Renaissance Florence

Rating:
Summary: Delightful!
Review: Gene Brucker sets new standards for World Historians! When you think about your purchases, think very hard before you walk away, so to speak, without a copy of Renaissance Florence. 'Cause if you do, you'll leave with a hole in your spiritual and cultural life.

Rating:
Summary: Dry
Review: I purchased this book because I wanted an overview of Florence during the Renaissance and the reviews I read about this book were all positive. Though I did learn things from this book I did not enjoy reading it. It was very dry and it didn't talk about what I expected it would - the artistic side of the Renaissance. It did start to go into it towards the end, but not in any sort of depth. Let's put it this way - I was a history major and expected this book to be somewhat academic, but I also expected the author to make the history come alive. Many historical books I have read make me excited to turn the page and see what comes next, this one did not.

Rating:
Summary: excellent overview of Renaissance Florence
Review: Picking up a book on Renaissance Florence, you would expect to get a book almost solely devoted to art and culture. However, this book is fascinating in its analysis of all aspects of life in Renaissance Florence. Covering the period between about 1300 and 1500, Brucker divides the book into six subjects, including the economy, politics and the church. Through a lot of use of contemporary (and unpublished) documents, Florence comes across as a pretty chaotic place, with 40 religious holidays per year, public executions, workers' riots, plagues, wars with Milan and Naples plus a booming population (the fifth largest in Europe at the time). How a huge cultural revolution emerged from all of this seems like a miracle, but Brucker argues that it was the confluence of several factors: the even influence of the Greco-Roman-Christian tradition and the vernacular tradition, being stuck between feudalism and capitalism, the flexible social structure and, last but not least, Dante.

Brucker also traces the decline of Florence in the late 1400s and early 1500s as the city grew conservative and public patronage of the arts declined with the rise of the Medicis. Finally, he does devote a good chunk of the book to describing the achievements of Giotto, Michelangelo et al., making this an important read for any student of the Renaissance.

Rating:
Summary: excellent overview of Renaissance Florence
Review: Picking up a book on Renaissance Florence, you would expect to get a book almost solely devoted to art and culture. However, this book is fascinating in its analysis of all aspects of life in Renaissance Florence. Covering the period between about 1300 and 1500, Brucker divides the book into six subjects, including the economy, politics and the church. Through a lot of use of contemporary (and unpublished) documents, Florence comes across as a pretty chaotic place, with 40 religious holidays per year, public executions, workers' riots, plagues, wars with Milan and Naples plus a booming population (the fifth largest in Europe at the time). How a huge cultural revolution emerged from all of this seems like a miracle, but Brucker argues that it was the confluence of several factors: the even influence of the Greco-Roman-Christian tradition and the vernacular tradition, being stuck between feudalism and capitalism, the flexible social structure and, last but not least, Dante.

Brucker also traces the decline of Florence in the late 1400s and early 1500s as the city grew conservative and public patronage of the arts declined with the rise of the Medicis. Finally, he does devote a good chunk of the book to describing the achievements of Giotto, Michelangelo et al., making this an important read for any student of the Renaissance.