Book description
In April 1478, a plot to murder the two heads of the powerful Medici
family dramatically miscarried. The younger of the two brothers was
killed, but Lorenzo the Magnificent, the brilliant poet and
connoisseur escaped. A bloodbath followed and all of Italy was at once
affected as it emerged that the Pope, the King of Naples, and the Duke
of Urbino were deeply implicated in the plot, and that binding
treaties required Milan and Venice to assist Florence.
If the conspirators had succeeded and Lorenzo had been killed the
future of the Medici family and, indeed, of the Florentine state would
have been utterly transformed.
One of the world's foremost authorities on the Italian
Renaissance, Lauro Martines was born in Chicago, has a Ph. D. from
Harvard University, but has been living in London since 1970. Until
recently he communted to Los Angeles, where he was Professor of
European History at the University of California. He and his wife, the
novelist Julia O'Faolain, lived for some years in Florence.
His best known books include Lawyers and Statecraft in
Renaissance Florence (1968), Society and History in English
Renaissance Verse (1985), An Italian Renaissance Sextet: Six
Tales in Historical Context (1994), Strong Words: Writing and
Social Strain in the Italian Renaissance (2001), and Power
and Imagination, now available in Pimlico.
