lucrezia Borgia was this biography written by the noted German historian Ferdinand Gregorovius. Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821-1891) was one of the preeminent scholars of the Italian Renaissance. His biography of Lucrezia Borgia reveals the atmosphere of the Renaissance, painting a portrait of Lucrezia and her relationships with her father Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, her brother Cesare, her mother Vanozza, her father’s mistress, Giulia Farnese, her husband Duke Alfonso D’Este of Ferrara, and many others, including important artists and writers of the time. All are vividly portrayed against the colorful background of Renaissance Italy. Gregorovius separates myth from documented fact and his book remains a key reference work on the life and times of the Borgia princess. This new edition of Gregorovius’s classic work Lucrezia Borgia is enhanced with an introduction by Samantha Morris, a noted expert on the history of the Borgias. Samantha studied archaeology at the University of Winchester where her interest in the history of the Italian Renaissance began. She is the author of Cesare Borgia: In a Nutshell and Girolamo Savonarola: The Renaissance Preacher. She also runs the website theborgiabull.com.
Book Synopsis The Borgias by : Giuseppe Portigliotti
Download or read book The Borgias written by Giuseppe Portigliotti and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Borgia Family by : Jennifer Mara DeSilva
Download or read book The Borgia Family written by Jennifer Mara DeSilva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-11 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation explores the historical and cultural structures that underpin the early modern Borgia family, their notoriety, and persistence and reinvention in the popular imagination. The book balances studies focusing on early modern observations of the Borgias and studies deconstructing later incarnations on the stage, on the page, on the street, and on the screen. It reveals how contemporary observers, later authors and artists, and generations of historians reinforced and perpetuated both rumor and reputation, ultimately contributing to the Borgia Black Legend and its representations. Focused on the deeds and posthumous reputations of Pope Alexander VI and his children, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, the volume charts the choices made by the family and contextualizes them amid contemporary expectations and reactions. Extending beyond their deaths, it also investigates how the Borgias became emblems of anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish criticism in the later early modern period and their residing reputation as the best and worst of the Renaissance. Exploring a spectrum of traditional and modern media, The Borgia Family contextualizes both Borgia deeds and their modern representations to analyze the family’s continuing history and meaning in the twenty-first century. It will be of great interest to researchers and students working on interdisciplinary aspects of the Renaissance and early modern Italy.
Book Synopsis The Borgia Confessions by : Alyssa Palombo
Download or read book The Borgia Confessions written by Alyssa Palombo and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Under Palombo’s skillful hand, the entangled world of the Borgias comes vividly to life, exposing the dark facets of class structure and the all-consuming greed that comes with ambition--and love." - Heather Webb, internationally bestselling author of Last Christmas in Paris and Meet Me in Monaco During the sweltering Roman summer of 1492, Rodrigo Borgia has risen to power as pope. Rodrigo’s eldest son Cesare, forced to follow his father into the church and newly made the Archbishop of Valencia, chafes at his ecclesiastical role and fumes with jealousy and resentment at the way that his foolish brother has been chosen for the military greatness he desired. Maddalena Moretti comes from the countryside, where she has seen how the whims of powerful men wreak havoc on the lives of ordinary people. But now, employed as a servant in the Vatican Palace, she cannot help but be entranced by Cesare Borgia’s handsome face and manner and finds her faith and conviction crumbling in her want of him. As war rages and shifting alliances challenge the pope’s authority, Maddalena and Cesare's lives grow inexplicably entwined. Maddalena becomes a keeper of dangerous Borgia secrets, and must decide if she is willing to be a pawn in the power games of the man she loves. And as jealousy and betrayal threaten to tear apart the Borgia family from within, Cesare is forced to reckon with his seemingly limitless ambition. Alyssa Palombo's captivating new novel, The Borgia Confessions, is a story of passion, politics, and class, set against the rise and fall of one of Italy's most infamous families--the Borgias.
Book Synopsis The Serpent and the Pearl by : Kate Quinn
Download or read book The Serpent and the Pearl written by Kate Quinn and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping novel about history’s most infamous family—The Borgias—and an innocent girl pulled into their treacherous rise to power, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Briar Club. Rome, 1492. The Holy City is drenched with blood and teeming with secrets. A pope lies dying and the throne of God is left vacant, a prize awarded only to the most virtuous—or the most ruthless. The Borgia family begins its legendary rise, chronicled by an innocent girl who finds herself drawn into their dangerous web… Vivacious Giulia Farnese has floor-length golden hair and the world at her feet: beauty, wealth, and a handsome young husband. But she is stunned to discover that her glittering marriage is a sham, and she is to be given as a concubine to the ruthless, charismatic Cardinal Borgia: Spaniard, sensualist, candidate for Pope—who is passionately in love with her. Two trusted companions will follow her into the Pope's shadowy harem: Leonello, a cynical bodyguard bent on bloody revenge against a mysterious killer, and Carmelina, a fiery cook with a past full of secrets. But as corruption thickens in the Vatican and the enemies begin to circle, Giulia and her friends will need all their wits to survive in the world of the Borgias.
Book Synopsis The Borgias and Their Enemies by : Christopher Hibbert
Download or read book The Borgias and Their Enemies written by Christopher Hibbert and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2008 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major biography of the Borgias in thirty years, Christopher Hibbert's latest history brings the family and the world they lived in--the glittering Rome of the Italian Renaissance--to life. The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, nepotism, and greed that were rife in Renaissance Italy. The powerful, voracious Rodrigo Borgia, better known to history as Pope Alexander VI, was the central figure of the dynasty. Two of his seven papal offspring also rose to power and fame--Lucrezia Borgia, his daughter, whose husband was famously murdered by her brother, and that brother, Cesare, who served as the model for Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince." Notorious for seizing power, wealth, land, and titles through bribery, marriage, and murder, the dynasty's dramatic rise from its Spanish roots to its occupation of the highest position in Renaissance society forms a gripping tale. Erudite, witty, and always insightful, Hibbert removes the layers of myth around the Borgia family and creates a portrait alive with his superb sense of character and place.
Download or read book Lucrezia Borgia written by John Faunce and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating story, rich in detail. In every case, Faunce portrays [Lucrezia] believably, with wit and sensitivity.”--Library Journal Hundreds of years after her death, Lucrezia Borgia remains one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of history, accused of incest, of poisoning her rivals, and even of murdering her own father. Born into scandal, she was the daughter of the treacherous Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, who would later be crowned Pope Alexander VI. When her father ascended the papal throne, young Lucrezia’s life changed forever. From then on, Lucrezia would be unable to escape the political ambitions of her father and her brother, the bloodthirsty Cesare Borgia. In an era when the Vatican was as decadent and violent as any royal court, Lucrezia was its crown princess. Famed for her beauty, she was a valuable pawn in the marriage game, and Alexander VI would use her to create one alliance after another. When her kindly first husband no longer suited the Pope’s needs, Lucrezia’s virginity was restored by papal decree (her new maidenhood was declared “miraculous”), and she was married off again, this time to a man she truly loved, Alfonso, Prince of Naples. But her joy was short-lived. Alfonso loathed her brother and refused to participate in the Pope’s imperial schemes, which threatened to tear apart the Vatican’s political alliances--and Lucrezia’s happy marriage. In this unforgettable debut, John Faunce perfectly captures the rotten decadence of the Borgias’ papal court and the inner steel of Lucrezia Borgia, one of history’s great survivors. “Fascinating...a searing portrait of an intelligent woman, cunning enough to shape her own bizarre destiny.”--Booklist
Download or read book The Borgia Betrayal written by Sara Poole and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Tudors, there were the Borgias. More passionate. More dangerous. More deadly. From the author of Poison, called "stunning"* and "a fascinating page-turner," comes a new historical thriller, featuring the same intriguing and beautiful heroine: Borgia court poisoner, Francesca Giordano. In the summer of 1493, Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI, has been pope for almost a year. Having played a crucial role in helping him ascend the chair of Saint Peter, Francesca, haunted by the shadows of her own past, is now charged with keeping him there. As court poisoner to the most notorious and dangerous family in Italy, this mistress of death faces a web of peril, intrigue, and deceit that threatens to extinguish the light of the Renaissance. As dangers close in from every direction, Francesca conceives a desperate plan that puts her own life at risk and hurls her into a nightmare confrontation with a madman intent on destroying all she is pledged to protect. From the hidden crypts of fifteenth-century Rome to its teeming streets alive with sensuality, obsession, and treachery, Francesca must battle the demons of her own dark nature to unravel a plot to destroy the Borgias, seize control of Christendom, and plunge the world into eternal darkness. *Booklist +Lauren Willig
Book Synopsis The Borgia Bride by : Jeanne Kalogridis
Download or read book The Borgia Bride written by Jeanne Kalogridis and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vivacious Sancha of Aragon arrives in Rome newly wed to a member of the notorious Borgia dynasty. Surrounded by the city's opulence and political corruption, she befriends her glamorous and deceitful sister-in-law, Lucrezia, whose jealousy is as legendary as her beauty. Some say Lucrezia has poisoned her rivals, particularly those to whom her handsome brother, Cesare, has given his heart. So when Sancha falls under Cesare's irresistible spell, she must hide her secret or lose her life. Caught in the Borgias' sinister web, she summons her courage and uses her cunning to outwit them at their own game. Vividly interweaving historical detail with fiction, The Borgia Bride is a richly compelling tale of conspiracy, sexual intrigue, loyalty, and drama.
Download or read book The Borgias written by Paul Strathern and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2019-06-06 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A wickedly entertaining read' The Times A Daily Mail Book of the Week The sensational story of the rise and fall of one of the most notorious families in history, by the author of The Medici. The Borgias have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. But the story of this remarkable family is far more than a tale of sensational depravities, it also marks a decisive turning point in European history. The rise and fall of the Borgias held centre stage during the golden age of the Italian Renaissance and they were the leading players at the very moment when our modern world was creating itself. Within this context the Renaissance itself takes on a very different aspect. Was the corruption part of this creation, or vice versa? Would one have been possible without the other? From the family's Spanish roots and the papacy of Rodrigo Borgia, to the lives of his infamous offspring, Lucrezia and Cesare - the hero who dazzled Machiavelli, but also the man who befriended Leonardo da Vinci - Paul Strathern relates this influential family to their time, together with the world which enabled them to flourish, and tells the story of this great dynasty as never before.
Book Synopsis Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume I (of 3) by : James Dennistoun
Download or read book Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume I (of 3) written by James Dennistoun and published by JOHN LANE COMPANY. This book was released on 2013 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume I (of 3) But Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino is not merely a history of the houses of Montefeltro and Della Rovere, of-viii- their famous and most brilliant Court, and of that part of Italy over which they held dominion, but really a work in belles-lettres too, discursive and amusing, as well as instructive. It deals not merely with history, as it seems we have come to understand the word, a thing of politics—in this case the futile and childish politics of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy—but illustrates "the arms, arts, and literature of Italy from 1440 to 1630." And indeed this programme was carried out as well as it could be carried out at the time these volumes were written. The book, which has long been almost unprocurable, is full, as it were, of a great leisure, crammed with all sorts of out-of-the-way learning and curious tales and adventures. Sometimes failing in art, and often we may think in judgment, Dennistoun never fails in this, that he is always interested in the people he writes of, interested in their quarrels and love affairs, their hair-breadth escapes and good fortunes. How eagerly he sides with Duke Guidobaldo, chased out of his city of Urbino by Cesare Borgia! It is as though he were assisting at that sudden flight at midnight, and, whole-heartedly the Duke's man as he was, almost fails to understand what Cesare was aiming at, and quite fails to see what Cesare saw too well—the helplessness of Italy, at the mercy, really, of the unconscious nations of the modern world. Such failures as this make his work, indispensable as it is, less valuable than it might have been, but they by no means detract from the general interest of the story. That is a quarry from which much has been hewn, and a good many of those enduring blocks which go to make up so popular and charming a work as John Inglesant came in the first instance from Dennistoun's volumes.
