Plague and Pleasure: The Renaissance World of Pius IIPlague and Pleasure is a lively popular history that introduces a new hypothesis about the impetus behind the cultural change in Renaissance Italy. The Renaissance coincided with a period of chronic, constantly recurring plague, unremitting warfare and pervasive insecurity. Consequently, people felt a need for mental escape to alternative, idealized realities, distant in time or space from the unendurable present but made vivid to the imagination through literature, art, and spectacle. |
Contents
1 The Myth of the Renaissance | 1 |
2 The Four Horsemen | 21 |
3 Corsignano and Siena | 48 |
4 The Exile | 65 |
5 The Cleric | 90 |
6 The Road to Mantua | 111 |
7 Renaissance Chivalry | 127 |
8 Mantua and After | 144 |
13 Pienza | 245 |
14 Urban Dreams | 258 |
15 Visits to Antiquity | 275 |
16 Villas and Gardens | 295 |
17 The Crusade | 312 |
18 The Art of Copiousness | 334 |
19 Conclusion Pius and His Period | 359 |
Appendix Plague in Italy 13471700 | 373 |
9 The Political Pope | 169 |
10 A Room of Ones Own | 189 |
1462 | 207 |
12 The Age of Spectacle | 226 |
| 381 | |
| 395 | |
Common terms and phrases
Aeneas Silvius Aeneas’s Alberti Ammanati ancient Ancona arch architecture artists Basel bishop Black Death Boccaccio Bologna Boulting buildings Burgundy cardinals cathedral Catherine celebrations century chapel Christian church classical Colonna Comm condottiere Corsignano council Council of Basel crusade d’Este d’Estouteville Duke emperor Enea Silvio Piccolomini Eugenius Europe Federico da Montefeltro Ferrante Ferrara festival figures Filarete Florence Florentine Francesco Sforza Frederick fresco garden Genoa Gothic History Holy human humanist Ibid ideal Italian Italy King Landucci later Leonardo lived loggia Lorenzo Mantua Medici medieval Middle Ages Milan monastery Naples never Nicholas nobles Painters painting palace papacy papal Paparelli Pastor Perugia Peter’s Petrarch Petriolo Philip piazza Piccolomini Library Pienza Pinturicchio Pius Pius’s plague pope pope’s princes quattrocento quoted in Ady Renaissance Roman Rome Rubenstein San Giovanni says ships Siena Sienese Sigismondo Smith streets studiolo tion tournament town Turks University Press Urbino Vasari Venetians Venice villa Viterbo walls wrote