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The Renaissance in 50 shades of grey

14 March 2020

9:00 AM

14 March 2020

9:00 AM

The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance Catherine Fletcher

Penguin/Bodley Head, pp.400, 25

The Mediterranean-centred era spanning a century or so either side of 1492 is filled to the brim with stories. There was the discovery of the Americas by a bold Genoese navigator; power struggles between wealthy Italian families, waged through conspiracies, poisonings and stabbings; a radical Dominican monk who managed to impose near-theocratic rule on a republican city before being burned at the stake; the advent of humanism and, subsequently, of a modern, power-focused theory of politics; and the maturing of the visual arts to a new level of sophistication, realism and emotional power.

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