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Renaissance Rome: A Portrait of a Society 1500-1559
Renaissance Rome A Portrait of a Society 15001559 Author:Peter Partner The idea that Rome has such mundane features as sewers or a mayor is hard to keep in mind as we stare at the Coliseum or the horns of Michelangelo's Moses. How much more difficult, but doubly fascinating, then to try to reconstruct the facts of real life in Renaissance Rome, where Michelangelo worked and Caesar Borgia schemed. (He) sho... more »ws that the Eternal City just before 1500 was a sorry, empty wreck...Upon this medieval midden, popes and contractors erected a new town and a new order. Partner's account of this vigorous urban revival is rich in detail of all sorts. He makes sense of the maze of papal and local politics, the invasions, the economics-all the forces that set in motion what we call the Renaissance. Partner's vision takes in everything from cardinals' salaries to the treatment of syphilis to the fashion of "antiquing" modest houses with monochrome drawings on their facades...His portrait is so persuasive that it almost starts one thinking of the Sistine ceiling as merely part of a public works program.« less