Princes Of The Renaissance: The Hidden Power Behind An Artistic Revolution, by Mary Hollingsworth

Unfortunately, this book manages to combine several unfortunate traits into a single book that would, at least at the outset, seem like a slam-dunk for a great book. The material of this book seems like an easy enough one to do well–the author has a strong interest and obvious knowledge about the complex politics of Italian Renaissance princes and the book has lots of pictures of beautiful art and architecture from the period. All an author has to do in a case like this get out of his (or her, in this case) way and let the narrative of the story shine. Sadly, this is one thing that the author was simply unable to do here, and it turns what should have been an amazing book into one that is just barely on the positive side of mediocre, and that largely because so much of the book consists of material that is intrinsically interesting on its own merits, despite the author’s serious problems in narrative history and the structure of this book, and the outstanding photography that supports this book. Even so, this book was a disappointment to read and is not one I can wholeheartedly recommend aside from its visual design elements and its helpful family trees.

Including its useful appendices and extensive photographs, this book is almost 500 pages long, divided into eleven chapters. This book did not have to be so long, or feel so disjointed, despite the fact that the author’s aim is complicated by the nature of her goals of explaining a time and place that are not known in detail by most readers as well as making specific points about the use of art as an alternative source of legitimacy to the military power that the divided and often small Italian states lacked when compared to larger polities like France, Spain (after the unification of Castille and Aragon), Austria (and the support of the Holy Roman Empire), and the Ottoman Empire. After a short note on money and an introduction that discusses Italy as being a cultural but not a political identity during the period in question, the book consists of a series of chapters that are related to themes and to particular figures within the Italian Renaissance and its context. So we have a discussion of Alfonso of Aragon and Francisco Sforza under usurpers (1), Leonello d’Este and Sigismondo Malatesta as knights and humanists (2), Ludovico Gonzaga and his wife Barbara of Brandenburg in a discussion of family (3), Ferrante I of Naples and Federigo da Montefeltro under the theme of conspiracy and greed (4), Ludovico, Ascanio, and Giangaleazzo Sforza as being a den of vipers (5) in Milan, Isabella and Alfonso d’Este as being survivors (6), Francesco Maria della Rovere and Federigo Gonzaga as being part of a new political order (7), Doge Andrea Gritti & his Venetian cronies as being, strangely, a new Rome (8), Paul III & the Farnese and the theme of dynasty (9), The Este and Cosimo de’ Medici as being emblematic of concerns of precedence and reform (10), with a closing chapter about the conquering Spanish (11), along with appendices that include family trees, tables, and maps. The book then closes with a bibliography and notes about sources, notes, image credits, acknowledgements, and an index.

What would have made this book a good one? There are at least a couple of ways that the admittedly complex story of the 15th and 16th centuries of Italian history could be told successfully. One possibility is that the author could have organized the story in a generally chronological fashion and used digressions or sidebars to talk about the interesting and noteworthy aspects of the period that did not exactly fit into the narrative. The consistent theme of French invasion in support of its claims to Naples and later Milan followed by initial victory over weak Italian states followed by eventual disaster upon the counter-invasions by the Hapsburgs would have made for a suitable narrative hook to hang the book’s contents on, with plenty of discussion of the ways that the weak Italian princes sought to use art and diplomacy (sometimes connected) as a means of punching above their admittedly limited weight as military powers. Alternatively, the author could have focused on the various Italian polities and show how they dealt with their own internal rivalries and sought to use art as a means of increasing the legitimacy of their rulers while they coped with the power of the French and Habsburg Austrian and Spanish power that they could not match through diplomatic finesse. Either way of organizing the text would have worked a lot better than the parallel lives format that the author chose, perhaps out of a misplaced desire to imitate Plutarch and show off her own classical knowledge. Ultimately, this book is not nearly as good as it could be because the author thinks that the theme of seeking to understand the Renaissance in terms of using art and diplomacy as a power play is an original idea in a time period where people are obsessed with power and politics already and tries too hard to show off her own knowledge of the history of Italy in the 1400s and 1500s.