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Magnifico is a vividly colorful portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, the uncrowned ruler of Florence during its golden age. A true "Renaissance man," Lorenzo dazzled contemporaries with his prodigious talents and magnetic personality. Known to history as Il Magnifico (the Magnificent), Lorenzo was not only the foremost patron of his day but also a renowned poet, equally adept at composing philosophical verses and obscene rhymes to be sung at Carnival. He befriended the greatest artists and writers of the time -- Leonardo, Botticelli, Poliziano, and, especially, Michelangelo, whom he discovered as a young boy and invited to live at his palace -- turning Florence into the cultural capital of Europe. He was the leading statesman of the age, the fulcrum of Italy, but also a cunning and ruthless political operative. Miles Unger's biography of this complex figure draws on primary research in Italian sources and on his intimate knowledge of Florence, where he lived for several years.
Lorenzo's grandfather Cosimo had converted the vast wealth of the family bank into political power, but from his earliest days Lorenzo's position was precarious. Bitter rivalries among the leading Florentine families and competition among the squabbling Italian states meant that Lorenzo's life was under constant threat. Those who plotted his death included a pope, a king, and a duke, but Lorenzo used his legendary charm and diplomatic skill -- as well as occasional acts of violence -- to navigate the murderous labyrinth of Italian politics. Against all odds he managed not only to survive but to preside over one of the great moments in the history of civilization.
Florence in the age of Lorenzo was a city of contrasts, of unparalleled artistic brilliance and unimaginable squalor in the city's crowded tenements; of both pagan excess and the fire-and-brimstone sermons of the Dominican preacher Savonarola. Florence gave birpth to both the otherworldly perfection of Botticelli's Primavera and the gritty realism of Machiavelli's The Prince. Nowhere was this world of contrasts more perfectly embodied than in the life and character of the man who ruled this most fascinating city.
- Sales Rank: #104631 in Books
- Brand: Unger, Miles J.
- Published on: 2009-05-05
- Released on: 2009-05-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.40" w x 6.12" l, 1.27 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Although a well-mined biography topic, the Medici dynasty continues to fascinate, and critic Unger (The Watercolors of Winslow Homer) offers a smart, highly readable and abundantly researched book, making particularly good use of Medici family letters and earlier biographical sources such as Machiavelli's writings. Heir to a vast international banking empire and trading cartel with branches in Venice, London and Geneva, Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) was born to rule. Naturally sociable and charismatic with a common touch, famous temper and cynical world view, the teenaged Lorenzo excelled in classics, riding, arms, archery and music. He pursued liaisons with both women and men, represented his sickly father, Piero, on an important diplomatic mission and thwarted his father's enemies during a legendary ambush. His accomplishments do not stop there: as Florence's de facto ruler, Lorenzo actively collaborated with the artist Botticelli, was a master tactician and diplomat, and survived a papal-sanctioned assassination attempt that claimed the life of his beloved brother. Renaissance Florence—where wealthy aristocrats rubbed shoulders with the poor on narrow city streets and whose art and intellectual life dazzled Europe—is itself an intriguing character, proving Unger's mastery over his facts. Illus. (May)
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From Booklist
The milieu of the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century always presents a puzzling dilemma. It was an epoch of constant political chaos when class antagonism, family rivalry, and intrigue and assassination were endemic, yet high culture flourished and left an immortal legacy in literature, architecture, painting, and sculpture. An excellent example of these streams is seen in the personality and career of Lorenzo (the Magnificent) de’ Medici. Unger, a contributing writer for the New York Times, lived for several years in Florence. He has written an excellent biography that deftly weaves Lorenzo’s story with the wider saga of politics and culture in both Florence and the other Italian city-states. Unger views Lorenzo as a compelling mix of aesthetics and action. He was a gifted poet, a wise philosopher, and a patron of the arts who loved beauty for its own sake. He was also a tough, shrewd battler who knew how to survive in a dog-eat-dog environment where he was constantly threatened by serpentine plots. This is an outstanding chronicle of the man and his time. --Jay Freeman
Review
"This portrait of the 'uncrowned ruler of Florence' does great justice to this most intriguing of all Renaissance princes. Unger's diligent scholarship combines with an impelling narrative to give a full-bodied flavor of the splendors as well as the horrors of Lorenzo's remarkable reign." -- Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Machiavelli
"A meticulous and entertaining study of one of the great characters of the Italian Renaissance, who ruled Florence during one of the most fascinating periods of Italy's turbulent history. Packed with incident and incisive research, this work succeeds in being both popular and scholarly." -- Paul Strathern, author of The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
“Dazzling. . . . From the first sentence, Magnifico transports the reader to 15th-century Florence, a place of matchless splendor, both natural and man-made. Unger mines a rich lode of sources. . . . The result is an indelible personal profile and an enthralling account of both the glories and brutalities of the era.”
—David Takami, The Seattle Times
“Highly absorbing . . . provides a mesmerizing microscope for viewing the entire Italian Renaissance. . . . Magnifico is a wonderful feast for lovers of Renaissance history and art.”
—Chuck Leddy, The Boston Globe
Most helpful customer reviews
44 of 46 people found the following review helpful.
Very good, but not quite as brilliant as its subject
By A reader
Sometimes, it seems to me that it would take a committee to produce an adequate biography of Lorenzo de' Medici. He was a many-sided jewel of a man, flashing his facets in so many directions that no single author could be the master of all of them. He was a sportsman, diplomat, political boss, essayist, poet, musician and connoisseur of all the arts. On the personal level he was a dutiful husband and loving father of a large family; he also had a reputation as man with a voracious appetite for extra-marital sex. Some 2,000 of his letters survive, along with more than 20,000 addressed to him by people from all over Europe: ambassadors, popes, princes, dukes, kings and their consorts, as well as friends and ordinary people from all walks of life. The sheer volume of material by and about Lorenzo is overwhelming.
Although Unger doesn't devote a lot of space to Lorenzo's personal life, he suggests/speculates that several of Il Magnifico's lovers were male, which could be true, but this is impossible to prove or disprove, and the author doesn't really make a case for his claim. One of the possible male lovers he mentions is the poet Luigi Pulci, who was many years older than Lorenzo, which in the sexual "etiquette" of that era would have made him the dominant partner. But given that he was a Medici client and Lorenzo's social inferior, it seems unlikely he could have played that role with Lorenzo. As for Lorenzo's friend Braccio Martelli-- he seems to have been vigorously heterosexual, and nothing Unger notes by or about him suggests a sexual interest in men, but who knows? Poet-scholar Angelo Poliziano is a definite maybe: he never married; there is some evidence he preferred men to women, and he was deeply, almost slavishly, devoted to Lorenzo.
Doing justice to such a complex and many-sided life in a single volume intended for the general reader would be a tall order for any writer, and I suspect that scholars of Renaissance history in general and the Medici in particular will look down their noses at this effort, although they'll no doubt envy Unger his lively writing style. A large majority of his sources are in English, thus ignoring much of the voluminous biography available in Italian. Furthermore, the author makes very little use of archival materials (only two such sources are cited, both available on-line).
Worst of all, for this reader at least, the book has no footnotes. Although there are some notes annoyingly appended to the bottom of some pages, and other notes hidden at the back but not indicated in the text, many sources for the facts (if they are indeed facts) presented are undocumented and may leave even the general reader wondering where the information came from. For example, on pages 216-217 the author mentions the birth dates of Lorenzo's children. Several of those dates differ from the dates given by other writers, so it would be interesting to know the source of Unger's information on this topic.
The decision not to use "real" footnotes-- the kind that appear as superscript numbers in the text--was the publisher's rather than the author's decision (according to the Comment added by the author to this post), and I think it was an unfortunate choice. Commercial publishers apparently feel that general readers will be so put off by footnote numbers in the text that they won't read the book; hence the use of notes that are NOT indicated in the text, so that when readers want to know the source for a statement, they have to flip to the back and see whether or not this particular item has a source given.
But despite these criticisms (which may not matter to most readers) this is a very well written and absorbing narrative. The books is full of penetrating insights into Lorenzo's personality and character. Unger is especially good at telling the various dramatic stories that punctuate Lorenzo's life. He emphasizes the political side of Lorenzo, however, perhaps to the detriment of the many other aspects of his life. I would have liked to have read more about Lorenzo's poetry and other literary works; seen more attention to his patronage of music and musicians, and perhaps read more about his complicated love-life, commented on by many of his contemporaries. But this would have made an already lengthy book too long for a single volume.
It's perhaps unfair to judge this work by the standards of scholarly biography, since it's not intended for an academic audience. As it stands, this is by far the best biography of Lorenzo de' Medici available today.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Good Place to Start on Lorenzo and the Medici
By J. Moran
No one volume life of Lorenzo can ever be comprehensive because he is a significant figure in too many areas. He is a major figure in Florentine, Italian and European political, diplomatic and cultural history. In the history of art, indeed, he may be said to be of global importance. He was himself a poet of skill, eminent in the literature of his time. Yet his cultural significance is his legacy to posterity. To the people of his city and time, however, his main importance was political and diplomatic; and that is the role most completely explored in this book.
This is not an unreasonable choice since his political role consumed most of Lorenzo's time. He worked endlessly to buttress and expand his family's de facto control of Florence, modifying the voting and political systems at least twice to do so (always to concentrate more power in his hands while careful to observe the old republican forms). He was equally active in trying to expand Florence's influence in Italy and beyond. These efforts were strenuous and stressful, especially in the early years of Lorenzo's primacy, for there were many who sought to challenge his ambitions and those of Florence.
Indeed, his first decade or so of power was fraught with a seemingly endless series of revolts and conspiracies, internal and external, culminating in the murderous Pazzi conspiracy that resulted in Lorenzo's wounding and the death of his beloved brother. There were also wars, especially after the Pazzi plot, with great danger for the regime and for Lorenzo personally. He not only survived all of this, he increased both his power and prestige because of the brilliant political and diplomatic outcome that he personally brought about. For the rest of his life he was both highly adroit and greatly influential in Italian affairs, to the point that many of his contemporaries credited him with keeping the intense rivalries of the various regimes from causing the peninsula to implode. The book's author believes that, if Lorenzo had lived (he died at the early age of 43), he might have been able to prevent the French invasion of Italy and the innumerable disasters that followed. It is a kind of tribute to Lorenzo that this wholly improbable notion cannot be totally ignored.
The book covers all of this in some detail and does a good job of describing what these monumental efforts cost Lorenzo in terms of stress and energy. Note that leaders of the day had to do much of their work personally as there were no significant administrative agencies or personal staffs to carry out their intentions for them. The tasks of governing were immense and consuming; and Lorenzo was personally beset every day by dozens of citizens seeking his opinion, his favor or his fiat. Note too that Lorenzo had also to run the far flung Medici banking business, one of the two major roles in which he performed poorly (the other was trying to educate his son Piero in how to rule: Lorenzo's constant efforts and advice were ignored and Piero remained an arrogant and ultimately unsuccessful fool). These enormous demands on Lorenzo make his cultural impact even more astonishing.
The book also sketches Lorenzo's role in some of the arts, primarily literature, architecture, painting and sculpture. The author does this well but just enough to whet the appetite. And other arts are mostly untouched (e. g. music, philosophy).
The book is clearly aimed at the educated general reader and is almost entirely based on printed works written in English or translated into that language. There is little, if any, research into contemporary documents or archives. The book is primarily an able retelling and contains no unexpected insights or research finds. Its prose style is clear and reasonably fluid, if not enchanting. The book is marred, however, by a significant number of the sorts of typos, omissions and other printing errors that should be caught by a competent publisher's staff. The author was poorly served in this respect.
Overall this is a worthwhile, if necessarily incomplete, portrait of an amazing man. In Lorenzo's day the word magnifico ("magnificent") was a term of polite respect accorded to prominent leaders. Only with Lorenzo did it in his own time become part of his personal identity and it has remained so to this day. This book suggests why.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici
By F. H. Svensli
Miles J. Unger's "Magnifico" is a fascinating narrative about one of the most powerful and influental figures in renaissance Italy and in the history of Europe. Although there are several books on the subject, I found "Magnifico", with it's detailed focus on the everyday-life of the uncrowned ruler of Florence the most interesting and enjoyable to read. I was amazed by the level of detail in this book. Unger focuses heavily on the subject's personality: From his taste in horses, banquets and women (or men), to his favourite tuscan villas where he spent much of his time writing poetry. We are also introduced to the lesser-known Lorenzo, with the author revealing his wickedness and disabilities, as a failure in heading the inherited familydriven bank-empire, which eventually paved the way for his son, "Piero the Unfortunate". In this, Unger succeeds in providing an excellent account on Lorenzo's double life as a young playboy-prince, diplomat and shrewd politician on one side, and the benign, unsecure poet and family-man on the other side. The author underlines how Lorenzo affected everyday-life of Florence and Tuscany, both political and cultural as a the leading statesman and patron of the arts, turning Florence into a great power on the Italian peninsula, and an international exporter of renaissance culture. The book is not only a biography, it also provides the reader with a brief topic on both Florence's turbulent history and the Meidici's road to power beginning with Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici in late 14th century.
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