Selasa, 09 Juni 2020

Best The Stones of Florence By Mary McCarthy

Read The Stones of Florence By Mary McCarthy

Read The Stones of Florence Read MOBI Sites No Sign Up - As we know, Read MOBI is a great way to spend leisure time. Almost every month, there are new Kindle being released and there are numerous brand new Kindle as well. If you do not want to spend money to go to a Library and Read all the new Kindle, you need to use the help of best free Read MOBI Sites no sign up 2020.

The Stones of Florence-Mary McCarthy

Read The Stones of Florence Link MOBI online is a convenient and frugal way to read The Stones of Florence Link you love right from the comfort of your own home. Yes, there sites where you can get MOBI "for free" but the ones listed below are clean from viruses and completely legal to use.

The Stones of Florence MOBI By Click Button. The Stones of Florence it’s easy to recommend a new book category such as Novel, journal, comic, magazin, ect. You see it and you just know that the designer is also an author and understands the challenges involved with having a good book. You can easy klick for detailing book and you can read it online, even you can download it



Ebook About
A journey through the glorious Italian city’s scenery, history, and culture, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Venice Observed and The Group. Mary McCarthy’s classic celebrates the Italian city often looked upon as the provincial sister to the better-dressed, more “feminine” Venice. To McCarthy, Florence, or Firenze, is a place of ageless enchantment, from the Duomo to the fortressed palaces. The Renaissance began here; art and architecture flourished. From its roots as a center of medieval trade to its transformation into one of the world’s wealthiest cities, McCarthy charts Florence’s rich and turbulent history. She introduces a cast of towering real-life characters. Through her probing writer’s lens, the poetry of Dante and the magnificent artistry of Raphael and Botticelli come vibrantly alive. Along this illuminating journey, McCarthy offers fascinating bits of trivia: There are no ruins in Florence because the Florentines aren’t sentimental about their past; America took its name from a Florentine traveler named Amerigo Vespucci. From Michelangelo to the Medicis to the story behind a statue’s missing head, The Stones of Florence is Mary McCarthy’s hymn to this unique city. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate. 

Book The Stones of Florence Review :



Some reviewers have suggested that this is the perfect book to read on the plane flying to Florence Italy. I would recommend reading this book on the plane after leaving Florence since McCarthy does an excellent job of pulling together history, political intrigue, the rise and fall of the Medici family, the history of architecture, sculpture, and painting during the renaissance, and the world view of the Italians in Tuscany. This book helps the traveler make sense of what they have seen and experienced while in Florence. The names of the great Tuscan families, the great artists, and the vast array of saints all make much more sense to the reader after they have experienced Florence and now have the opportunity to read McCarthy's thoughtful reflections on this jewel of a city.McCarthy explains that during the renaissance, the fields of engineering, architecture, sculptor, and painter all overlapped and the great geniuses such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giotto, Brother Lippi, Botticelli, and Brunelleschi excelled in all these fields. The power of Michelangelo's David and Sistine Chapel may cloud our understanding of Michelangelo as outstanding architect. McCarthy would have us understand that the outstanding talents and minds of the Renaissance knew few bounds as they applied their talents and innovations. Brunelleschi's architectural masterpieces of the Duomo, San Lorenzo, Santo Spirito, and the Pazzi Chapel would ensure his place in history but he also developed the concept of the vanishing point in pictorial 2-dimensional space which was a innovation of considerable power and which influenced every serious artist since. As the technical aspects of the vanishing point are learned, Masaccio paints the painting of the Trinity, showing the power of this technique, a technique that spread quickly within the artistic community of Europe.Tales of the Duomo are peppered throughout the book since the competition to design and build this dome are legendary. McCarthy tells the essential facts which are given in more detail in Ross King's Brunelleschi's dome. She is unkind to Vasari, the favorite of Cosimo I, who designed the Uffizi and painted the frescoes within the Duomo. She is also unkind to the Mannerists that follow the giants of the late Renaissance.McCarthy is rightfully critical of aspects of Florence. The Uffizi is damp with body heat and wet breath of the crowds that are so dense that it is difficult to see the art and McCarthy invites the reader to enjoy other art treasures in other collections such as the Bargello museum and the Pitti Palace. She invites the reader to stroll in the Boboli and Bardini gardens.McCarthy has a keen understanding of human conflict and the story of Florence is also the story of rivalry, grudge, crime, retribution, violence, power, faction, alliance, and betrayal. The names of the great families such as Medici, Strozzi, Pazzi, and Brancacci begin to make sense as McCarthy weaves the ancient conflicts and rivalries into stories that illustrate how such rivalries and competition could be both destructive and also could inspire innovation and unintended developments. The conflicts were not just between the great families, they were also between the great families and the dictatorship of the Medici family. The conflicts were often between different factions of Christianity such as the Patarenes and Albigensians that challenged the dogma of the Catholic Church. The rise and fall of the evangelical monk Savonarola is often mentioned in her descriptions of the conflicting forces within Florence.McCarthy makes the point that these innovative people strove for both the ideal religion and the ideal state since every form of government was tried in Florence. McCarthy casts Machiavelli as the brilliant political scientist that he was. His cool objectivity about how power is gained and retained remains vibrant reading to this day. Machiavelli explains the attributes of a mercenary army compared to a citizen army but unfortunately it is 300 years later before these lessons take root in democratic Europe.Florence is often at the mercy of the Arno and I was amazed at the number of times over the last 700 years that the Arno floods destroyed bridges and sometimes buildings and art treasures.The Italian language derives from the dialect spoken in Florence and it is Dante's Divine Comedy that helped establish this particular dialect as the primary dialect.Florence is the birthplace of the Renaissance. This re-birth or re-discovery of the philosophers, political models, sculptors and architects of antiquity turned the God-centered world of the Middle Ages on its head and opened the door for the conceptions of modernity. McCarthy captures this transitional process in single geographic place with exceptional story telling skills.
Prior to reading this book, my favorite book on Florence was "The City of Florence: Historical Vistas and Personal Sightings" by R.W.B. Lewis which, like much of what one reads about the city, is generally positive.In searching out books on the subject, I had repeatedly come across references to "The Stones of Florence," which I avoided because I viewed Mary McCarthy (1912 - 1989) as a sort of upscale Danielle Steel, a popular novelist incapable of perceptive insights. That assessment was wrong.Instead, from the first page, the reader is confronted with perceptive and knowledgeable opinions that challenge his or her own perceptions (e.g., the Florentines are a cantankerous, miserly bunch). You may not agree with her, but there is no doubt that she is highly intelligent and has seriously thought out her positions. In the end, the reader comes away with strong admiration for her intelligence, candor, and succinct writing style. For example:"Up until this time (the age of Michelangelo), sculpture and architecture had been relied on by the Florentines to affirm the strength of the Republic. That is why the Uffizi, beautiful as many of its paintings are, is only a picture gallery, while the Bargello and the Museum of the Works of the Duomo are Florence." (p. 108)."The kind of vulgarity in decoration that is today thought of as middle-class seems to stem straight from Tuscany in the time of the Medici grand dukes (citing Cosimo I)... The interiors of the grand-ducal palaces and villas are sumptuously, stuffily ugly in a way that is hard to connect with a period that was contemporary, after all, with classic Palladio in the Veneto." (p. 201)"Lorenzo the Magnificent was `incredibly devoted to the indulgence of an amorous passion', as Roscoe, his eighteenth-century biographer, puts it; his sexuality was uncontrollable, a perpetual bullish rut." (p. 176)This is not a book for readers considering a first trip to Florence or for those whose sole exposure has been a whirlwind tour of the Uffizi, Duomo and David. It presupposes an in-depth knowledge of the city itself, its history and literature. Those who have that knowledge will find it thought-provoking and rewarding.The title of this book is explained by the fact that three years before writing "The Stones of Florence," McCarthy wrote "Venice Observed," in which she relied heavily on John Ruskin's masterpiece "The Stones of Venice."Readers interested in an objective view of the Medici, particularly Lorenzo il Magnifico, should consider  Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise)  by Tim Parks. The final chapter is spectacular, pulling together what for me had previously been separate strands of history.

Read Online The Stones of Florence
Download The Stones of Florence
The Stones of Florence PDF
The Stones of Florence Mobi
Free Reading The Stones of Florence
Download Free Pdf The Stones of Florence
PDF Online The Stones of Florence
Mobi Online The Stones of Florence
Reading Online The Stones of Florence
Read Online Mary McCarthy
Download Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy PDF
Mary McCarthy Mobi
Free Reading Mary McCarthy
Download Free Pdf Mary McCarthy
PDF Online Mary McCarthy
Mobi Online Mary McCarthy
Reading Online Mary McCarthy

Best Illusion: A Novel By Frank Peretti

Download PDF Body Magic (The Triad of Magic series Book 2) By Macy Blake

Download PDF Using LEDs, LCDs and GLCDs in Microcontroller Projects By Dogan Ibrahim

Download PDF The Beginning of Everything: A Historical Lesbian Romance By Cara Malone

Download Mobi Revelation (The John Walvoord Prophecy Commentaries) By John Walvoord,Philip E. Rawley,Mark Hitchcock

Best Rika Destroyer (Aeon 14: The Genevian Queen Book 3) By M. D. Cooper

Download Mobi Five Gold Rings (Crossroads Collection) By Amanda Tru,Jaycee Weaver,Hallee Bridgeman,Chautona Havig

Download PDF How To Travel Hack The World On A Budget By Andrew Andrews

Download Mobi Out of Africa: and Shadows on the Grass (Vintage International) By Isak Dinesen

Best The Stones of Florence By Mary McCarthy Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: justinamal

0 komentar:

Posting Komentar