Andrea Rizzi - The Prince in Quattrocento Italian Courts

February 19, 2013


The Power of Luxury: Art and Culture at the Italian Courts in Machiavelli’s Lifetime
The Australian Institute of Art History
The University of Melbourne
19 and 20 February, 2013

Session One - Machiavelli's Prince
Tuesday 16 February 10.00 am

Andrea Rizzi
Machiavelli before Machiavelli: the Prince in Quattrocento Italian Courts

Abstract
This paper investigates an important connection between the Quattrocento humanists (Pontano, Maio, Decembrio, and Vergerio to mention a few) and Machiavelli. Fifteenth-century humanists tried, often unsuccessfully, to refashion tyrannical, pitiless and opportunistic princes of the Italian courts into virtuous and learned leaders. In an apparently antithetical yet paradoxically similar manner, Machiavelli wrote to Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici in the hope of changing him into a cynical, pragmatic and 'real-politick' leader. This paper discusses how both Quattrocento humanists and Machiavelli promoted cultural and political values that fundamentally clashed with the reality and nature of the leaderships under which their thought was produced.

Video
Not posted at source

Livetweets














Dr. Andrea Rizzi holds a BA (Hons) from the Universita' Statale di Pavia (Italy) and PhD in Italian Renaissance from University of Kent at Canterbury (UK). Before coming to the University of Melbourne (2005), he held positions at Kent, University of Western Australia, and University of South Australia. Dr. Rizzi researches and publishes on translation history, Matteo Maria Boiardo, and fifteenth century Venetian chronicles.

nb. Entry created May 4 2013. Dated to Feb 19 (date of presentation) for indexing purposes

1 comments:

W42 said...

In lieu of a video, that twitter livefeed was tantalizing. I would love to be able to read the letters between Vettori and Machiavelli.

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...