Renaissance Lives

Some ladies who served at the Tudor court are only faceless silhouettes lost to the sands of time, but there are those who dedicated their lives to please their royal mistresses and left documentation, allowing us to piece their life stories together and link them to the stories of Tudor queens. These female attendants saw their queens and princesses up close and often used their intimate bonds to their own benefit. Some were beloved, others hated. This is the story of the ladies of the Tudor court like you've never heard it before.

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance", was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Thomas Cromwell by Diarmid MacCulloch, read by David Rintoul. Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King.

The eagerly awaited first book in Philippa Gregory’s sweeping new series begins with the story of Alinor, a young midwife who finds herself tempted by a forbidden love affair. But in a society that has already set a path for her, she is all too aware of the dangers that await a woman who dares step out of place....

England, July 1540: it is one of the hottest summers on record, and the court of Henry VIII is embroiled once again in political scandal. Anne Cleves is out. Thomas Cromwell is to be executed and, in the countryside, an aristocratic teenager named Catherine Howard prepares to become fifth wife to the increasingly unpredictable monarch.

The Tudor era encompasses some of the greatest changes in our history. But while we know about the historical dramas of the times, what was life really like for a commoner? To answer this question, the renowned 'method historian' Ruth Goodman has slept, washed and cooked as the Tudors did. She is your expert guide to this fascinating era, drawing on years of practical historical study to show how our ancestors coped with everyday life, from how they slept to how they courted.

You can talk like the smartest people of all time. It's easy. Just quote them! This book is a museum of cryo-preserved quotes waiting for the Spring of your intellect. What is the purpose of this book? To help smart people become smarter. Mesmerism with aphorism. Every morning have some quotes with your oats. Quote books are high yield to accelerate your quest for wisdom. Open new metaphors of perception. Parry criticisms with witticisms. This is not just another simpleton, McPlatitude book.

Like its popular and acclaimed predecessors, Restoration London and Dr Johnson's London, this fascinating evocation of Elizabethan London is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of everyday life and the conditions in which most people lived, which most history books ignore: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework and shopping; clothes, jewellery and make-up; medicine and sex; education, etiquette and hobbies; religion, law and crime.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realised portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies he encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the world of the Henrician court, Holbein was a protean and multi-faceted genius.

Born into the English Wars of the Roses, educated in the European Renaissance, enthralled by the Age of Exploration and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, Thomas More is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Thomas More: A Life is the definitive biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning many received interpretations of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows Thomas More to have been an intellectual and political giant of his age, central to the making of modern Europe.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

Most historians credit the city-state of Florence as the place that started and developed the Italian Renaissance, a process carried out through the patronage and commission of artists during the late 12th century. If Florence is receiving its due credit, much of it belongs to the Medicis, the family dynasty of Florence that ruled at the height of the Renaissance. The dynasty held such influence that some of its family members even became pope.

1496 It is the height of the Renaissance and its flowering of intellectual and artistic endeavour, but the city state of Florence is in the grip of fundamentalist preacher Friar Girolamo Savonarola. Its good people believe the Lord speaks through him, just as certainly as the Sun circles the Earth.

Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, given the title the "most Catholic monarchs" by the Pope during their reign over Spain, are often blamed for some of the greatest atrocities in history. Remembered primarily for commissioning Christopher Columbus's historical voyage to the New World in 1492, they have been assigned blame for the results of the Spanish Conquest, particularly the catastrophes that befell the Native Americans of the New World.

It's possible that Michelangelo is the most famous artist in history, but it's also possible that he's an underrated artist. The vast influence of his career is reflected by the fact that he is not only known for his own art but has also come to embody an entire epoch of Western art. Along with Leonardo da Vinci, there are no other artists who so fully capture the spirit of scientific and artistic discovery that characterized art during the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Ever since Machiavelli penned The Prince, his 1513 treatise on princely rule and the politics of reality, a work that infamously advises rulers to abandon virtue and morality when necessary, his name has been synonymous with deceit, duplicity, and amoral pragmatism. Since then a sinister reputation has posthumously plagued the controversial Florentine. But is this depiction of Machiavelli as wicked and immoral accurate?

The Renaissance spawned the use of the label "Renaissance man" to describe a person who is extremely talented in multiple fields, and no discussion of the Renaissance is complete without the original Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, if 100 people are asked to describe Leonardo in one word, they might give 100 answers.

Ce livre pour débutants est là pour répondre à toutes vos questions sur la vie après la mort et vous aider à comprendre ce que vous devez faire pour les comprendre la réincarnation et ainsi pour améliorer la compréhension de nombreux aspects de la vie et de vous-même - alors continuez à lire !

Fighting for success in 17th century Amsterdam, a female artist must risk everything - and make enemies along the way. Defying convention, gifted artist Clara becomes a pupil to the renowned painter Osias Beerts. But when the highly prized patronage won from the powerful Burgomeister Fabritius turns to hostility, Clara has to make sacrifices and risk everything to pursue her craft. Together with her fellow pupil, Nico, she finds herself surrounded by dangerous secrets and powerful enemies. But in the face of so much past pain, can something as fragile as love survive?

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known across the world simply by the name Raphael, stands as one of the main pillars of the High Renaissance, an iconic example of the balance between spirituality and humanistic inquiry that characterized the time period. Although he lived just 37 years, his career produced an amazingly rich output, and he completed more works than many artists do over careers spanning twice the length.