List Price: $30.00
Save: $10.00 (33%)

FREE Shipping on orders over $35.

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Want it Wednesday, Dec. 9? Order within and choose Two-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

Buy Used

$10.32

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by Jenson Online Inc

Fulfilled by Amazon

Condition: Used: Acceptable

Comment: The item is fairly worn but continues to work perfectly. Signs of wear can include aesthetic issues such as scratches, dents, and worn corners. All pages and the cover are intact, but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting, but the text is not obscured or unreadable.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty Hardcover – October 7, 2014

by Alexander Lee (Author)

52 customer reviews

See all 7 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$9.92

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$20.00

$11.07

$7.50

Paperback

"Please retry"

$14.47

$8.93

$8.33

Audio CD

"Please retry"

—

$118.33

—

A fascinating and counterintuitive portrait of the sordid, hidden world behind the dazzling artwork of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and more

Renowned as a period of cultural rebirth and artistic innovation, the Renaissance is cloaked in a unique aura of beauty and brilliance. Its very name conjures up awe-inspiring images of an age of lofty ideals in which life imitated the fantastic artworks for which it has become famous. But behind the vast explosion of new art and culture lurked a seamy, vicious world of power politics, perversity, and corruption that has more in common with the present day than anyone dares to admit.
In this lively and meticulously researched portrait, Renaissance scholar Alexander Lee illuminates the dark and titillating contradictions that were hidden beneath the surface of the period’s best-known artworks. Rife with tales of scheming bankers, greedy politicians, sex-crazed priests, bloody rivalries, vicious intolerance, rampant disease, and lives of extravagance and excess, this gripping exploration of the underbelly of Renaissance Italy shows that, far from being the product of high-minded ideals, the sublime monuments of the Renaissance were created by flawed and tormented artists who lived in an ever-expanding world of inequality, dark sexuality, bigotry, and hatred.
The Ugly Renaissance is a delightfully debauched journey through the surprising contradictions of Italy’s past and shows that were it not for the profusion of depravity and degradation, history’s greatest masterpieces might never have come into being.

The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty

$20.00 FREE Shipping on orders over $35. In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Total price: $45.82

Buy the selected items together

This item:The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty by Alexander Lee Hardcover $20.00
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $35. Details
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones Hardcover $25.82
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $35. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

William Manchester

6

Hardcover
$21.89
Stephen Greenblatt…

640

Paperback
$10.48
Dan Jones

154

Hardcover
$25.82
Susan Wise Bauer

51

Hardcover
$22.50
Miles J. Unger

58

Hardcover
$29.95
Mary Beard

25

in Ancient Roman History
Hardcover
$23.37

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Take an Extra 25% Off Any Book: Use promo code BOOKDEAL25 at checkout to get an extra 25% off any book for a limited time. Excludes Kindle eBooks and Audible Audiobooks. Restrictions apply. Learn more | Shop now

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (October 7, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385536593
ISBN-13: 978-0385536592
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #397,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #408 in Books > History > Europe > Italy
- #2967 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources
- #3501 in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > History

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars

5 star		23%
4 star		35%
3 star		27%
2 star		11%
1 star		4%

See all 52 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful

Good book marred by a silly premise

By Thomas B. Gross VINE VOICE on October 4, 2014

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

I hesitated to order this book because I was put off by its apparent premise: that the Italian Renaissance was not all sweetness and light but had a "dark side" - hardly a revelation to anyone, but I decided to read it anyway because I am fascinated by descriptions of daily life in 15th and 16th Century Florence - my favorite part of Ross King's "Brunelleschi's Dome" was the description of herds of sheep within the city walls and I figured it would be entertaining to read about the sex lives of Renaissance Men (and Women).

I haven't read Vasari's "Lives of the Artists" since my first visit to Florence 40 years ago this month - I don't remember much of it but I remember loving the stories, and the best of "The Ugly Renaissance" is reminiscent of Vasari if not directly sourced from it.

There's a lot of interesting information here - enough for perhaps three shorter books. The first book would be a description of Florence at the time that Michelangelo carved the David - it would be very much like "Brunelleschi's Dome". Some of this is really great, like when he describes Michelangelo's father giving his son a hard time for being a painter and not a banker. The second book would be about the Medici family, and the third book would be a description of Florence during the "Age of Discovery" (which is remarkable because Florentines don't appear to have been interested at all in the discovery of America). These three sections make up the entire "Ugly Renaissance" book somehow bound together by the idea that not everything in Renaissance Florence was beautiful or enlightened.Read more ›

2 Comments Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

Did Corruption and Evil Fuel Renaissance Art and Creativity?

By Reader from Washington, DC on August 29, 2014

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

The depravity of the Renaissance era is no secret -- within the last few decades at least two gaudy television series about one of the most evil Popes, Alexander Borgia and his equally icky illegitimate children, have been produced. Many novels and much poetry about Renaissance Italy, filled to the brim with murder and adultery, have been published in the last three centuries.

But historian Alexander Lee believes that modern admirers of the art and literature of the Renaissance tend to romanticize the era, seeing only the beautiful altarpieces and statues like Michelangelo's David in isolation from the horrific society which produced them. He argues that moderns tend to believe that people who paid for and produced art and poetry that beautiful couldn't have been bigots, murderers and rapists, and must instead be close to moderns in their thinking. Lee's book tries to break up the sanitized picture of the Renaissance as a wonderful time of intellectual discovery and show its seamy underside.

In "The Ugly Renaissance," Lee describes how many of the altarpieces, with pictures of the art patrons painted into them, were given to churches to alleviate the guilt that the wealthy merchants, violent soldiers and corrupt church officials felt about their sin-stained lives. Huge libraries were built by merchants fearing that they would spend eternity in purgatory or hell for ruthless acts of usury.

Lee writes in an engaging style as he takes the reader on tours of breathtaking crimes and atrocities, followed by commissions to Raphael or Fra Lippi that were intended as atonement for the crimes. Even readers who are not convinced that the public has a sanitized view of Renaissance Italy can learn much from this fascinating book.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By James Norwood on November 27, 2014

Format: Hardcover

Drawing on the title of an iconic Clint Eastwood film, scholar Christopher Lee writes the following about the era of the Renaissance: "The story is much like a good old shoot-`em-up Western, except that the good aren't so great, the bad are a lot worse, and the ugly really, really like art." (p. 205) The author follows the path set forth by Swiss scholar Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) to examine the Renaissance as one of the acmes of civilization, but also one that deserves an asterisk for its darker side.

One of the strengths of "The Ugly Renaissance--Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty" is the depth analysis provided by Mr. Lee. The author skillfully probes beneath the surface to uncover a complete picture of life in Renaissance Italy. Far from a one-dimensional book about the seamier side of life, "The Ugly Renaissance" features an extensive spread of illustrations and detailed discussions of great works of Italian art. By the book's conclusion, it is clear that the author genuinely believes that the Renaissance bequeathed an incandescent legacy of high culture.

Mr. Lee raises a valid point when he asserts that the seamier side of the Renaissance has often been ignored by historians. In Kenneth Clark's book and television series "Civilisation," the court of Urbino is described as the most civilized place on the planet in the fifteenth century. But Lord Clark fails to mention the sordid background of Urbino's condottiere despot, Federico da Montefeltro. By contrast, Mr. Lee describes Federico as "among the most underhanded, backstabbing men of the age. Though charming to a fault, he lived and breathed treachery and never seems to have thought twice about spying, poisoning, and murder." (p.Read more ›

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See all 52 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Revisionist Ugly?

This is not a terrible book by any means, and the reader understands very quickly that instead of "The Renaissance" the author is discussing only the renaissance in the... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Autodidact

darker side of the renaissance revealed

very informative, interesting and needed for class assignment, this book was what I was looking for.

Published 6 months ago by Amazon Customer

Very disappointing

The author starts off with an interesting premiss: that most histories of the Italian Renaissance concerned with the marvelous art of the period tend to white-wash the ugly social... Read more

Published 7 months ago by A reader

Three Stars

Ok but not great

Published 8 months ago by Rodman D Cart

One Star

Not at all what I expected.

Published 8 months ago by Karen Madej

The Seedier Side of the Renaissance

Alexander Lee's _the Ugly Renaissance_ is really three shorter books threaded together. The first begins with a discussion of Michaelangelo's early career: his rough-and tumble... Read more

Published 8 months ago by doc peterson

Overburdened with distracting style

Although Mr. Lee's book is filled with interesting information it is marred, in my opinion by trying to be overly chatty interspersed with lists of characters which becomes mind... Read more

Published 9 months ago by Marvin A. Rose

lifeless boring book with the material he had to work with

I don't know how the author managed to write such a dry, lifeless boring book with the material he had to work with. Read more

Published 9 months ago by zendawg

Good but not great.

Readable but promised more than it delivered.

Published 9 months ago by Mark

A great read

I am SO glad I bought this book. I enjoyed it hugely. It is a great read and I learnt something new on almost every page. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Andrew Fletcher

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more