Stevenson, Jane – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Fri, 14 Mar 2025 18:23:38 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Stevenson, Jane – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 Siena https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/siena-2/ Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=35845 An authoritative, richly illustrated history, and affectionate celebration, of Siena, one of the best-loved and most-visited cities in Italy.

Occupying a hilltop site in the midst of a vast, undulating landscape, Siena is as much a magnet for contemporary tourism as Florence. However, its proud republican past presents an intriguing contrast with its Medici-dominated northern Tuscan rival, with which it tussled for local supremacy for much of the High Middle Ages. From the twelfth century, profiting from its advantageous position on a major pilgrim route, the Republic of Siena developed into a major European power and remained an important commercial, financial and artistic centre for four centuries.

Jane Stevenson charts the changing fortunes of a city that rose to an astonishingly productive cultural heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, suffered a catastrophic late medieval decline in the aftermath of the Black Death, but transcended the loss of its wider political power to enjoy a prosperous civic afterlife. Siena today enjoys a cherished position as a uniquely well-preserved medieval city, crammed with world-class art and architecture, furnished with appealing and intriguing traditions, and set in a heavenly landscape.

]]> Siena https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/siena/ Thu, 13 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=26438 An authoritative, richly illustrated history, and affectionate celebration, of Siena, one of the best-loved and most-visited cities in Italy.Occupying a hilltop site in the midst of a vast, undulating landscape, Siena is as much a magnet for contemporary tourism as Florence. However, its proud republican past presents an intriguing contrast with its Medici-dominated northern Tuscan rival, with which it tussled for local supremacy for much of the High Middle Ages. From the twelfth century, profiting from its advantageous position on a major pilgrim route, the Republic of Siena developed into a major European power and remained an important commercial, financial and artistic centre for four centuries.Jane Stevenson charts the changing fortunes of a city that rose to an astonishingly productive cultural heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, suffered a catastrophic late medieval decline in the aftermath of the Black Death, but transcended the loss of its wider political power to enjoy a prosperous civic afterlife. Siena today enjoys a cherished position as a uniquely well-preserved medieval city, crammed with world-class art and architecture, furnished with appealing and intriguing traditions, and set in a heavenly landscape.

]]> The Light of Italy https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-light-of-italy-2/ Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=24607 The story of the Renaissance city and palace of Urbino, and the life of the extraordinary man who created it: Federico da Montefeltro, humanist, book-collector, patron of celebrated artists and battle-scarred mercenary soldier.

]]> The story of the Renaissance city and palace of Urbino, and the life of the extraordinary man who created it: Federico da Montefeltro.

‘Painstakingly researched and yet unfailingly readable’ Ross King
‘An insight into one of Renaissance Italy’s most glamorous courts’ Catherine Fletcher
‘The perfect tour guide to the past’ Literary Review
‘A fabulous merging of seductive design with bravura scholarship’ Alexandra Harris
‘A superior study… Packed with detail’ TLS

The one-eyed mercenary soldier Federico da Montefeltro, lord of Urbino between 1444 and 1482, was one of the most successful condottiere of the Italian Renaissance: renowned humanist, patron of the artist Piero della Francesca, and creator of one of the most celebrated libraries in Italy outside the Vatican. From 1460 until her early death in 1472 he was married to Battista, of the formidable Sforza family, their partnership apparently blissful. In the fine palace he built overlooking Urbino, Federico assembled a court regarded by many as representing a high point of Renaissance culture. For Baldassare Castiglione, Federico was la luce dell’Italia – ‘the light of Italy’.

Jane Stevenson’s affectionate account of Urbino’s flowering and decline casts revelatory light on patronage, politics and humanism in fifteenth-century Italy. As well as recounting the gripping stories of Federico and his Montefeltro and della Rovere successors, Stevenson considers in details Federico’s cultural legacy – investigating the palace itself, the splendours of the ducal library, and his other architectural projects in Gubbio and elsewhere.

]]> The Light of Italy https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-light-of-italy/ Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=17252 The story of the Renaissance city and palace of Urbino, and the life of the extraordinary man who created it: Federico da Montefeltro, humanist, book-collector, patron of celebrated artists and battle-scarred mercenary soldier.

]]> The story of the Renaissance city and palace of Urbino, and the life of the extraordinary man who created it: Federico da Montefeltro.

‘Painstakingly researched and yet unfailingly readable’ Ross King
‘An insight into one of Renaissance Italy’s most glamorous courts’ Catherine Fletcher
‘The perfect tour guide to the past’ Literary Review
‘A fabulous merging of seductive design with bravura scholarship’ Alexandra Harris
‘A superior study… Packed with detail’ TLS

The one-eyed mercenary soldier Federico da Montefeltro, lord of Urbino between 1444 and 1482, was one of the most successful condottiere of the Italian Renaissance: renowned humanist, patron of the artist Piero della Francesca, and creator of one of the most celebrated libraries in Italy outside the Vatican. From 1460 until her early death in 1472 he was married to Battista, of the formidable Sforza family, their partnership apparently blissful. In the fine palace he built overlooking Urbino, Federico assembled a court regarded by many as representing a high point of Renaissance culture. For Baldassare Castiglione, Federico was la luce dell’Italia – ‘the light of Italy’.

Jane Stevenson’s affectionate account of Urbino’s flowering and decline casts revelatory light on patronage, politics and humanism in fifteenth-century Italy. As well as recounting the gripping stories of Federico and his Montefeltro and della Rovere successors, Stevenson considers in details Federico’s cultural legacy – investigating the palace itself, the splendours of the ducal library, and his other architectural projects in Gubbio and elsewhere.

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