Beauty and horror. True history of the Italian Renaissance

What do we really know about the Renaissance? The era of rich patrons of art, the development of technology, the opening of new continents. But at the same time - the time when treachery and corruption, wars between the republics, cruelty, hunger, prostitution and epidemics flourished. Historian Katherine Fletcher in her book demonstrates the true face of the Renaissance in all his diversity. Bankers, priests, women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, engineers, prostitutes and farmers - all of them played no less role than Medici and Machiavelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo. This book is an amazing journey through the contradictory and gloomy era that laid the foundation of our modern civilization