The Black Prince of Florence The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici
The Black Prince of Florence The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici
- ISBN 13:
9780190092146
- ISBN 10:
0190092149
- Format: Paperback
- Copyright: 07/08/2020
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
List Price $18.95 Save
TERM | PRICE | DUE |
---|---|---|
Free Shipping Both Ways
Highlight/Take Notes Like You Own It
Purchase/Extend Before Due Date
List Price $18.95 Save $3.40
Usually Ships in 24-48 Hours
We Buy This Book Back!
Free Shipping On Every Order
List Price $18.95 Save $0.66
Usually Ships in 3-5 Business Days
We Buy This Book Back!
Free Shipping On Every Order
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Extend or Purchase Your Rental at Any Time
Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.
Summary
After ruling for a turbulent six years, Alessandro was murdered in 1537 during a late-night tryst arranged by a scheming cousin. As Fletcher puts it, he was assassinated twice: "first with a sword, then with a pen." Following his death, Alessandro's reign was dismissed by his enemies--of which every Medici prince had many, and Alessandro more than his share--and his death painted as tyrannicide. It was in the years and centuries that followed that his racial origin became a focus, first by those seeking to emphasize his "savagery" and thus to justify his murder, and later to argue his case as the first ruler of color in the Western world. In 1931, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, founder of the famous collection of African history in Harlem, wrote an article about Alessandro in the magazine The Crisis, then edited by W.E.B. Du Bois, calling him the "Negro Medici."
Defined by intrigue, opulence, sexual conquest, and an endless struggle to retain power, Alessandro's life and afterlife reveal how racial identity has played out over the centuries, and to what degree it remains in the eye of the beholder. In this captivating biography of an intriguing and forgotten figure, Fletcher does full justice to his remarkable story, unraveling centuries-old mysteries, exposing forgeries, and bringing to life the epic personalities--artists, popes, queens, and pimps--of one of the most colorful periods in history.