The life and times of Catherine de' Medici--the most powerful woman in sixteenth-century Europe--as seen through her often controversial role in religion and the arts.

During an age of heightened religious conflict, Catherine de' Medici lived her life at the center of sixteenth-century European and French politics. Daughter of Lorenzo II, the Medici ruler of Florence--and then wedded to a French prince by papal decree at the age of fourteen--Catherine first became queen consort of France and then mother to three French kings (Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III) who reigned in an era of almost continuous civil and religious strife.

A lavish promoter of the arts, Catherine patronized poets, painters, and sculptors; lavished ruinous sums on the building and embellishment of monuments and palaces; and masterminded spectacular entertainments and tournaments that prefigure the splendor and ritual of the court of Versailles.

Catherine maintained eighty ladies-in-waiting at court; it was rumored she used these women as bait to seduce courtiers for her political ends. Her admiration for the seer Nostradamus fueled claims of her love for the occult and the dark arts. Posterity has condemned her as the epitome of the scheming royal matriarch, her reputation tainted forever by her role in instigating the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants in 1572.

Catherine de' Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen is Mary Hollingsworth's evocative, authoritative biography of the most extraordiary woman of the sixteenth-century.

A fresh, revelatory, and shockingly revisionist narrative of the rise and fall of the House of Medici, by the acclaimed author of The Cardinal's Hat and The Borgias.

Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the fifteenth century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Among their number were no fewer than three popes and a powerful and influential queen of France. Their influence brought about an explosion of Florentine art and architecture. Michelangelo, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Leonardo were among the artists with whom they were socialized and patronized.

Thus runs the accepted view of the Medici. However, Mary Hollingsworth argues that the idea that the Medici were enlightened rulers of the Renaissance is a fiction that has now acquired the status of historical fact. In truth, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias-tyrants loathed in the city they illegally made their own. In this dynamic new history, Hollingsworth argues that past narratives have focused on a sanitized and fictitious view of the Medici-wise rulers, enlightened patrons of the arts, and fathers of the Renaissance-but that in fact their past was reinvented in the sixteenth century, mythologized by later generations of Medici who used this as a central prop for their legacy.

Hollingsworth's revelatory re-telling of the story of the family Medici brings a fresh and exhilarating new perspective to the story behind the most powerful family of the Italian Renaissance.

Real-life stories often inspire those who listen; serving as timeless models of truth. With Fireside Stories, author Mary Hollingsworth has compiled such anecdotes-heartwarming stories that share the personal experiences of both classic and contemporary Christian authors, as well as those of everyday people. Humorous and challenging, these stories will instruct and encourage readers for years to come.

'In a subject of this magnitude, the author's coverage is impeccable ... Patronage in Renaissance Italy is an absolute must.' - The Art Book

A perfect read for art historians and their students and for lovers of Renaissance art and civilization.

In this first comprehensive study of patrons in the Italian quattrocento, Mary Hollingsworth shows how the patron - rather than the artist - carefully controlled both subject and medium in artistic creation.

In a competitive and violent age, she explains, image and ostentation were essential statements of the patron's power. As a result, perceived cost became more important than artistic quality (and buildings, bronze, or tapestry were considered more eloquent statements than cheaper marble or fresco).

Since Christian teaching frowned on wealth and power, money also had to be spent on religious endowments made in expiation. But here too the patron was in control, and used the arts and other means to express religious belief, not aesthetic sensibility. Artists in the early Renaissance were employed as craftsmen, Hollingsworth concludes, and only late in the century did their relations with patrons start to adopt a pattern we might recognize today.

Praise for Mary Hollingsworth:

'Many readers, specialists and non-specialists alike, will welcome this book as a reliable and straightforward introduction to an important and interesting subject' - Literary Review

'She writes authoritatively, drawing on a vast store of knowledge' - Frances Spalding, The Sunday Times

'A thorough, readable and skilfully crafted survey' - Burlington Magazine

'This book will be of interest to anyone who looks at art in fifteenth-century Italy [and] will be particularly salutary for anyone who teaches or studies art history.' - Apollo

Mary Hollingsworth is an academic and an expert in Renaissance art and architecture. Her published works include The Medici, The Borgias, and The Cardinal's Hat.

A vivid history of the lives and times of the aristocratic elite whose patronage created the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was an era of dramatic political, religious, and cultural change in the Italian peninsula, witnessing major innovations in the visual arts, literature, music, and science.

Princes of the Renaissance charts these developments in a sequence of eleven chapters, each of which is devoted to two or three princely characters with a cast of minor ones--from Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, to Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence, and from Isabella d'Este of Mantua to Lucrezia Borgia. Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held Renaissance society together--but whose tensions could spark feuds that threatened to tear it apart.

A vivid depiction of the lives and times of the aristocratic elite whose patronage created the art and architecture of the Renaissance, Princes of the Renaissance is a narrative that is as rigorous and definitively researched as it is accessible and entertaining. Perhaps most importantly, Mary Hollingsworth sets the aesthetic achievements of these aristocratic patrons in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of an age of change and innovation.

Intrigue, double-dealing and conspiracy in the Eternal City.
'A fascinating narrative of the intermingling of secular and religious power' New Statesman

'A highly enjoyable and thrilling read... Hollingsworth has peeled back the veil of secrecy surrounding papal conclaves' History Today

'Full of lively detail and colour' Literary Review

August 1559. As the long hot Italian summer draws to its close, so does the life of a rigidly orthodox and profoundly unpopular pope. The papacy of Paul IV has seen the establishing of the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books, an unbending refusal to open dialogue with Protestants, and the ghettoization of Rome's Jews. On 5 September 1559, as the great doors of the Vatican's Sala Regia are ceremonially locked, the future of the Catholic Church hangs in the balance.

Mary Hollingsworth offers a compelling and sedulously crafted reconstruction of the longest and most taxing of sixteenth-century papal elections. Its crisscrossing fault lines divided not only moderates from conservatives, but also the adherents of three national 'factions' with mutually incompatible interests. France and Spain were both looking to extend their power in Italy and beyond and had very different ideas of who the new pope should be - as did the Italian cardinals. Drawing on the detailed account books left by Ippolito d'Este, one of the participating cardinals, Conclave 1559 provides remarkable insights into the daily lives and concerns of the forty-seven men locked up for some four months in the Vatican.

Another devotional from the best-selling One Year line, The One Year Devotional of Joy and Laughter is specifically designed to brighten your day with laughter and joy. Joy is a special type of happiness. Each one of us needs to and should create habits in our lives that encourage us to look on the bright side of our circumstances and see the goodness in what God has given us. This devotional is a daily joy break--something all of us need.

A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal is the first comprehensive overview of its subject in English or any language. Cardinals are best known as the pope's electors, but in the centuries from 1400 to 1800 they were so much more: pastors, inquisitors, diplomats, bureaucrats, statesmen, saints; entrepreneurs and investors; patrons of the arts, of music, literature, and science. Thirty-five essays explain their social background, positions and roles in Rome and beyond, and what they meant for wider society. This volume shows the impact which those men who took up the purple had in their respective fields and how their tenure of office shaped the entangled histories of Rome and the Catholic Church from a European and global perspective.

Timeless tales of inspiration, drawn from author Mary Hollingsworth's personal experiences, as well as the writings of other Christian authors -- both classic and contemporary -- and from the lives of everyday, ordinary Christians. These real-life accounts of faith, hope, and love will inspire and challenge readers long after the firelight fades.

Cardinals occupied a unique place in the world of early modern Europe, their distinctive red hats the visible signs not only of impressive careers at the highest rank the pope could bestow, but also of their high social status and political influence on an international scale. Appointed for life, these princes of the Church played a key role in the dramatic events of a period in which both the power and the authority of the papacy were challenged.

Cardinals crossed the ambiguous boundaries then existing between religious and secular power. Granted unparalleled access to Church and private property, they spent considerable time, money, and effort on making the best collections of art and antiquities. Some commissioned artworks in churches that advertised their monastic or national connections, while others took Rome and the papacy abroad to enrich their own cities and countries. But theirs was a precarious dignity: while cardinals could thrive during one papacy, they could suddenly fall from power during the next. The new research represented by the sixteen case studies in The Possessions of a Cardinal reveals how cardinals used their vulnerable position and spent their often substantial wealth on personal and religious interests. As a result, the tensions inherent in their position between the spiritual and the worldly are underscored.