Piero de Medici and the Crisis of Renaissance Italy

"This biography brings to life an important but little known Renaissance figure and also fills a gap in the history of Florence and Italy after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico in 1492. As Lorenzo's eldest son, Piero enjoyed two years in power as Florence's unofficial ruler before the French invasion of 1494 brought down his regime and led to his nine-year exile. Although condemned as a tyrant and criticized for his princely behaviour as an Orsini, his life and letters reveal an interesting but divided personality: clever and cultured as a scholar, confidant as a patron and sportsman, but diffident as a city-politician and often cowardly in times of crisis. He provides a valuable lens through which to view many aspects of Renaissance society - its social life and marriage rituals, its art, music and cultural patronage, its sports - and especially its politics. As well as shedding new light on his father's double politics, which Piero continued, his life suggests how in less fraught times he might have provided Florence's expanding state with the new sort of leader it needed, more of a patron and mediator than a city politician or prince"--