Fionnuala’s Reviews > The Subtlest Soul > Status Update
Fionnuala
is on page 51 of 454
“What do you see when you look at all this?” I looked down on the...peasants going about their labors, at a loss as to how to answer this strange question. “Five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, we would have seen this same scene, essentially unchanged.” Leonardo sounded indignant. “How do you think it will look in five hundred years’ time? Things will be so changed we can barely encompass them with our mind.
— Sep 15, 2017 09:46AM
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Fionnuala
is on page 371 of 454
When I entered his room at the Castel Sant’Angelo, Valentino was with his doctors...two swollen black leeches at the base of his neck, supping greedily on his blood. He looked murderously at me and abused me for having conducted my mission so ill...In his fury, he tore a leech off his neck and hurled it at me...the creature splattered hideously against a tapestry, covering a bucolic scene with an explosion of blood.
— Sep 23, 2017 04:20AM
Fionnuala
is on page 270 of 454
The only means to get in was to be lowered down a narrow cleft on a board strung from ropes and then to grope through the underground passageways by candlelight...We breathed it in wonderingly...Nero had been here, in this same room, fourteen hundred years before...
Nero's Golden House, Rome:
— Sep 21, 2017 02:23PM
Nero's Golden House, Rome:
Fionnuala
is on page 250 of 454
a letter arrived for me from Messer Leonardo. It was tied tightly with string, with a seal over the knot, and my name written in ink of a strange purplish hue. Messer Leonardo had supplied the courier who brought it with a caricature he had drawn of me, to ensure that he found the correct recipient...although it was marvelously unflattering, the likeness was sufficient for it to be clear that it was a portrait of me.
— Sep 21, 2017 09:59AM
Fionnuala
is on page 130 of 454
After I had been in Valentino’s service some months, I was employed..to help oversee the inventorying of the library of the dukes of Urbino...This was an extraordinary collection...famed especially for its remarkable manuscripts. Duke Federico, who assembled it, had no time for printed books, thinking it beneath the dignity of a ruler to sully his eyes to sully his eyes with volumes a commoner might have on his shelf
— Sep 20, 2017 12:29PM
Fionnuala
is on page 120 of 454
The day Messer Niccolò left, I was finally summoned to my audience with the duke...Duke Valentino received me in a handsome room on the uppermost floor of the palace, hung with tapestries representing scenes of hunting. He greeted me distantly..
Cesare Borgia, Duke Valentino by Altobello Melone
— Sep 19, 2017 05:53AM
Cesare Borgia, Duke Valentino by Altobello Melone
Fionnuala
is on page 111 of 454
a sharp-eyed youth from my escort spurred up alongside me to say he thought he had seen a pair of feet in a thicket...we found nothing more fearsome than two living men, bound tightly hand and foot...I told my men to release them and untie their gags...
“God’s cunt, potta di Dio”...was the first phrase that issued from his mouth. This was my first meeting with the Florentine envoy, Messer Niccolò Machiavelli...
— Sep 18, 2017 08:37PM
“God’s cunt, potta di Dio”...was the first phrase that issued from his mouth. This was my first meeting with the Florentine envoy, Messer Niccolò Machiavelli...
Fionnuala
is on page 90 of 454
We won our audience with Pope Alexander, and I had the chance to bend my knee before the man whom many thought the Antichrist in person. He received us in a room in the Vatican, in the new series of apartments he had built for himself...of great splendor...adorned in paintings of wondrous brilliance.
Pinturicchio 1494
— Sep 17, 2017 11:39PM
Pinturicchio 1494
Fionnuala
is on page 76 of 454
Our mission was a delicate one: to persuade Pope Alexander to recognize the new regime in Fermo without allowing him to extract more in recompense for this service than Liverotto’s stretched finances could afford.
Reading this while visiting the ducal palace in Mantua where the Gonzaga wrested control of the city from the Bonacolsi and then had to obtain papal recognition makes for interesting parallels.
— Sep 16, 2017 11:30PM
Reading this while visiting the ducal palace in Mantua where the Gonzaga wrested control of the city from the Bonacolsi and then had to obtain papal recognition makes for interesting parallels.
Fionnuala
is on page 50 of 454
a remarkable-looking man...had caught my attention...He looked as you might imagine the wizards of romance. He was wearing a robe in a lurid purplish color and a white fur tippet round his neck, ending in what looked like two desiccated snakes’ heads set in silver. His fine-featured face was surrounded by a great flowing mass of gray hair and a long beard that fell to his breast.
“Messer Leonardo,” the lady said
— Sep 14, 2017 07:15PM
“Messer Leonardo,” the lady said
