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The Artist, the Philosopher and the Warrior
In the autumn of 1502 three giants of the Renaissance period - Cesare Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli - set out on one of the most treacherous military campaigns of the period. Cesare Borgia was a ferocious military leader whose name was synonymous with brutality and whose reputation was marred with the suspicion of incest. Niccolò Machiavelli was a witty and subversive intellectual, more suited to the silken diplomacy of royal courts than the sodden encampments of a military campaign. And Leonardo da Vinci was a visionary master and the most talented military engineer in Italy. What led him to work for the monstrous Borgia? And what attracted him to the cunning Machiavelli?
In his extraordinary new book acclaimed historian Paul Strathern ingeniously focuses on this improbable collusion of three iconic figures of the Italian Renaissance to unite three mighty strands of the period - war, politics and art. As each man's life unfolds, so does the Italian Renaissance.
In his extraordinary new book acclaimed historian Paul Strathern ingeniously focuses on this improbable collusion of three iconic figures of the Italian Renaissance to unite three mighty strands of the period - war, politics and art. As each man's life unfolds, so does the Italian Renaissance.
456 pages, Paperback
First published February 5, 2009
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3787 people want to read
About the author
Paul Strathern
160 books542 followersPaul Strathern (born 1940) is a English writer and academic. He was born in London, and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, after which he served in the Merchant Navy over a period of two years. He then lived on a Greek island. In 1966 he travelled overland to India and the Himalayas. His novel A Season in Abyssinia won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1972.
Besides five novels, he has also written numerous books on science, philosophy, history, literature, medicine and economics.
Besides five novels, he has also written numerous books on science, philosophy, history, literature, medicine and economics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 157 reviews
July 7, 2018
The title of this book is somewhat off-putting. I would have preferred if the author, or the editor, had chosen the names of the three personalities with which he engages himself in this book: Leonardo da Vinci, NIccolò Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia. For these three figures were so complex that none of the three appellatives conjures them up properly.
The title then had put me on guard. The book has surprised me for the better.
The book starts in June 1502 when Cesare Borgia swept through and conquered the northern section of central Italy - the Romagna (from Bologna to Ancona). This raid also put Florence in jeopardy, since they could see themselves as next in the territorial ambitions of young Cesare (then aged 27). So Machiavelli, aged 33, and another negotiator (Francesco Soderini) were despatched by the Republic to try and negotiate with Cesare. During these negotiations a pawn was offered: the unemployed and eccentric Leonardo, who was already 50, would be assigned to Cesare to assist him in his military engineering requirements.
The book examines, closely, the association or collusion or collaboration of these three extraordinary men during a few months of 1502 - in the Romagna (particularly: Bologna, Urbino, Pesaro, Forlì, Cesena, Imola and Senigallia). Strathern does step back to give us an account of what these three men were carrying on their shoulders and what kept the light in their imaginations before this historic encounter. He also traces how they later followed their own paths - and as life is a path-dependent phenomenon - how the time together disposed their later lives.
Certainly a fascinating read.
The driver of this historical episode is certainly Cesare and for me he became the most interesting character. That such a young person could baffle the astute Machiavelli (and most political figures of Italy at the time), and command the inquiring mind of Leonardo, is an affair that cannot leave any reader indifferent, no matter how revulsive Cesare's foul reputation may also seem. Granted, Cesare's success was the result of his being a son of Pope Alexander VI's, and in this book I came to see the father-and-son-tandem as the very effective combination of a strategist and a tactician. But on several occasions it was Cesare's own abilities that managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat surprising even his sly father.
And even if Cesare lost his luck once his father died, his real fall is understood not just as the result of having lost a major political support, but rather as the outcome of a single mistake precisely in that in which he was so able - to trick others. As Strathern contends, Cesare's successes in his military and political exploits were the result less of his strictly military valour and more in his ability in treachery. For it was treachery what caught him.
Machiavelli's personality emerges gradually, but Strathern succeeds less well in portraying a three dimensional figure. Machiavelli often seems just an observer who draws his conclusions from the mirrored image of Cesare so that only on certain sections does he emerge as more than a shadow figure or an amanuensis. Since I read The Prince a while ago, I would have to revisit the work - but my memory had kept an image of a political analyst who scrutinized not just Cesare but other political players of the time - such as Emperor Maximilian, the two French Kings (Charles VIII and Louis XII), the Della Rovere Pope, and the King of Aragón, Ferdinand. But Strathern strives to present Machiavelli as a parallel to Leonardo and conceives of both as scientists. One was studying the political phenomena and the behaviour of politicians with the aim of drawing laws that regulated politics and human behaviour.
Leonardo, who seemed the weakest character in this account, is rendered then as what we all know - as a sort of Aristotelian scientist who studied the natural world and who sought to expand human potential through Tekné. And this leads to what was the most fascinating aspect of Strathern's presentation of Leonardo, an aspect that I have been suspecting was the one most valued by his contemporaries, and the one that Leonardo himself always sought to bring forward. Leonardo was valuable to his times as a military engineer. His ingenious weapons - "exploding cannonballs, scuttling tanks spitting fire....", as well as improvements on the defence mechanisms for the fortresses and bastions, where what made him irreplaceable at crucial moments. Of course this impression of Leonardo the maker of machines, the Tekné, to kill fast and efficiently does not marry well with the painter of the Mona Lisa that we revere. The sensitive, creative, subtle, original and 'artistic' sides of him were also there and although he painted throughout his life, he may have sought to take refuge in these sweeter activities after the period of service under both the Milan Sforzas and the Borgias. We would like to think that Leonardo's witnessing the carnage perpetrated at Senigallia by Cesare's unruly troops was the final straw, or bullet, for him - by then an ageing genius. But this may be us projecting the nature of a pacifist onto the Leonardo we want to love.
The book is loaded with information. It may require a second reading after I have learnt more about these three figures from other accounts.
October 11, 2025
The Artist, the Philosopher & the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of Da Vinci, Machiavelli & Borgia and the World They Shaped by Paul Strathern represents a non-fiction book that is more interesting conceptually than when actually read. The premise of Strathern's book is that Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli & Cesare Borgia all represented "denials of the spiritual outlook of the preceding medieval era, yet each would in their separate ways, become emblematic of an eternal aspect of the human spirit--the artist, the philosopher & the warrior."
While the book proceeds to treat each of these three Renaissance figures independently, the focus is on their intersections with each other at a time when the various city states vied with each other for dominance, aided by military regiments of Spain, France and the Papacy, among other forces.
The book does an excellent job of positioning the regional powers or Italian city states (including Venice, Florence, Rome) that each acted as separate kingdoms with shifting mercenary support and often contrasting ideologies. Previously, I had no inkling that there was an attempt by the Papal State to become both an overarching spiritual as well as a military/territorial power in the 16th Century, with the Medicis, Orsinis and Borgias all attempting to expand their footholds in Italy.
Unification of what became Italy, rather than competing provincial or regional states, did not come until much later, around 1860. What the author illuminates is that Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli & Cesare Borgia all were classically educated and each sought to impose a much more scientific approach to their respective disciplines--art, political strategy and military warfare respectively.
In my opinion, there are just far too many unnecessary & minute details cluttering the story line in Strathern's book, references to things & people that had no real bearing on the trio the author was most keen to represent. One example is that da Vinci worked on a mathematical puzzle ("squaring the circle") that ultimately was judged to have no solution but with great detail included about the mathematics involved, perhaps because it interested the author who has some training in Math.
Beyond that, the context of these three memorable figures interacting with each other is often built on supposition rather than historical facts, blurring the line between non-fiction & what is labelled "historical fiction". As an example, Strathern at one point contends that da Vinci & Machiavelli may have met & exchanged all manner of thoughts on a certain date because each was in the general vicinity of the other, with the actual documentation perhaps being contained in a "missing notebook" da Vinci had kept but which disappeared at some point late in his life or just after his death & which was never again located.
Anyone in search of material on "bad popes" will find it aplenty in this book and it is indeed staggering to learn that Pope Alexander VI (a Borgia) and Pope Julius II seemed to be more involved in expanding their bank accounts by selling newly minted positions as cardinals and throwing lavish & carnal parties than in any sort of religious leadership. No wonder Luther rebelled when he visited Rome, having previously had no imagination of these papal excesses. Pope Alex & others had mistresses and generated various offspring along the way and this apparently was not a matter for concern as the position of pope seemed more about expanding territory than in adding a spiritual dimension to the lives of those within the papal realm.
One learns that Leonardo da Vinci seldom completed a commission he was given, his mind drifting constantly to new areas of science (including a prototype submarine), map making, armaments (for Borgia's forces) and art, as time allowed. He had amazing powers of imagination & was a vegetarian when few were. While respectful of classical authors, both Leonardo & Machiavelli were "believers in learning from experience rather than accepting the pronouncements of some ancient authority: they adhered to what we would call scientific method."
Machiavelli was a canny survivor and did not have his major work, The Prince published until after his death & at a time when he was long out of favor with prevailing forces. In fact, Machiavelli has been presented as someone whose thoughts are a "handbook for dictators" when in fact, he borrowed heavily from Greek & Roman philosophy & ethical systems. Later, he wrote The Discourses which actually was a refinement if not a repudiation of much of his initial "ends justifies the means" approach to diplomacy & political strategy. When asked about a potential afterlife, Machiavelli replied:
I sense that the manuscript called for tighter editing which the author may have declined but 100 or more pages could easily have been excised without the story suffering for the editorial cuts. That said, The Artist, the Philosopher & the Warrior does fill in many gaps about the warring Italian city-states and the 3 main characters whose lives are detailed within the book but it is a long & difficult path to follow in order to gain a better sense of life in the initial decades of the 16th Century in Italy.
*There are numerous black & white sketches & multiple color plates included within the book. (I rate this book at 3.5, which rounds off to 4.) **The first photo image within my review is of the author, Paul Strathern & the 2nd is an assemblage of the 3 figures Strathern illuminates in the book.
While the book proceeds to treat each of these three Renaissance figures independently, the focus is on their intersections with each other at a time when the various city states vied with each other for dominance, aided by military regiments of Spain, France and the Papacy, among other forces.
The book does an excellent job of positioning the regional powers or Italian city states (including Venice, Florence, Rome) that each acted as separate kingdoms with shifting mercenary support and often contrasting ideologies. Previously, I had no inkling that there was an attempt by the Papal State to become both an overarching spiritual as well as a military/territorial power in the 16th Century, with the Medicis, Orsinis and Borgias all attempting to expand their footholds in Italy.
Unification of what became Italy, rather than competing provincial or regional states, did not come until much later, around 1860. What the author illuminates is that Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli & Cesare Borgia all were classically educated and each sought to impose a much more scientific approach to their respective disciplines--art, political strategy and military warfare respectively.
In my opinion, there are just far too many unnecessary & minute details cluttering the story line in Strathern's book, references to things & people that had no real bearing on the trio the author was most keen to represent. One example is that da Vinci worked on a mathematical puzzle ("squaring the circle") that ultimately was judged to have no solution but with great detail included about the mathematics involved, perhaps because it interested the author who has some training in Math.
Beyond that, the context of these three memorable figures interacting with each other is often built on supposition rather than historical facts, blurring the line between non-fiction & what is labelled "historical fiction". As an example, Strathern at one point contends that da Vinci & Machiavelli may have met & exchanged all manner of thoughts on a certain date because each was in the general vicinity of the other, with the actual documentation perhaps being contained in a "missing notebook" da Vinci had kept but which disappeared at some point late in his life or just after his death & which was never again located.
Anyone in search of material on "bad popes" will find it aplenty in this book and it is indeed staggering to learn that Pope Alexander VI (a Borgia) and Pope Julius II seemed to be more involved in expanding their bank accounts by selling newly minted positions as cardinals and throwing lavish & carnal parties than in any sort of religious leadership. No wonder Luther rebelled when he visited Rome, having previously had no imagination of these papal excesses. Pope Alex & others had mistresses and generated various offspring along the way and this apparently was not a matter for concern as the position of pope seemed more about expanding territory than in adding a spiritual dimension to the lives of those within the papal realm.
One learns that Leonardo da Vinci seldom completed a commission he was given, his mind drifting constantly to new areas of science (including a prototype submarine), map making, armaments (for Borgia's forces) and art, as time allowed. He had amazing powers of imagination & was a vegetarian when few were. While respectful of classical authors, both Leonardo & Machiavelli were "believers in learning from experience rather than accepting the pronouncements of some ancient authority: they adhered to what we would call scientific method."
Machiavelli was a canny survivor and did not have his major work, The Prince published until after his death & at a time when he was long out of favor with prevailing forces. In fact, Machiavelli has been presented as someone whose thoughts are a "handbook for dictators" when in fact, he borrowed heavily from Greek & Roman philosophy & ethical systems. Later, he wrote The Discourses which actually was a refinement if not a repudiation of much of his initial "ends justifies the means" approach to diplomacy & political strategy. When asked about a potential afterlife, Machiavelli replied:
I would rather be in hell & converse with great minds upon state questions than live in paradise with the rabble I saw just now....for in the latter, one would meet no one but wretched monks & apostles, whereas in hell, one would be in the company of cardinals, popes, princes & kings.Finally, Cesare Borgia, who greatly influenced Machiavelli, was a ruthless thug, often wearing a mask to hide fast-encroaching syphilis scars on his face and he ultimately died a vicious death in his early 30s as his power & prestige waned and new forces took control of his former dominions.
I sense that the manuscript called for tighter editing which the author may have declined but 100 or more pages could easily have been excised without the story suffering for the editorial cuts. That said, The Artist, the Philosopher & the Warrior does fill in many gaps about the warring Italian city-states and the 3 main characters whose lives are detailed within the book but it is a long & difficult path to follow in order to gain a better sense of life in the initial decades of the 16th Century in Italy.
*There are numerous black & white sketches & multiple color plates included within the book. (I rate this book at 3.5, which rounds off to 4.) **The first photo image within my review is of the author, Paul Strathern & the 2nd is an assemblage of the 3 figures Strathern illuminates in the book.
January 5, 2011
The idea of this book is both excellent and intriguing, but the excecution is poor. A study of three very different men who bestride history and most fortuitiously lived at the same time and shared many experiences which deeply influenced the Renaissance and our modern world should produce some insight into the soul of the Renaissance, or at least the souls of these men who are Renaissance Men writ large. This book fails to produce this insight, primarily due to the ideas of Freudian psychology and continental philosophy which have obviously shaped Stathern's mind and are evident on most of his pages.
March 24, 2022
Leonardo da Vinci and Machiavelli are two Renaissance figures who have earned immortal fame, Leonardo for his fantastical notebooks, artistic masterpieces and proto-scientific approach to the natural world, Machiavelli for his foundational text on the cynicism of realistic politics with The Prince. Cesare Borgia is the most colorful member of the extremely colorful Borgia clan, notorious as the worst thing that ever happened to Catholicism. And for a few key months in 1502, they were in the same place, influencing each other as the world lurched from Medieval superstition to modern clarity.
Strathern spins a fascinating study of these three characters, but one which dissipates in the gaps in his sources. Much of the meat of the story is Borgia's critical 1502 campaign to secure his rule of Romagna as the first step towards a united Italy under Borgia rule. In this case, Borgia outmaneuvered a conspiracy against him, winning a war with treachery and boldness against his dithering and divided enemies.
The second viewpoint is Leonardo da Vinci, a bastard son raised in the rural hinterlands of Florence, who by sheer talent became one of the major artists and engineers of the age. In 1502, Leonardo was a military engineer working for Borgia, creating maps, updating fortresses, and building diabolical engines of destruction. While Leonardo had always had pacifists impulses, he was fascinated by tempests and engines of destruction. Strathern claims that seeing the aftermath of battles and sacked towns traumatized Leonardo, turning him from war, and likely also exacerbated the psychological block that prevented him from finishing his masterpieces or organizing his notebooks.
The third viewpoint is Machiavelli, who was a hard-travelling Florentine envoy posted to the Borgia court, to keep an eye on one of the many titans which threatened to crush his beloved city. Machiavelli is the most normal of the viewpoints, a civil servant who loves gossip and a bawdy joke with his drinking buddies, as contrasted against the genius of Leonardo and the overweening ambition of Borgia.
After 1502, their paths diverged. But Borgia's boldness and fortune did not long survive his father, Pope Alexander VI (and yeah, Popes should not have children, which is about the least scandalous thing about the Borgias), who'd been the strategic force behind Cesare's tactics. Imprisoned by his enemies, stripped of his riches and titles, and eventually exiled to Navarre, Cesare died in a pointless skirmish, a failure.
Leonardo's artistic block got worse and worse, but he found a comfortable retirement with the French and eventually painted the Mona Lisa. His unpublished notebooks are full of wonderous fragments of genius, though the scientific revolution would wait for a century after his death.
Machiavelli suffered the hardest fall. He'd been a major booster of Leonardo's in Florence, and his reputation was damaged when two of Leonardo's projects, an immense fresco and a plan to divert a river in the war against Pisa, came to nothing. Worse, the Medicis overthrew his republic and he lost his office. He wrote The Prince to try and curry favor with the Medicis, but the infamous manuscript doomed his chances when the Medici left power.
This book is often fascinating and plausible, and while there's frustratingly little hard proof of key elements, particularly of a friendship between Leonardo and Machiavelli, it's not like there lots of clever Florentines hanging around Borgia in 1502.
Strathern spins a fascinating study of these three characters, but one which dissipates in the gaps in his sources. Much of the meat of the story is Borgia's critical 1502 campaign to secure his rule of Romagna as the first step towards a united Italy under Borgia rule. In this case, Borgia outmaneuvered a conspiracy against him, winning a war with treachery and boldness against his dithering and divided enemies.
The second viewpoint is Leonardo da Vinci, a bastard son raised in the rural hinterlands of Florence, who by sheer talent became one of the major artists and engineers of the age. In 1502, Leonardo was a military engineer working for Borgia, creating maps, updating fortresses, and building diabolical engines of destruction. While Leonardo had always had pacifists impulses, he was fascinated by tempests and engines of destruction. Strathern claims that seeing the aftermath of battles and sacked towns traumatized Leonardo, turning him from war, and likely also exacerbated the psychological block that prevented him from finishing his masterpieces or organizing his notebooks.
The third viewpoint is Machiavelli, who was a hard-travelling Florentine envoy posted to the Borgia court, to keep an eye on one of the many titans which threatened to crush his beloved city. Machiavelli is the most normal of the viewpoints, a civil servant who loves gossip and a bawdy joke with his drinking buddies, as contrasted against the genius of Leonardo and the overweening ambition of Borgia.
After 1502, their paths diverged. But Borgia's boldness and fortune did not long survive his father, Pope Alexander VI (and yeah, Popes should not have children, which is about the least scandalous thing about the Borgias), who'd been the strategic force behind Cesare's tactics. Imprisoned by his enemies, stripped of his riches and titles, and eventually exiled to Navarre, Cesare died in a pointless skirmish, a failure.
Leonardo's artistic block got worse and worse, but he found a comfortable retirement with the French and eventually painted the Mona Lisa. His unpublished notebooks are full of wonderous fragments of genius, though the scientific revolution would wait for a century after his death.
Machiavelli suffered the hardest fall. He'd been a major booster of Leonardo's in Florence, and his reputation was damaged when two of Leonardo's projects, an immense fresco and a plan to divert a river in the war against Pisa, came to nothing. Worse, the Medicis overthrew his republic and he lost his office. He wrote The Prince to try and curry favor with the Medicis, but the infamous manuscript doomed his chances when the Medici left power.
This book is often fascinating and plausible, and while there's frustratingly little hard proof of key elements, particularly of a friendship between Leonardo and Machiavelli, it's not like there lots of clever Florentines hanging around Borgia in 1502.
June 19, 2017
I'm an eclectic reader, and when I ran across this one being reviewed in the Washington Post, I added it to my list. Turns out that was a good call. Da Vinici, Machiavelli, and Cesare Borgia are names that ring out in history. The fact that they all knew each other intrigued me, so I wanted to see what Strathern had to say.
1500's Italy was not a peaceful place. In fact, there wasn't really an Italy. Different city states vied for power, and "noble" families within them fought each other constantly. Add in the Papacy and it's a recipe for instability. These three different men all took part in the great events of their time, although none of them achieved then the fame they have now.
I knew the least about Borgia, and I found him the least interesting. He was a noble with impulse issues. He had ruthlessness, but he got away with a lot of what he did because his father was influential, later becoming Pope. Machieavelli was an adviser an envoy whose fortunes rose and fell with the people he allied himself to. His masterwork, The Prince, was written when he was essentially unemployed, and it was looked on with horror when it was published. It was far too truthful for the time. Da Vinci was a genius, no one doubts that. But he had his problems. He could have been great in his time, but he had a nearly pathological inability to finish his projects when he started them, earning him the ire of many great families. His brilliant inventions were unknown for so long because, in part, he couldn't get his notes organized. How much would the world have changed if Galileo had access to Da Vinci's notes? That's just one interesting question raised.
This was a good read about Italian history, the chaos around the selection of several Popes, and the three great men named in the title. Recommended for those interested in such histories, or the Renaissance in general.
1500's Italy was not a peaceful place. In fact, there wasn't really an Italy. Different city states vied for power, and "noble" families within them fought each other constantly. Add in the Papacy and it's a recipe for instability. These three different men all took part in the great events of their time, although none of them achieved then the fame they have now.
I knew the least about Borgia, and I found him the least interesting. He was a noble with impulse issues. He had ruthlessness, but he got away with a lot of what he did because his father was influential, later becoming Pope. Machieavelli was an adviser an envoy whose fortunes rose and fell with the people he allied himself to. His masterwork, The Prince, was written when he was essentially unemployed, and it was looked on with horror when it was published. It was far too truthful for the time. Da Vinci was a genius, no one doubts that. But he had his problems. He could have been great in his time, but he had a nearly pathological inability to finish his projects when he started them, earning him the ire of many great families. His brilliant inventions were unknown for so long because, in part, he couldn't get his notes organized. How much would the world have changed if Galileo had access to Da Vinci's notes? That's just one interesting question raised.
This was a good read about Italian history, the chaos around the selection of several Popes, and the three great men named in the title. Recommended for those interested in such histories, or the Renaissance in general.
August 31, 2011
Paul Strathern's, 'The Artist, The Philosopher and the Warrior,' is an engaging account of some of the greatest minds of the renaissance (and arguably, history).
As I had just travelled to Italy and learned for the first time (yes, I'm a bit late to the renaissance party) about characters such as Machiavelli and Borgia, I was really interested in exploring their lives and their personalities. This book also appealed to me because I knew that it's focus on Florence would therefore lead to an exploration of the Medici family and their impact on the three main characters. Although the characters are the main focus, I think it is fair to say that Italy itself takes on a leading role, as the political disputes between Florence, Rome, Venice and Naples (not to mention the French and Spanish) are often important turning points in the characters lives.
I really enjoyed Strathern's exploration of Leonardo Da Vinci as he often showed his fondness for the man through his delicate exploration of his character. Throughout the book, he made sure to include various paintings, sketches and quotes, which was a fantastic aid in following not only the flow of the book but further understanding the psychological state of Leonardo through his work. While some assumptions made by Strathern seem a bit of a leap, especially considering the limited resources he would have had to have worked with, I believe that any reader of this book can separate fact from assumption and enjoy Strathern's interpretation of certain events or quotes. It isn't as if he doesn't present a weighted opinion and frequently he doesn't just lay out his own interpretation, but others, which is helpful for making up an individualistic idea of events.
I also enjoyed his exploration of Machiavelli and Borgia who, as men who are usually represented as quite wicked, were really explained in ways that could give a logical understanding for their actions. For example, most of the book with Machiavelli's character is merely a crescendo for The Prince and a hinted exploration of why Machiavelli came to write what he did in that book. While Strathern did admit the likelihood of the Borgia's not engaging in incest, he at least presented information for both sides of the argument and left the decision up to the readers. At the end of the book and the character's inevitable death, it was quite sad to read their ends, which is a testament to how personal Strathern made them to the reader.
However, I did notice some things that could be improved. It's difficult to weave three main characters into one book and while Strathern did it admirably, it was still slightly confusing at times. For example, if he was focusing on one character, it was often confusing to understand where the other characters were at the same point as the next chapter might leap through time or back into it. Strathern has also created a bit of a mixed book, with focuses on not just the personal sides of the characters but the political spectrums of Italy. While this is necessary to understand their lives, I believe that their should have been more of an emphasis on one approach. If he wanted to explore the characters, I think he probably should have done that with as little politics as possible. As he did go very in depth with politics, it sometimes seemed forced and unnecessary, sometimes a bit difficult to get through. I've read some of the more difficult books ever published and even at page 200 I was wondering whether it was worth continuing. It certainly was but the emphasis on politics, for a book that most people read to get to the people, was a bit disheartening.
Overall though, I really enjoyed this and I am suggesting it to others a good read. I will definitely look up his other books.
As I had just travelled to Italy and learned for the first time (yes, I'm a bit late to the renaissance party) about characters such as Machiavelli and Borgia, I was really interested in exploring their lives and their personalities. This book also appealed to me because I knew that it's focus on Florence would therefore lead to an exploration of the Medici family and their impact on the three main characters. Although the characters are the main focus, I think it is fair to say that Italy itself takes on a leading role, as the political disputes between Florence, Rome, Venice and Naples (not to mention the French and Spanish) are often important turning points in the characters lives.
I really enjoyed Strathern's exploration of Leonardo Da Vinci as he often showed his fondness for the man through his delicate exploration of his character. Throughout the book, he made sure to include various paintings, sketches and quotes, which was a fantastic aid in following not only the flow of the book but further understanding the psychological state of Leonardo through his work. While some assumptions made by Strathern seem a bit of a leap, especially considering the limited resources he would have had to have worked with, I believe that any reader of this book can separate fact from assumption and enjoy Strathern's interpretation of certain events or quotes. It isn't as if he doesn't present a weighted opinion and frequently he doesn't just lay out his own interpretation, but others, which is helpful for making up an individualistic idea of events.
I also enjoyed his exploration of Machiavelli and Borgia who, as men who are usually represented as quite wicked, were really explained in ways that could give a logical understanding for their actions. For example, most of the book with Machiavelli's character is merely a crescendo for The Prince and a hinted exploration of why Machiavelli came to write what he did in that book. While Strathern did admit the likelihood of the Borgia's not engaging in incest, he at least presented information for both sides of the argument and left the decision up to the readers. At the end of the book and the character's inevitable death, it was quite sad to read their ends, which is a testament to how personal Strathern made them to the reader.
However, I did notice some things that could be improved. It's difficult to weave three main characters into one book and while Strathern did it admirably, it was still slightly confusing at times. For example, if he was focusing on one character, it was often confusing to understand where the other characters were at the same point as the next chapter might leap through time or back into it. Strathern has also created a bit of a mixed book, with focuses on not just the personal sides of the characters but the political spectrums of Italy. While this is necessary to understand their lives, I believe that their should have been more of an emphasis on one approach. If he wanted to explore the characters, I think he probably should have done that with as little politics as possible. As he did go very in depth with politics, it sometimes seemed forced and unnecessary, sometimes a bit difficult to get through. I've read some of the more difficult books ever published and even at page 200 I was wondering whether it was worth continuing. It certainly was but the emphasis on politics, for a book that most people read to get to the people, was a bit disheartening.
Overall though, I really enjoyed this and I am suggesting it to others a good read. I will definitely look up his other books.
December 17, 2010
I had two problems with this book. The first is that the book doesn't quite cohere--it is hard to do group biographies and this one jumps from subject to subject. The second, and sometimes related problem, is the author's tendency to speculate, sometimes without making it clear that that is what he is doing. As I've written before, most histories require an amount of speculation but it must always be limited and explicit. I say this problem is related to the first because he often discusses the subjects' feelings (in general and about each other) though it is clear that he has no basis for it. The people and the time period are interesting anyway but it could have been improved, I think, had he focused just on Borgia (since he takes up the majority of the text) and had excursions into the lives of the other two as they intersected with his.
January 7, 2013
I'm fascinated by the fact that this turbulent, bloody thirty year period in Italy produced so much amazing art that defined the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci, here portrayed as somewhat of a hostage/indentured servant to Borgia, is such an interesting and complex character. He was an early vegetarian (didn't want to hurt animals) but also devised some of the most cunning and effective ways to kill human beings of that era. I guess artists -- and scientists -- have to make their daly bread.
Also a very sympathetic portrait of Machiavelli. I had read "The Prince" when I was in Peace Corps and thought it was pretty brilliant. I'd be interested to read his "Discourses," which give a much more democratic view of government. The Florence he felt was necessary to survive their times vs. Florence as he wanted it to be.
Also a very sympathetic portrait of Machiavelli. I had read "The Prince" when I was in Peace Corps and thought it was pretty brilliant. I'd be interested to read his "Discourses," which give a much more democratic view of government. The Florence he felt was necessary to survive their times vs. Florence as he wanted it to be.
November 11, 2018
This is an interesting analysis of Leonardo Da Vinci, Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia's relationship. It focuses upon the short period when Leonardo was coerced by the Florentine government to work for Borgia as a weapons designer and Machiavelli served as its diplomatic envoy. Strathern provides a detailed and frightening account of Borgia's amoral quest for power and attempts to assess the impact
of this brutal behavior on these two famous eyewitnesses.
The book is well written and researched. I read while travelling through Italy which made it all the more real.
of this brutal behavior on these two famous eyewitnesses.
The book is well written and researched. I read while travelling through Italy which made it all the more real.
February 12, 2013
I am interested to learn more about Leonardo, but halfway into the first chapter I've run into two historical errors, so I have to doubt the accuracy of the rest of the book. The author refers to a wooden conic tank design of Leonardo's that he never built, but it is clearly on display in the Leonardo museum in Florence. Also, the author refers to Leonardo's attention to detail in painting Luke into the Last Supper. Luke was not one of the 12 disciples, and is not in the painting. I doubt I will read much more of this book when its facts can't be trusted.
September 21, 2014
This is a very interesting book looking at the lives of Leonarda Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia and how they intersected.
It's a very interesting book and I learned much about all three men that I had not previously known.
Well written and erudite, the author does repeat himself on a number of occasions, which is slightly annoying. Because we've been told what happened when the spotlight was on Machiavelli doesn't mean we need it repeated when the light switches to Leonardo or Cesare. That is the only this that stops this from being a 5 star read in my book.
It's a very interesting book and I learned much about all three men that I had not previously known.
Well written and erudite, the author does repeat himself on a number of occasions, which is slightly annoying. Because we've been told what happened when the spotlight was on Machiavelli doesn't mean we need it repeated when the light switches to Leonardo or Cesare. That is the only this that stops this from being a 5 star read in my book.
September 2, 2012
This could be interesting: Niccolo Machiavelli, Caesar Borgia and Leonardo daVinci influencing one another in a riveting century I don't know all that much about. It misses the mark, and leaves the impression the brief book was tossed together to make a marketing deadline rather than a consideration of mutual impact. Borgia and Machiavelli both rise out of the pages as -- incomplete. Borgia is at times dashing, at times morally twisted, at times an enlightened conqueror. His death makes a riveting story. The sketch of the man and his life is the most complete of the three, and grounds enough for making the curious want to find other sources.
Machiavelli is portrayed as a keen psychologist, but the argument as to his success (while ti lasted) point largely to the result without much of a glimmer as to the process. He sounds as thought he would make a good and entertaining friend rather than the diabolical manipulator his name has come to represent. I can't recall if Strathern explicitly makes the point that Niccolo reminds us more of a modern man who has a century or so of awareness of social and psychological insight to rely on, rather than predating modern habits by four or five hundred years, but the reader has no trouble reaching that conclusion. But I will have to give Strathern credit for my wanting to know more about the man who thought that there may be rules of behavior based not on what people should do, but what they are likely to do.
Da Vinci's portrait is pure supposition, resting on a feather light armature. I agree with the 3/18/12 review by Superfluous Man that the author offers no basis for his suppositions as to Leonardo's character. Leonardo also comes across as feckless, a mind of genius so distracted by his own thoughts and digressions that he rarely finishes what he starts. It is suggested there is insufficient record of da Vinci to support any sort of reasonable biography and it is certain that this attempt doesn't get very far. Strathern's shot at it is so speculative and rather simple minded that the reader is likely to ignore him entirely. There is little to no sense of a dynamic between any of the characters but least of all with the broadest mind of all.
Ultimately the book failed for me because the premise of tri-party mutual influence was unconvincing. The strongest influence was Borgia as an exemplar for Machiavelli so had it been a dual biography, it might have been more successful. But I am grateful to know a bit more about his contemporaries and will look further.
Machiavelli is portrayed as a keen psychologist, but the argument as to his success (while ti lasted) point largely to the result without much of a glimmer as to the process. He sounds as thought he would make a good and entertaining friend rather than the diabolical manipulator his name has come to represent. I can't recall if Strathern explicitly makes the point that Niccolo reminds us more of a modern man who has a century or so of awareness of social and psychological insight to rely on, rather than predating modern habits by four or five hundred years, but the reader has no trouble reaching that conclusion. But I will have to give Strathern credit for my wanting to know more about the man who thought that there may be rules of behavior based not on what people should do, but what they are likely to do.
Da Vinci's portrait is pure supposition, resting on a feather light armature. I agree with the 3/18/12 review by Superfluous Man that the author offers no basis for his suppositions as to Leonardo's character. Leonardo also comes across as feckless, a mind of genius so distracted by his own thoughts and digressions that he rarely finishes what he starts. It is suggested there is insufficient record of da Vinci to support any sort of reasonable biography and it is certain that this attempt doesn't get very far. Strathern's shot at it is so speculative and rather simple minded that the reader is likely to ignore him entirely. There is little to no sense of a dynamic between any of the characters but least of all with the broadest mind of all.
Ultimately the book failed for me because the premise of tri-party mutual influence was unconvincing. The strongest influence was Borgia as an exemplar for Machiavelli so had it been a dual biography, it might have been more successful. But I am grateful to know a bit more about his contemporaries and will look further.
February 9, 2022
The Renaissance is one of those eras that created the right set of circumstances for extraordinary personalities to flourish. This book shows how three of them came into contact with one another: Cesare Borgia, Leonardo DaVinci, and Niccolo Machiavelli—the last two being natives of Florence. Borgia, of course, was the ruthless aggressor, and he employed DaVinci to create military machines and advise him on his destructive campaign to conquer Romagna for his father the Pope—and himself. It’s unclear whether or not DaVinci went of his own free will or was under some sort of obligation, but initially this new job coincided with his interests:
Leonardo was already famous as the artist who had painted a miraculous picture that made Christ and his saints look like living people, as alive as if they still breathed and walked the earth, while they sat at the Last Supper. Yet now he chose instead to draw tiny cartoon figures laboring and heaving at huge, intricate machines capable of wreaking death and destruction. He was a solitary, seemingly gentle figure, but there was something inflexible in the way he went about his business, lost in deep meditation, occasionally sketching obscure facets of the world about him, his thoughts encoded in a curious secret script.
After a particularly bloody attack on a defenseless town, DaVinci became totally disenchanted with the whole war machine ethos and essentially ran away. Machiavelli, on the other hand, had no such opportunity; he was an ambassador for Florence and needed to play a complicated cat-and-mouse game with Borgia to keep the city from being occupied. While he found Borgia personally terrifying and without morals, he respected the man’s ruthless efficiency and possibly even secretly admired him. At the end of his life he was to write “The Prince” which demonstrated the successful application of Borgia’s methods. Cesare Borgia came to a bad end, possibly because his mind was affected by syphilis and his judgment failed; it could also be because, with the death of his father he lost his most powerful—or only—ally. He certainly had a plethora of enemies. This was a very interesting book that helped enlighten a difficult era.
Leonardo was already famous as the artist who had painted a miraculous picture that made Christ and his saints look like living people, as alive as if they still breathed and walked the earth, while they sat at the Last Supper. Yet now he chose instead to draw tiny cartoon figures laboring and heaving at huge, intricate machines capable of wreaking death and destruction. He was a solitary, seemingly gentle figure, but there was something inflexible in the way he went about his business, lost in deep meditation, occasionally sketching obscure facets of the world about him, his thoughts encoded in a curious secret script.
After a particularly bloody attack on a defenseless town, DaVinci became totally disenchanted with the whole war machine ethos and essentially ran away. Machiavelli, on the other hand, had no such opportunity; he was an ambassador for Florence and needed to play a complicated cat-and-mouse game with Borgia to keep the city from being occupied. While he found Borgia personally terrifying and without morals, he respected the man’s ruthless efficiency and possibly even secretly admired him. At the end of his life he was to write “The Prince” which demonstrated the successful application of Borgia’s methods. Cesare Borgia came to a bad end, possibly because his mind was affected by syphilis and his judgment failed; it could also be because, with the death of his father he lost his most powerful—or only—ally. He certainly had a plethora of enemies. This was a very interesting book that helped enlighten a difficult era.
March 19, 2012
If the book suffers from a flaw (other than its unnecessarily oversold title), it is Mr. Strathern’s strenuous efforts to work da Vinci into the story, which one presumes is a reasonable marketing ploy given the popularity of all things da Vinci these days. Leonardo is a famously enigmatic character who left behind a relatively spare record for future historians, despite the thousands of his notebook pages that have survived. Where the record is silent, Mr. Strathern invents and speculates. For the most part, his suppositions have the ring of plausibility–perhaps Machiavelli would have learned thus-and-such from Leonardo at this time, perhaps this well-known trait of Leonardo could have been provoked by his time spent in the employ of the famously cruel Borgia.
On other occasions, Mr. Strathern indulges in the strangely anachronistic intellectual tic of applying Freudian psychology to an individual who lived half a millennium ago.
My full review is available here.
On other occasions, Mr. Strathern indulges in the strangely anachronistic intellectual tic of applying Freudian psychology to an individual who lived half a millennium ago.
My full review is available here.
May 16, 2018
I waffled between 2 and 3 stars for this one. Knowing little about 15th/16th century Italy, I found it interesting and generally liked Strathern's writing but his contortions to try to link his three subjects grated. Especially in his sections about Leonardo, he leans heavily on phrases like "may have" and "could have," in his attempts to tie the artist to the other two figures. It calls much of his analysis into question.
October 26, 2017
I enjoyed this book a lot. Learned history while reading something as entertaining as a nivel
November 14, 2019
It’s a bit wordy and a little hard to follow in the middle of the book. At a high level it is a story of conflict in the Italian city states between Venice, the Papal states, France and Spain. So it is fairly complicated. And the author had a difficult task.
Overall it was an entertaining read. The characters represented some of the most interesting minds in history.
Overall it was an entertaining read. The characters represented some of the most interesting minds in history.
May 5, 2018
Strathern's research is impressive, and his writing is often by turns lively, lovely and amusing. Personally, I feel like his documentation is more impressive than his analysis, though he occassionally surprises me in that too.
It didn't hurt to have read this one while on vacation -- the best ever --in Florence.
It didn't hurt to have read this one while on vacation -- the best ever --in Florence.
November 20, 2016
This book was very interesting for several reasons. It caught my attention because the idea of Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia's lives being intertwined with each other seemed far-fetched because of the vast differences in these three people as individuals.
And yet, for several months in 1502 and 1503, the artist (serving as military engineer), the philosopher (officially representing Florence, imperiled economically and militarily, yet paralyzingly indecisive over political allegiances), and the warrior indeed were together as Borgia made his eventually-doomed move, with his corrupt and debauched father, Pope Alexander VI, pulling the political strings in the background from the Vatican, to begin the quest to rule a united Italy.
Borgia, it turns out, was Machiavelli's inspiration for his best known work, The Prince. I came away from this book with a better understanding of Machiavelli the man as opposed to Machiavelli the author. He was a skilled diplomat and was a keen observer of human nature, with a desire to understand why people do what they do.
Machiavelli and Da Vinci, surprisingly, were very good friends and their lives intersected continually before, during, and after Borgia's quest to create a country out of the provinces that composed what is now known as Italy.
Strathern's portrait of Da Vinci is incisive. He was a complicated man, a troubled man, and suffered a lot of trauma in his life. Although Da Vinci is now seen as a great artist of the Renaissance, the reality is that he rarely finished any of the great art projects he was paid to do, and even when he did, he made egregious errors in their composition and they did not hold up over time (most of what we see and know are copies from other artists).
Only the Mona Lisa, which took Da Vinci years to complete, survives as an original Da Vinci painting. His notebooks, which Strathern dissects in great detail, reveal the great internal conflicts within Da Vinci and they also reveal a man unable to stay focused on any task for very long.
An interesting description of the young Michelangelo is also included in this book and it's wholly unflattering to see what he was really like as a person.
The bigger picture of this book shows the absolute decadence within the Catholic Church and the papacy. If you want to see the opposite of any kind of godliness (not that, IMHO, it's much different today, no matter what things look like on the surface), you need to look no further than this book as it unveils the whole sordid mess.
There is a lot of crudeness in some of the language in the letters and conversations among the people described in this book, but it accurately portrays just how debauched and immoral the society was. Sadly, it doesn't look much different, in many ways, than the society we lived in now.
But it's on, the whole, an interesting and close-up view, from an angle I haven't seen before in my reading, of a slice in time during the infancy of the Renaissance, which is often touted in glittering and glitzy tones as a great time, when in fact it was, behind the scenes, anything but, with the heart of darkness in humans still calling the shots, as it does today.
And yet, for several months in 1502 and 1503, the artist (serving as military engineer), the philosopher (officially representing Florence, imperiled economically and militarily, yet paralyzingly indecisive over political allegiances), and the warrior indeed were together as Borgia made his eventually-doomed move, with his corrupt and debauched father, Pope Alexander VI, pulling the political strings in the background from the Vatican, to begin the quest to rule a united Italy.
Borgia, it turns out, was Machiavelli's inspiration for his best known work, The Prince. I came away from this book with a better understanding of Machiavelli the man as opposed to Machiavelli the author. He was a skilled diplomat and was a keen observer of human nature, with a desire to understand why people do what they do.
Machiavelli and Da Vinci, surprisingly, were very good friends and their lives intersected continually before, during, and after Borgia's quest to create a country out of the provinces that composed what is now known as Italy.
Strathern's portrait of Da Vinci is incisive. He was a complicated man, a troubled man, and suffered a lot of trauma in his life. Although Da Vinci is now seen as a great artist of the Renaissance, the reality is that he rarely finished any of the great art projects he was paid to do, and even when he did, he made egregious errors in their composition and they did not hold up over time (most of what we see and know are copies from other artists).
Only the Mona Lisa, which took Da Vinci years to complete, survives as an original Da Vinci painting. His notebooks, which Strathern dissects in great detail, reveal the great internal conflicts within Da Vinci and they also reveal a man unable to stay focused on any task for very long.
An interesting description of the young Michelangelo is also included in this book and it's wholly unflattering to see what he was really like as a person.
The bigger picture of this book shows the absolute decadence within the Catholic Church and the papacy. If you want to see the opposite of any kind of godliness (not that, IMHO, it's much different today, no matter what things look like on the surface), you need to look no further than this book as it unveils the whole sordid mess.
There is a lot of crudeness in some of the language in the letters and conversations among the people described in this book, but it accurately portrays just how debauched and immoral the society was. Sadly, it doesn't look much different, in many ways, than the society we lived in now.
But it's on, the whole, an interesting and close-up view, from an angle I haven't seen before in my reading, of a slice in time during the infancy of the Renaissance, which is often touted in glittering and glitzy tones as a great time, when in fact it was, behind the scenes, anything but, with the heart of darkness in humans still calling the shots, as it does today.
April 11, 2022
A tour-de-force through one of the darkest Renaissance periods as seen through the eyes of three legendary men: Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia. I had no idea that they met and worked together for a few violent, tumultuous months in 1502. I was familiar with the calculating Machiavelli and the cruel Borgia, but what was the artistic Da Vinci doing with them? My ideas of Italy and all three men were turned upside down during this rough ride through the Italian countryside. Da Vinci was 50 years old in July, 1502 when he was sent from Florence to act as the Chief Military Engineer for Borgia. Machiavelli, a Florentine diplomat, negotiated the partnership. Borgia was leading his murderous invasion of the Romagna, supported by his father, Pope Alexander and King Louis XII of France. Leonardo’s notebooks for this time contain sketches of a haggard Borgia and a variety of military machine inventions, such as multi-barreled cannons and armored tanks driven by cranks.
Borgia issued Leonardo a letter of authority to “inspect the buildings and fortresses of our states” and to improve the arms used in the Borgia invasions. Meanwhile, Borgia continued his murderous rampage through Italy, cutting out people’s tongues and slicing their bodies asunder to be displayed in the public square as warnings. He killed allies and enemies alike. All of this was encouraged by the Pope, who fathered seven children by two different married women and held wild parties with prostitutes in the Vatican. Machiavelli, no shrinking violet, paled in comparison to the Borgia leaders when it came to heartless warfare, but luckily Machiavelli wrote many letters during this period to help us re-construct events. “[Borgia] is truly splendid and magnificent, and in war there is no enterprise so great that it does not seem small to him…he is beloved by his soldiers…all this makes him victorious and formidable.”
I will concede that Borgia seemed more complicated and dimensional here than the history books indicate, although still despicable. This story gives you plenty of deep background on how the Borgia family fared in history; honestly, they weren’t much different than other prominent Italian families protecting their land and wealth through torture and perfidy. We watch Machiavelli ride the waves of power bravely – up with Medici, down with the Medici, up with the Borgia, down with the Borgia. He gets his revenge in his later years by writing The Prince and other advice books still used today!
Leonardo Da Vinci remains the most enigmatic of the characters, keeping hundreds of notebooks containing few personal observations. “One who by himself is gentle and gives no offense will become terrible and ferocious when he is in bad company and will most cruelly take the lives of many men…” Leonardo wrote cryptically. Was he describing Borgia? Himself? Leonardo was a guy who didn’t eat meat, who painted The Last Supper, who bought doves in cages to set them free. He wrote about the solar system a century before Copernicus; he wrote about blood circulation a century before William Harvey. Of his 13,000 notebook pages, only 6,000 have come down to us. So far. This story raised more questions than answers for me so I am off to read more Italian history and see what else I can learn!
Borgia issued Leonardo a letter of authority to “inspect the buildings and fortresses of our states” and to improve the arms used in the Borgia invasions. Meanwhile, Borgia continued his murderous rampage through Italy, cutting out people’s tongues and slicing their bodies asunder to be displayed in the public square as warnings. He killed allies and enemies alike. All of this was encouraged by the Pope, who fathered seven children by two different married women and held wild parties with prostitutes in the Vatican. Machiavelli, no shrinking violet, paled in comparison to the Borgia leaders when it came to heartless warfare, but luckily Machiavelli wrote many letters during this period to help us re-construct events. “[Borgia] is truly splendid and magnificent, and in war there is no enterprise so great that it does not seem small to him…he is beloved by his soldiers…all this makes him victorious and formidable.”
I will concede that Borgia seemed more complicated and dimensional here than the history books indicate, although still despicable. This story gives you plenty of deep background on how the Borgia family fared in history; honestly, they weren’t much different than other prominent Italian families protecting their land and wealth through torture and perfidy. We watch Machiavelli ride the waves of power bravely – up with Medici, down with the Medici, up with the Borgia, down with the Borgia. He gets his revenge in his later years by writing The Prince and other advice books still used today!
Leonardo Da Vinci remains the most enigmatic of the characters, keeping hundreds of notebooks containing few personal observations. “One who by himself is gentle and gives no offense will become terrible and ferocious when he is in bad company and will most cruelly take the lives of many men…” Leonardo wrote cryptically. Was he describing Borgia? Himself? Leonardo was a guy who didn’t eat meat, who painted The Last Supper, who bought doves in cages to set them free. He wrote about the solar system a century before Copernicus; he wrote about blood circulation a century before William Harvey. Of his 13,000 notebook pages, only 6,000 have come down to us. So far. This story raised more questions than answers for me so I am off to read more Italian history and see what else I can learn!
October 27, 2019
The events that this book describes are kinda amazing: Three of the leading figures of the late 15th - early 16th century in central Italy meet up for a few months as each pursues his ambitions and destiny. Each is on his way at the time to becoming famous (or infamous) forever, and for each some of that fame comes from their interaction and the services they do for each other.
The setting is 1502. Leonardo daVinci, the oldest of the three, is a renowned painter and sculptor and is becoming known as an engineering genius. Machiavelli, 33 years old, is a rising diplomatic star in the service of Florence, one of the wealthiest but most vulnerable city-states in Italy. Cesare Borgio, age 27, is the son of the Pope (yeah, wrap your head around that one) and is a bloodthirsty tyrant who's determined to unify Italy by seizing city-states such as Florence, Pisa, Milan and Naples.
Borgia puts Florence into a panic when he threatens to invade. Not only does he have the backing of the Pope's army, which was a real fighting force in those days, but he also has, at times, either the support of the Spanish or the French, each of which hold territory in Italy. In desperation, Florence sends Machiavelli to negotiate, and the deal they come up with is that Leonardo will be lent to Borgio for a while to help him reinforce the fortresses he owns and assess his other military and engineering needs. And so in 1502, Leonardo joins the Borgio army on the battlefield, ultimately witnesses cruel sackings and pillaging of defenseless towns. Machiavelli follows along, as he's still trying to keep Florence out of harm's way.
The author does a great job of setting up the scene and explaining how each of the three men helped to move Italy (and the world out) of Middle Ages thinking and into the Renaissance. This is more Machiavelli and Leonardo than Borgio, but Borgio's actions push the reigning powers to take actions that hasten the Renaissance and even the Reformation a few decades later. All of this information is told in a well-paced, superbly well-documented story.
The author's main points are as follows. First, Leonardo changed how we think of science by saying that only through observation can we learn things, can we discover how the world works (also known at the time as God's creation, although Leonardo was apparently not a religious man). This was a radical departure from the age in which he was born, which based all scientific knowledge in Greek and Roman texts that were being discovered in monasteries.
Similarly, Machiavelli did the same thing with political science and government. He said that what leaders say is not important -- what they do is important. Political theory should not be about an ideal world, as described by Greeks, but by about the world as it is. And that world is ruthless.
So the thinking of these two men, who spent time together for decades, moved in parallel, and the author does a nice job of imagining how they might have discussed their emerging and similar views.
Borgio comes into the picture because he was a man of action. Through him, Leonardo put some of his ideas into operation, ideas about castle defenses and also about various offensive weapons of war. Borgia's war successes owe a fair amount to Leonardo, as well as Borgio's own strategic brilliance and evil.
For much of his life, Leonardo didn't finish his projects, but for Borgia -- who would cut off your head or cut out your tongue in a moment -- Leonardo did his work. And Machiavelli watched Borgia work for close to a decade, and he saw how ruthlessness and deception gave him power over everyone else....that is, until someone with even more power betrayed him. Machiavelli wrote down those lessons in "The Prince" and later works.
It's a great tale, and the author takes you on a literally day-by-day account a times, thanks to copious letters from Machiavelli and correspondence among political leaders that survive. You really understand the insanity of these city-states fighting each other, with murderous leaders at every stage turning on each other. It's remarkable that anyone lived to be 30 years old. Borgia, by the way, barely made it past 30.
The book also does a good job of explaining the impact of some of this on regular people. There are a lot of references to towns laid waste by pillage, rape, etc. Lots of beheadings and chopping of hands and being put on the rack. In fact, one of the flaws of the book, in my opinion, is that the author is a little too eager to reference wholesale rapes by mercenary soldiers and the endless affairs and bouts of syphilis (and rapes) by leaders such as Borgia and his father, Pope Alexander VI. Women will not like this book, despite the audacity of Caterina Sforza described in early sections.
Another flaw is that the author also repeats his points about the revolutionary thinking of Leonardo and Machiavelli more times than is necessary. The points I referenced above are made at least a dozen times in the book, sometimes with direct quotes, and sometimes with the author's statements. There's a lot of repetition in the book in general. While I recognize some of that is helpful with a story with so many people and places, and the return of those people and places at different times, it's too much. The maps, timeline and one-sentence bios at the front of the book are sufficient.
In sum, for anyone interested in Italy or the Renaissance, this is a good supplement. It's about the pre-Renaissance, so to speak, but helps explain why that time was revolutionary, and it gives some insights into the types of extraordinary people who made it happen. But it's a depressing read in a lot of ways because the people are so evil, and their actions as leaders were surely tragic for the regular people of Italy even more than for themselves.
The setting is 1502. Leonardo daVinci, the oldest of the three, is a renowned painter and sculptor and is becoming known as an engineering genius. Machiavelli, 33 years old, is a rising diplomatic star in the service of Florence, one of the wealthiest but most vulnerable city-states in Italy. Cesare Borgio, age 27, is the son of the Pope (yeah, wrap your head around that one) and is a bloodthirsty tyrant who's determined to unify Italy by seizing city-states such as Florence, Pisa, Milan and Naples.
Borgia puts Florence into a panic when he threatens to invade. Not only does he have the backing of the Pope's army, which was a real fighting force in those days, but he also has, at times, either the support of the Spanish or the French, each of which hold territory in Italy. In desperation, Florence sends Machiavelli to negotiate, and the deal they come up with is that Leonardo will be lent to Borgio for a while to help him reinforce the fortresses he owns and assess his other military and engineering needs. And so in 1502, Leonardo joins the Borgio army on the battlefield, ultimately witnesses cruel sackings and pillaging of defenseless towns. Machiavelli follows along, as he's still trying to keep Florence out of harm's way.
The author does a great job of setting up the scene and explaining how each of the three men helped to move Italy (and the world out) of Middle Ages thinking and into the Renaissance. This is more Machiavelli and Leonardo than Borgio, but Borgio's actions push the reigning powers to take actions that hasten the Renaissance and even the Reformation a few decades later. All of this information is told in a well-paced, superbly well-documented story.
The author's main points are as follows. First, Leonardo changed how we think of science by saying that only through observation can we learn things, can we discover how the world works (also known at the time as God's creation, although Leonardo was apparently not a religious man). This was a radical departure from the age in which he was born, which based all scientific knowledge in Greek and Roman texts that were being discovered in monasteries.
Similarly, Machiavelli did the same thing with political science and government. He said that what leaders say is not important -- what they do is important. Political theory should not be about an ideal world, as described by Greeks, but by about the world as it is. And that world is ruthless.
So the thinking of these two men, who spent time together for decades, moved in parallel, and the author does a nice job of imagining how they might have discussed their emerging and similar views.
Borgio comes into the picture because he was a man of action. Through him, Leonardo put some of his ideas into operation, ideas about castle defenses and also about various offensive weapons of war. Borgia's war successes owe a fair amount to Leonardo, as well as Borgio's own strategic brilliance and evil.
For much of his life, Leonardo didn't finish his projects, but for Borgia -- who would cut off your head or cut out your tongue in a moment -- Leonardo did his work. And Machiavelli watched Borgia work for close to a decade, and he saw how ruthlessness and deception gave him power over everyone else....that is, until someone with even more power betrayed him. Machiavelli wrote down those lessons in "The Prince" and later works.
It's a great tale, and the author takes you on a literally day-by-day account a times, thanks to copious letters from Machiavelli and correspondence among political leaders that survive. You really understand the insanity of these city-states fighting each other, with murderous leaders at every stage turning on each other. It's remarkable that anyone lived to be 30 years old. Borgia, by the way, barely made it past 30.
The book also does a good job of explaining the impact of some of this on regular people. There are a lot of references to towns laid waste by pillage, rape, etc. Lots of beheadings and chopping of hands and being put on the rack. In fact, one of the flaws of the book, in my opinion, is that the author is a little too eager to reference wholesale rapes by mercenary soldiers and the endless affairs and bouts of syphilis (and rapes) by leaders such as Borgia and his father, Pope Alexander VI. Women will not like this book, despite the audacity of Caterina Sforza described in early sections.
Another flaw is that the author also repeats his points about the revolutionary thinking of Leonardo and Machiavelli more times than is necessary. The points I referenced above are made at least a dozen times in the book, sometimes with direct quotes, and sometimes with the author's statements. There's a lot of repetition in the book in general. While I recognize some of that is helpful with a story with so many people and places, and the return of those people and places at different times, it's too much. The maps, timeline and one-sentence bios at the front of the book are sufficient.
In sum, for anyone interested in Italy or the Renaissance, this is a good supplement. It's about the pre-Renaissance, so to speak, but helps explain why that time was revolutionary, and it gives some insights into the types of extraordinary people who made it happen. But it's a depressing read in a lot of ways because the people are so evil, and their actions as leaders were surely tragic for the regular people of Italy even more than for themselves.
August 24, 2017
The idea behind this book is that the interactions between Cesare Borgia, Niccolo Macchiavelli, and Leonardo da Vinci had life and history-changing effects on all three, as well as the history of Italy. The problem with this thesis is that most of those interactions are undocumented, so beyond the obvious, much of the reasoning behind these assertions is based on deduction and guesswork, and at times seemed to me more appropriate to classify as possibility than fact. Aside from this flaw, the author expresses these interactions in the course of describing the life of all 3 men and much of the history of Italy during the reign of Pope Alexander VI and the life of his son, Cesare Borgia. This is interesting all by itself and, for me, was enough to make me overlook the author's aggressive assumptions made regarding all three men.
January 18, 2014
This book was awesome. A good overview of Renaissance Florence and the intersection of the lives of DaVinci, Machiavelli and the Borgia's: Rodrigo, Cesare and Lucrezia from 1498 to 1512-ish. I would recommend this book 110%. I did feel like I wanted to know more about Machiavelli and/or DaVinci as a result of reading this book. Please note that this book has an extensive character list and very good maps. I learned that Machiavelli survived torture, strappado. Amazing. I never knew that.
This book spurred me to read Machiavelli A Biography by Miles Unger and I would like to read Leonardo: The Artist and The Man by Serge Bramly. (First I have to read my two book club books by next week - Eek!) Sorry Leo!
This book spurred me to read Machiavelli A Biography by Miles Unger and I would like to read Leonardo: The Artist and The Man by Serge Bramly. (First I have to read my two book club books by next week - Eek!) Sorry Leo!
March 27, 2012
The author worked a little too hard trying to include Da Vinci, but it was a fascinating book nonetheless.
August 4, 2025
The Artist, The Philosopher and The Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped
Nine out of 10
Paul Strathern is without a doubt a phenomenal, creative, impressive author that this reader has enjoyed in the past with special gratitude for the titles that have made accessible otherwise rather impenetrable thinkers ( for the hoi polloi like the undersigned) such as Descartes in 90 Minutes - http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/08/d... -Beckett in 90 Minutes - http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/08/b... - Plato in 90 Minutes - http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/08/p... - and a few more…
The Artist, The Philosopher and The Artist is a whole different story though and it demands much more than the advertised 90 Minutes, which were quite enough to become somewhat acquainted with the general idea of one genius or another and in no way achieve the status of expert on subject, evidently, on David Hume, for instance: http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/d....
This is where a quandary has to be confronted – for readers such as this one – and see if one is interested to learn much more about Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia, with the implication that there would be many details on their friends, acquaintances, enemies, the setting of their work and conflicts, which ultimately proved to be more than the undersigned wished to know.
Surely, this work would be ideal on a few levels, allowing one to be instructed in the main characters of the work, without going into the minutia required to become specialized in the subject and spending just enough time to know about the age, the enemies of Borgia, innuendo such as the fact that Leonardo Da Vinci has spent some time in jail, because someone made a complaint about his sexuality, at a time when this was not just against the law, but it could result in dire consequences (on the other hand, there are countries in the world today, which would simply kill a gay individual or use torture, lashes and so on).
The introduction makes a few very instructive, amusing references to the period and the protagonists of the book…
“Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel?” The Merry Wives of Windsor…
“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
From The Third Man, Orson Welles
We learn from The Artist, The Philosopher and The Artist aspects of the life at the time of the three heroes that we might have missed in school, in terms of the general violence, the brutish force with which men (there have been very few women in positions of power…indeed, in The History Boys there is a splendid quote: “History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.”) dealt with their enemies.
In one instance, a longtime ally of Borgia is taken in, although he seemed to have been such a good friend of the powerful character and then he shows up ‘cut in half ‘and we learn there is speculation as to what was he reason, one of the many schemes and treasonous connections, or the fact that he had been on a journey with the woman that Borgia was infatuated with and misbehaved?
As for Da Vinci, some of the brilliant facts about what might have been the brightest mind of all time have been known although such details as his sexuality might have been well known by the experts, but the large public was probably not well acquainted with the innuendo, not even with such speculation as is generated by a letter addressed to the Turkish sultan, which might have been translated and edited for the use of his Highness to include a final “your slave’, that was surely not there, because the great genius was not in the habit of addressing himself in this way, albeit he seems to have included in the ‘CV’ he had sent, among some of his early inventions, drawings of wind mills, which had already operated and the inventor might have been unfamiliar with.
Otherwise, his projects have been tested recently and apart from some inventions – which might have been drawn on purpose with flaws, to avoid others from stealing his ideas and then using them, Leonardo used a code in his writing – they all seem to work perfectly, from the diving suit which could be – and has been used for television documentaries – utilized to swim under the surface, up to a certain depth, to the much more sophisticated projects that the glorious, divine man has thought of…
The book is surely impressive, more than worth reading, because there could be no other subject more interesting that this – three brilliant minds, perhaps the most gifted ever, in their respective domains – and Paul Strathern is an extraordinary author.
Nine out of 10
Paul Strathern is without a doubt a phenomenal, creative, impressive author that this reader has enjoyed in the past with special gratitude for the titles that have made accessible otherwise rather impenetrable thinkers ( for the hoi polloi like the undersigned) such as Descartes in 90 Minutes - http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/08/d... -Beckett in 90 Minutes - http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/08/b... - Plato in 90 Minutes - http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/08/p... - and a few more…
The Artist, The Philosopher and The Artist is a whole different story though and it demands much more than the advertised 90 Minutes, which were quite enough to become somewhat acquainted with the general idea of one genius or another and in no way achieve the status of expert on subject, evidently, on David Hume, for instance: http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/d....
This is where a quandary has to be confronted – for readers such as this one – and see if one is interested to learn much more about Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia, with the implication that there would be many details on their friends, acquaintances, enemies, the setting of their work and conflicts, which ultimately proved to be more than the undersigned wished to know.
Surely, this work would be ideal on a few levels, allowing one to be instructed in the main characters of the work, without going into the minutia required to become specialized in the subject and spending just enough time to know about the age, the enemies of Borgia, innuendo such as the fact that Leonardo Da Vinci has spent some time in jail, because someone made a complaint about his sexuality, at a time when this was not just against the law, but it could result in dire consequences (on the other hand, there are countries in the world today, which would simply kill a gay individual or use torture, lashes and so on).
The introduction makes a few very instructive, amusing references to the period and the protagonists of the book…
“Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel?” The Merry Wives of Windsor…
“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
From The Third Man, Orson Welles
We learn from The Artist, The Philosopher and The Artist aspects of the life at the time of the three heroes that we might have missed in school, in terms of the general violence, the brutish force with which men (there have been very few women in positions of power…indeed, in The History Boys there is a splendid quote: “History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.”) dealt with their enemies.
In one instance, a longtime ally of Borgia is taken in, although he seemed to have been such a good friend of the powerful character and then he shows up ‘cut in half ‘and we learn there is speculation as to what was he reason, one of the many schemes and treasonous connections, or the fact that he had been on a journey with the woman that Borgia was infatuated with and misbehaved?
As for Da Vinci, some of the brilliant facts about what might have been the brightest mind of all time have been known although such details as his sexuality might have been well known by the experts, but the large public was probably not well acquainted with the innuendo, not even with such speculation as is generated by a letter addressed to the Turkish sultan, which might have been translated and edited for the use of his Highness to include a final “your slave’, that was surely not there, because the great genius was not in the habit of addressing himself in this way, albeit he seems to have included in the ‘CV’ he had sent, among some of his early inventions, drawings of wind mills, which had already operated and the inventor might have been unfamiliar with.
Otherwise, his projects have been tested recently and apart from some inventions – which might have been drawn on purpose with flaws, to avoid others from stealing his ideas and then using them, Leonardo used a code in his writing – they all seem to work perfectly, from the diving suit which could be – and has been used for television documentaries – utilized to swim under the surface, up to a certain depth, to the much more sophisticated projects that the glorious, divine man has thought of…
The book is surely impressive, more than worth reading, because there could be no other subject more interesting that this – three brilliant minds, perhaps the most gifted ever, in their respective domains – and Paul Strathern is an extraordinary author.
July 2, 2017
This book is one of those which makes you really start to grasp the lived-in nature of history. Our central and titular characters are household names, but it would take much closer knowledge of the period for you to realise that they once met, working and talking with each other, with each having great impact on their fellows and indeed on their most famous works.
Respectively, these characters are the artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, the clearheaded political philosopher Niccoló Machiavelli and the terrifyingly amoral yet effective warrior Cesare Borgia. The short version of their interaction is that Machiavelli was often an envoy to Borgia due to his position in the Florentine government, and that one deal struck by him saw Leonardo employed by Borgia to strengthen his recently-acquired fortresses.
To give up a few highlights: It is while working for Borgia that Leonardo found the background for his famous Mona Lisa, it is from Leonardo's empiricism that Machiavelli found support for his pragmatic political outlook, and it is Cesare Borgia who provided the inspiration for Machiavelli's most famous publication: _The Prince_, a description of how power is attained, lacking any reference to morality.
The balance between the characters in the novel is a little off-kilter. Strathern notes early on that Machiavelli and Borgia are of known character (Machiavelli a surprisingly macho wit, Borgia a sort of dramatic monster) but Leonardo is less so, and it seems that he tries to address this by providing more personal-level speculation for Leonardo than for either of the others. In Borgia's case particularly, so much space is devoted to the (admittedly gripping) political struggles that there is little room to consider the man himself.
That comment aside, Strathern writes in one of the best manners possible for this sort of historical dissertation. He provides a contextual narrative for each character, summing up most of their lives through the course of the book, but keeping them always well-intertwined. While carefully referencing the sources for the verifiable portions of events, he also provides rich suggestive imagery, and indulges in clearly-labelled speculation where it seems most apt. The effect is a highly entrancing book, a factual historical account with all the rich tones of a work of fiction, spanning some of the greatest achievements of three formidable historical figures. A strong recommendation for the historically inclined reader.
Respectively, these characters are the artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, the clearheaded political philosopher Niccoló Machiavelli and the terrifyingly amoral yet effective warrior Cesare Borgia. The short version of their interaction is that Machiavelli was often an envoy to Borgia due to his position in the Florentine government, and that one deal struck by him saw Leonardo employed by Borgia to strengthen his recently-acquired fortresses.
To give up a few highlights: It is while working for Borgia that Leonardo found the background for his famous Mona Lisa, it is from Leonardo's empiricism that Machiavelli found support for his pragmatic political outlook, and it is Cesare Borgia who provided the inspiration for Machiavelli's most famous publication: _The Prince_, a description of how power is attained, lacking any reference to morality.
The balance between the characters in the novel is a little off-kilter. Strathern notes early on that Machiavelli and Borgia are of known character (Machiavelli a surprisingly macho wit, Borgia a sort of dramatic monster) but Leonardo is less so, and it seems that he tries to address this by providing more personal-level speculation for Leonardo than for either of the others. In Borgia's case particularly, so much space is devoted to the (admittedly gripping) political struggles that there is little room to consider the man himself.
That comment aside, Strathern writes in one of the best manners possible for this sort of historical dissertation. He provides a contextual narrative for each character, summing up most of their lives through the course of the book, but keeping them always well-intertwined. While carefully referencing the sources for the verifiable portions of events, he also provides rich suggestive imagery, and indulges in clearly-labelled speculation where it seems most apt. The effect is a highly entrancing book, a factual historical account with all the rich tones of a work of fiction, spanning some of the greatest achievements of three formidable historical figures. A strong recommendation for the historically inclined reader.
May 27, 2023
I LOVED Paul Strathern's "The Medicis: Godfathers of the Renaissance". I learned so much about art, philosophy, and politics from it, so I was excited to read his work, "The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped." It is about how all three men's lives intersected in 1502 when Cesare Borgia took over the Romagna region of Italy and how that convergence shaped Western history. Borgia taking over the Romagna is nowhere near as interesting as Lorenzo de Medici spearheading the Italian Renaissance; it is, in fact, rather bloody. And maybe this is heresy, but I think Michelangelo is way more interesting than Leonardo da Vinci (blame Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy" for that). But Machiavelli, I like. He always seems to be portrayed as the Uriah Heep of the Renaissance--disliked and endlessly plotting-- but instead he was popular and ribald with a deep interest in human nature: what makes humans tick?
But my fascination with Machiavelli is not strong enough to get me to the end of this book. Strathern conducts some impeccable research, but the telling of it is dry, and being two-thirds of the way through it, I am not convinced the pay-off is worth it. I have the feeling that the big reveal of how this moment in time shaped history is that Machiavelli wrote "The Prince", putting this book on par with watching "Titanic". The connection between Borgia and Machiavelli is real and obvious, but it felt like Strathern shoe-horned da Vinci into the narrative. Much of the relations between da Vinci and Machiavelli in the Romagna is speculative and circumstantial, and da Vinci's takeaway from his time with Borgia is that he really does not like war. Once back in Florence, he returns to making frescoes, imagining flying machines, and attempting to square the circle; he is no longer interested in making weapons. This is a perfectly natural response after having spent time with any Borgia. Even Machiavelli was horrified, and he got along with Cesare. It felt like Strathern was capitalizing on the fact that these three dynamic and influential men all happened to be together during this one moment of time but making more of it than what is actually there.
If you are really interested in this time period, I recommend it.
But my fascination with Machiavelli is not strong enough to get me to the end of this book. Strathern conducts some impeccable research, but the telling of it is dry, and being two-thirds of the way through it, I am not convinced the pay-off is worth it. I have the feeling that the big reveal of how this moment in time shaped history is that Machiavelli wrote "The Prince", putting this book on par with watching "Titanic". The connection between Borgia and Machiavelli is real and obvious, but it felt like Strathern shoe-horned da Vinci into the narrative. Much of the relations between da Vinci and Machiavelli in the Romagna is speculative and circumstantial, and da Vinci's takeaway from his time with Borgia is that he really does not like war. Once back in Florence, he returns to making frescoes, imagining flying machines, and attempting to square the circle; he is no longer interested in making weapons. This is a perfectly natural response after having spent time with any Borgia. Even Machiavelli was horrified, and he got along with Cesare. It felt like Strathern was capitalizing on the fact that these three dynamic and influential men all happened to be together during this one moment of time but making more of it than what is actually there.
If you are really interested in this time period, I recommend it.
January 3, 2025
News Flash: The Mosquito has Free Will
Paul Strathern provides a highly readable, entertaining, and page turning account as he tries to interlace into a single coherent narrative the ideas of consequence and the consequence of ideas. Ideas are the incubators of history. It is the collision of ideas with individual actors that creates both the continuity and the ruptures in the unfolding of history. The author traces the primary actors, the new ideas and antecedent causals in this unique tripartite biography and historical narrative. The author points to that ‘something that was in the air’ of what we call the Renaissance. Some readers may find that there is some repetition when the same events are told and retold from the viewpoints of the three protagonists but if read correctly, there is no repetition just a chance to view the same historical events for three different perspectives. This helps the reader to realize that never is there a single correct story to tell when it comes to the process, events and unfolding of history as well as the recording of historical events.
In assembling this tripartite biographical story about this key period known to us as the Renaissance, the author speculates as to the many possible, might have been, may well have been, had to have been, need to have been, would certainly have to be, may even have, must have taken place meetings and conversations between Da Vinci, Machiavelli and Borgia. Much of the nexus between the Renaissance Big-Three was tangential and fleeting as they crisscrossed the realms of time, place, events and ideas, still, at other times the connections were deep and shaped the very contours of this enigmatic period with all its high culture and low barbarism. The author embarks upon a tripartite inferential journey that necessarily strays further from the known and knowable facts the further he proceeds. But how much of a problem is it to stray from these so called known facts? To what extent should one or a few out of place facts bother the reader?
These things we are content to call the facts are rather opaque and quite peculiar when examined closely. History is not easily reducible to this ‘atomic structure’ of nothing but facts and the void. Some readers seem to believe the facts are simple things that must correspond with observations from experience, that is, what is only contingently the case. That is, an appeal to the concept of facts is an appeal to the concept of truth, which is often contingent and not necessary as well as to objectivity which does not exist. Facts and values are symbolic representations contextual to awareness. Objectively is a faith-based fantasy - to see it otherwise is to exhibit an evasive sense of awareness and over attachment to structure and order . All facts are relative and dependent on subjectivity. A fact can only be a fact relative to a context and every context has its subjective boundaries. There are no objective facts. In fact, 'objective' does not exist. All knowledge is contextual and a fact cannot be featured without context. Facts are subjective because they are only perceived as such by a subjective awareness. David Hume famously stated there are relations of ideas and matters of fact. Granted, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it serves to illustrate what is going on in this book. The ideas are the context for the facts. Paul Strathern’s seeks to guide the reader beyond the mere matters fact to the relations of people and ideas. No doubt, when it comes to writing history, matters of fact and correspondence are part of the inventory of the things we expect to find, but too often forgotten, so are highly nuisanced relations among subtle ideas from which springs ideology. The author seeks to weave together the complex, opaque, obscure and at times obfuscated relationship between three overlapping giants that in large measure drove the Renaissance as we have come to understand it. That which we call the Renaissance was much more than series of events and facts, it was the coming together and admixture of ideas classical, barbaric, medieval, artistic and scientific in the convulsion that gave birth to what we are very pleased to call modernity. This often, perhaps too often, requires inference from the known ostensible matters of fact to gain insight into the more arcane relationship of ideas driving the observable facts of experience. Though I do not agree with every inference the author makes about driving forces, inner thoughts and causal antecedents, in most cases, I fund them to be reasonable and plausible based on the known matters of fact.
Oh yes, the mosquito:
As if human existence was not contingent and capricious enough, imagine this, a mosquito quite probably changed the course of human history. So much for free will, or will the free will fanatics now insist upon the free will of the mosquito? Perhaps we should just give it up and chalk this one up to those deterministic casual antecedents, the engine that propels history forward with us conscious humans only along for the ride as observes. Otherwise, we must hold the mosquito accountable for its act of free will. Free will is just the stuff of appearances that we impose upon events; a reactionary response based on abstractions from apparent events and the subjective assertions of feelings about observed appearances. We are too easily fooled into thinking we are driving events because we are aware of events. We are too willing to mistake awareness for agency and experience for control; awareness of ourselves in a world which pushes us down and drives us on. Awareness is always after the event but is mistaken for agency prior to the event. Thoughts, feelings, and the will are reactive are responsive, not causal. In any case, Paul Strathern relates for us the vineyard diner party held on the hillside of Monte Mario on August 5, 1503 hosted by Cardinal Adriano Castellesi for Alexander VI and Cesar Borgia. Though poison is a plausible explanation, it is much more likely that all three were bitten by malaria infected mosquitos. At this time, the Borgias were on their way to christening a new era in Italy, on their way to bringing Italy under a single government, consolidating local political authority and converting the papacy into a secular authority as well as making it a Borgia heredity office. Basically, they were on the verge of creating the Italian state. It is of course counterfactual speculation (not meant to imply the agency of free will) but still, how much different would have western European history turned out if presented with a unified, progressive and powerful Italian state at the beginning of the 16th century rather than the vacillating irresolute state at the end of the 19th century?
Paul Strathern provides a highly readable, entertaining, and page turning account as he tries to interlace into a single coherent narrative the ideas of consequence and the consequence of ideas. Ideas are the incubators of history. It is the collision of ideas with individual actors that creates both the continuity and the ruptures in the unfolding of history. The author traces the primary actors, the new ideas and antecedent causals in this unique tripartite biography and historical narrative. The author points to that ‘something that was in the air’ of what we call the Renaissance. Some readers may find that there is some repetition when the same events are told and retold from the viewpoints of the three protagonists but if read correctly, there is no repetition just a chance to view the same historical events for three different perspectives. This helps the reader to realize that never is there a single correct story to tell when it comes to the process, events and unfolding of history as well as the recording of historical events.
In assembling this tripartite biographical story about this key period known to us as the Renaissance, the author speculates as to the many possible, might have been, may well have been, had to have been, need to have been, would certainly have to be, may even have, must have taken place meetings and conversations between Da Vinci, Machiavelli and Borgia. Much of the nexus between the Renaissance Big-Three was tangential and fleeting as they crisscrossed the realms of time, place, events and ideas, still, at other times the connections were deep and shaped the very contours of this enigmatic period with all its high culture and low barbarism. The author embarks upon a tripartite inferential journey that necessarily strays further from the known and knowable facts the further he proceeds. But how much of a problem is it to stray from these so called known facts? To what extent should one or a few out of place facts bother the reader?
These things we are content to call the facts are rather opaque and quite peculiar when examined closely. History is not easily reducible to this ‘atomic structure’ of nothing but facts and the void. Some readers seem to believe the facts are simple things that must correspond with observations from experience, that is, what is only contingently the case. That is, an appeal to the concept of facts is an appeal to the concept of truth, which is often contingent and not necessary as well as to objectivity which does not exist. Facts and values are symbolic representations contextual to awareness. Objectively is a faith-based fantasy - to see it otherwise is to exhibit an evasive sense of awareness and over attachment to structure and order . All facts are relative and dependent on subjectivity. A fact can only be a fact relative to a context and every context has its subjective boundaries. There are no objective facts. In fact, 'objective' does not exist. All knowledge is contextual and a fact cannot be featured without context. Facts are subjective because they are only perceived as such by a subjective awareness. David Hume famously stated there are relations of ideas and matters of fact. Granted, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it serves to illustrate what is going on in this book. The ideas are the context for the facts. Paul Strathern’s seeks to guide the reader beyond the mere matters fact to the relations of people and ideas. No doubt, when it comes to writing history, matters of fact and correspondence are part of the inventory of the things we expect to find, but too often forgotten, so are highly nuisanced relations among subtle ideas from which springs ideology. The author seeks to weave together the complex, opaque, obscure and at times obfuscated relationship between three overlapping giants that in large measure drove the Renaissance as we have come to understand it. That which we call the Renaissance was much more than series of events and facts, it was the coming together and admixture of ideas classical, barbaric, medieval, artistic and scientific in the convulsion that gave birth to what we are very pleased to call modernity. This often, perhaps too often, requires inference from the known ostensible matters of fact to gain insight into the more arcane relationship of ideas driving the observable facts of experience. Though I do not agree with every inference the author makes about driving forces, inner thoughts and causal antecedents, in most cases, I fund them to be reasonable and plausible based on the known matters of fact.
Oh yes, the mosquito:
As if human existence was not contingent and capricious enough, imagine this, a mosquito quite probably changed the course of human history. So much for free will, or will the free will fanatics now insist upon the free will of the mosquito? Perhaps we should just give it up and chalk this one up to those deterministic casual antecedents, the engine that propels history forward with us conscious humans only along for the ride as observes. Otherwise, we must hold the mosquito accountable for its act of free will. Free will is just the stuff of appearances that we impose upon events; a reactionary response based on abstractions from apparent events and the subjective assertions of feelings about observed appearances. We are too easily fooled into thinking we are driving events because we are aware of events. We are too willing to mistake awareness for agency and experience for control; awareness of ourselves in a world which pushes us down and drives us on. Awareness is always after the event but is mistaken for agency prior to the event. Thoughts, feelings, and the will are reactive are responsive, not causal. In any case, Paul Strathern relates for us the vineyard diner party held on the hillside of Monte Mario on August 5, 1503 hosted by Cardinal Adriano Castellesi for Alexander VI and Cesar Borgia. Though poison is a plausible explanation, it is much more likely that all three were bitten by malaria infected mosquitos. At this time, the Borgias were on their way to christening a new era in Italy, on their way to bringing Italy under a single government, consolidating local political authority and converting the papacy into a secular authority as well as making it a Borgia heredity office. Basically, they were on the verge of creating the Italian state. It is of course counterfactual speculation (not meant to imply the agency of free will) but still, how much different would have western European history turned out if presented with a unified, progressive and powerful Italian state at the beginning of the 16th century rather than the vacillating irresolute state at the end of the 19th century?
April 3, 2019
You know growing up I spent years considering going to school for Renaissance history. The period in Europe is just astonishing to me. I didn't get a degree in it because studying the past as we have seen here in America we often forget the past wouldn't be a field where you could make much of a career. So I enjoy reading history as a hobby and I'm happy with that.
Which brought me to this fantastic book. That looks at three of the sharpest minds from that period all of whom met each other, interacted with each other and were each effected by the times they were living in.
Machiavelli rose to the ultimate heights in the public service only to later fall in disgrace, write the ultimate guide on how to wield power only to have the book banned by the church and secretly distributed to princes and kings. Leonardo Da Vinci, the artisan and engineer who started every brilliant project and was always in demand only to rarely finish them. He was a military engineer who upon seeing battle became a painter of its honest brutality, a pacifist and a vegetarian. Cesare Borgia was a general who was the model for Machiavelli's 'The Prince' but a man who was slowly becoming demented from untreated syphilis. All three converged in this book as the Italian states fought for control and power. And this makes for great reading...
Which brought me to this fantastic book. That looks at three of the sharpest minds from that period all of whom met each other, interacted with each other and were each effected by the times they were living in.
Machiavelli rose to the ultimate heights in the public service only to later fall in disgrace, write the ultimate guide on how to wield power only to have the book banned by the church and secretly distributed to princes and kings. Leonardo Da Vinci, the artisan and engineer who started every brilliant project and was always in demand only to rarely finish them. He was a military engineer who upon seeing battle became a painter of its honest brutality, a pacifist and a vegetarian. Cesare Borgia was a general who was the model for Machiavelli's 'The Prince' but a man who was slowly becoming demented from untreated syphilis. All three converged in this book as the Italian states fought for control and power. And this makes for great reading...
January 21, 2024
The lead historical characters of this book are compelling. The surprising inter weaving of their paths fascinating. But in the end the book stretches too far for full success. As the Independent rightfully observes: "Such, indeed, is Strathern's flair for vivid description and snappy dialogue that you can't help wishing, as you get a little way into this book, that he had written it as a novel. That reflection is also prompted by a consideration of the meagre historical evidence that has survived from the Romagna campaign, and of the way the author uses it. In a bid to cover up the gaps in the record he is often forced to stretch his flimsy facts to breaking point – and sometimes they snap.
For example, while he cautiously tells us on page 112 that Leonardo's notebooks contain three sketches that are "widely thought to be of Borgia", only a few pages later he confidently cites them as evidence of Cesare's brooding character. By page 317 his confidence has become certainty: he imagines Da Vinci "drawing those three portrait sketches of Borgia as he lay stretched out in his chair before the fire", before going on to deduce from them the artist's attitude to his master and to "the evil nature of men" in general."
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...
For example, while he cautiously tells us on page 112 that Leonardo's notebooks contain three sketches that are "widely thought to be of Borgia", only a few pages later he confidently cites them as evidence of Cesare's brooding character. By page 317 his confidence has become certainty: he imagines Da Vinci "drawing those three portrait sketches of Borgia as he lay stretched out in his chair before the fire", before going on to deduce from them the artist's attitude to his master and to "the evil nature of men" in general."
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...
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