Folio Society Published Works Number 3275
Hibbert, Christopher - The House of Borgia
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Hibbert, Christopher - The House of Borgia (Published in by The Folio Society in 2017. Bound in blocked cloth with a blocked spine label. Set in Centaur with Arabesque ornaments. 280 pages. 24 pages of colour plates. 2 maps. Printed endpapers. Gilded top of page edges. Slipcase. 9" x 6.75". Nepotism, murder and debauchery abound in this gripping portrait of a family that bribed their way to power in Renaissance Italy. The first illustrated edition, this is designed in series with Hibbert's The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici. Greedy, lascivious and unashamedly corrupt, the Borgia name has come to define the politics of Renaissance Italy. Christopher Hibbert's thrilling history, published here in series with The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, records their violent and dissolute rule. This edition boasts 24 pages of colour plates, including portraits of the ambitious Pope Alexander VI and his daughter, Lucrezia, famed for her beauty and her ill-fated husbands. At the head of the family sat Rodrigo Borgia, who was crowned pope in 1492 (thanks to a series of generous bribes) and proceeded to indulge in nepotism, simony and lechery. His cruel son Cesare became a cardinal as 'a mere boy' and papal legate at 21, and inspired Machiavelli's The Prince with his political manoeuvres. Haughty Juan, a year younger, 'could be seen swaggering about Rome in gorgeous attire' before his corpse was pulled from the Tiber in 1497 (his untimely death often attributed to Cesare). Their sister Lucrezia, whose closeness to her male relatives inspired many a lurid rumour, grew up to be an intelligent, music-loving femme fatale, both admired and vilified in equal measure. )
