The Medici Chronicles

The spectacular rise of the Medici family is a dramatic tale. They may lack the royal kudos of the Tudors or the infamous reputation of the Borgias, but their story is truly the stuff of the American dream. Starting out as jobbing moneylenders, they made themselves the richest bankers in Europe. Next came local politics, and control of the Florentine republic. Finally, after managing to leapfrog the high wall that segregated nobility from trade in the sixteenth century, they became a great ruling dynasties wielding their power on the international stage.

This year-by-year account of the Medici story, enhanced with extensive quotes from contemporary sources will also be lavishly illustrated. The treasures they amassed are unrivalled: no other family of the period can boast so many iconic images of Renaissance art, nor such a priceless collection of manuscripts, tapestries, portraits, statues and antiquities, and all the other luxurious artefacts of this bygone age.

Book Author

Mary Hollingsworth has a B.Sc. in business studies and a Ph.D. in art history. Her doctoral thesis dealt with the role of the architect in Italian Renaissance building projects and led to research on the role of the patron in the development of Renaissance art and architecture, a subject she taught to undergraduates and postgraduates, and published in two books (see below). Her subsequent work on the papers of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este considerably broadened her horizons, and expertise, well beyond the confines of art history into the everyday world of Renaissance Europe. She has publ...
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