The Artist, The Philosopher and The Warrior

by PaulStrathern (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2010

  $17.00

  In the autumn of 1502 three giants of the Renaissance period - Cesare Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli - set out on one of the most treacherous military campaigns of the period. Cesare Borgia was a ferocious military leader whose name was synonymous with brutality and whose reputation was marred with the suspicion of incest. Niccolo Machiavelli was a witty and subversive intellectual, more suited to the silken diplomacy of royal courts than the sodden encampments of a military campaign. And Leonardo da Vinci was a visionary master and the most talented military engineer in Italy. What led him to work for the monstrous Borgia? And what attracted him to the cunning Machiavelli? In his extraordinary new book acclaimed historian Paul Strathern ingeniously focuses on this improbable collusion of three iconic figures of the Italian Renaissance to unite three mighty strands of the period - war, politics and art. As each man's life unfolds, so does the Italian Renaissance.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $3.25

  In this masterful study, Paul Strathern (author of The Medici , and Napoleon in Egypt ) details the incidental convergence of three of Renaissance Italy's most brilliant minds. The Artist, the Philosopher and the Warrior follows Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia through the mountains, remote villages and hill towns of the Italian Romagna. This was a period of extreme significance and considerable danger, not just for themselves, but for the country they were helping to shape. Borgia has become a byword for brutal and inhuman deeds, marred with the suspicion of incest. Depicted as a savage whose eyes were fixed on the prize of his own kingdom - a province in which he ruled supreme. But he was an educated savage and an unrivalled tactician, relying on surprise and patience.Leonardo, possessed of the most inquisitive mind of his generation, is the exemplar of the Renaissance man. His paintings and drawings are among the finest and most famous in the world and his notebooks portray intricate scientific and technological investigations. But what led this master thinker to work for the tyrannical Borgia and how did he become involved with Machiavelli? Machiavelli was the infamous author of The Prince - a work that was the culmination of all he had learnt throughout his long political career. Driven by an uncanny understanding of human nature, and the way people behave rather than how they ought to behave, Machiavelli became a master politician and diplomatic negotiator, unrivalled in Renaissance Italy. The legacies of these three men shaped the Renaissance and all that came after it and their impact is still felt today. Paul Strathern's new book is a vivid and gripping account of what happened in one short season in 1502.