Lorenzo Da Ponte

escape the dark and desolate world of the Middle Ages to enter a society that illustrates the wonders and possibilities of humankind. One of the major cities in the creation of the Renaissance is Florence where influential people such as as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Dante gained inspiration from. However, many scholars have wondered how this one city was able to assumption what hundreds of societies have failed to accomplish during the Middle Ages. The energy per capita in Florence…

History of Dolce & Gabbana Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are two Italian born artist that begin the Dolce & Gabbana empire we know today. Through groundbreaking achievements and outwardly approach to the taboos of society, these two men established what sex, glam and fashion had in common, the people. In the early 1980s two colleagues turned partners created a brand that represented their lifestyles while including and rooting for the outcasts of society. The two men worked with one…

Background Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli or Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy 3rd May 1469 during Renaissance. He was known as Italian or Florentine historian, politician, diplomat, and philosopher. In 1494, there’s one well-known political family in Italy called Medici family—already ruled Florence for 40 years, which removed temporarily from power. Thus, Florence was under control by Girolamo Savonarola a Dominican monk who obsessed to transform Florence into a “Christian…

Describe Machiavelli’s life and the political climate in Italy while this book was being written. Machiavelli was a bureaucrat under the Republican government before he lost his job to the supporters of Medici during 1512. At the end of 1513 or even the early 1514, the time period when Nicolo Machiavelli, wrote The Prince. During that time period, Machiavelli was seeking to regain his status in the Florentine government. Meanwhile, the Medici family had been driven from power in Florentine.…

ulterior motives for their alliance - Francis wanted the Papal authority backing his claims for Milan and Naples, and Giovanni wanted one of the two continental super powers on his side during the battle for supremacy between France and Spain. When Lorenzo and Madeleine died, both Francis and Giovanni were worried that their relationship might fall apart with only a little girl left as their hope for an alliance. This mentality set the stage for what would become a series of chess-like moves,…

because he was considered an enemy of the Medici. This was unfair to Machiavelli, which later brought him with the idea of being an effective leader. Machiavelli was imprisoned and tortured but later was allowed to leave Florence when Giovanni, Lorenzo dé Medici’s son, was elected Pope Leo X in 1513 since the Medici family significantly impacted Italy. He spent the next fifteen years…

To understand the concept of foreign exchange trade better, an example of a typical business between the Florence branch and the London branch of the Medici Bank would be helpful. “A merchant would borrow 1000 florins (Florence’s currency) from Giovanni’s Florentine branch where the exchange rate is 40 pence (England’s currency) per florin. With that money, the merchant buys goods in Italy that he knows are in high demand in London. Upon arriving in London, he sells his goods and receives…

There was a wise man who once said, do it with passion or not at all, because anything worth acting upon will ignite a spark within that is so insatiable that one cannot help but burn with the desire to do it. Passion can be defined as desire, and almost necessity, for something, whether it be love, happiness, work, or life in general. It is in the beginning of Irving Stone’s The Agony and The Ecstasy that we learn what could essentially be Michelangelo’s most defining trait; he is passionate.…

Giambattista Bodoni (b. 1740-1813, Saluzzo Piedmont, Italy) was an Italian printer and a designer of typefaces still used today. He was a third generation printmaker who modeled his type designs after Pierre Simon Fournier, "...but later felt inspired by the typography of John Baskerville" (Famous Graphic Designers). He was at the front of industrialized print making. The Bodoni typeface, according to Bodoni: The History of Being Awesome, is, "...an easily recognizable Romantic typeface with a…

The European Renaissance and Reformation was a pivotal time in history; numerous artists and thinkers from that time had created a new set of ideals that shaped the works of playwrights and poets. The new set of ideals were created by Humanist philosophers and were vastly different from the Medieval and Deterministic ideals that were previously popular. Medieval and Deterministic ideals coincided with the ideas that man was the scum of the Earth and that man would never amount to anything. Man…