Shrewd and ruthless, the Pucci were Medici loyalists whose political and cultural alignment with the most powerful family in Renaissance Florence was rewarded with wealth and influence. The Pucci family's martial support for the Medici in the ugly business of ruling Tuscany drove their transformation from a clan of minor guildsmen to a noble dynasty with three cardinals to its name. Over the next centuries, they showcased their exalted status with art and architecture that mirrored Medici tastes and reflected the values of civic humanism. The political and religious turmoil of the High Renaissance is writ large in this vivid portrait of the Pucci cardinals and their artistic patronage, a cultural biography inflected by the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, the Sack of Rome, the Reformation, and the occupation of Italy by Emperor Charles V. New archival evidence documents the chapels, palaces, and villas that were built, expanded, and decorated by the Pucci family in Rome, Tuscany, and Umbria. These celebrated projects were carried out by luminaries of Renaissance art and architecture: Michelozzo, the Pollaiuolo brothers, the Sangallo family, Baccio d'Agnolo, the Montelupo workshop, and others. A remarkable body of inventories reveals how the family's trials and tribulations shaped the fate of their estates and illustrates the role luxury goods played in the social ambitions of this newly-arrived family. Finally, a previously unknown catalogue of Palazzo Pucci tells the tale of the nineteenth-century dispersal of the family's priceless Renaissance artworks, a collection that once paralleled the splendor of the Medici court.

A book for fashion and design lovers detailing Emilio Pucci's creativity beyond fashion, expressed through his interior design projects, rugs, and porcelain. The brightly colored printed fabrics that twist around in a kaleidoscope created by Emilio Pucci recount an important period of Italian fashion history dating back to the 1960s. This volume celebrates Emilio Pucci's creativity, which he expressed through his interior design projects, rugs, and porcelain, as well as in his fashion. Pucci's patterns and designs have been used in collaboration with other brands to create designer and collector objects. Emilio Pucci focused on the creation of rugs that were presented in 1970 at the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires. The production of exclusive rugs continues upon the request of selected clients, whose houses have been photographed for the book. Currently, Pucci collaborates with Cappellini, Kartell, Bisazza, Illy, and many others on their interior design projects.eation of rugs that were presented at the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires. The production of exclusive rugs continues upon the request of selected clients, whose houses have been photographed for the book. Currently, Pucci collaborates with Cappellini, Kartell, Bisazza, Illy, and many others on their interior design projects.

This “gripping social history” (Publishers Weekly), with all the passion and pathos of a classic opera, chronicles the riveting first campaign against the death penalty waged in 1895 by American pioneer activist, Cora Slocomb, Countess of Brazzà, to save the life of a twenty-year-old illiterate Italian immigrant, Maria Barbella, who killed the man who had abused her. Previously published as The Trials of Maria Barbella. In 1895, a twenty-two-year-old Italian seamstress named Maria Barbella was accused of murdering her lover, Domenico Cataldo, after he seduced her and broke his promise to marry her. Following a sensational trial filled with inept lawyers, dishonest reporters and editors, and a crooked judge repaying political favors, the illiterate immigrant became the first woman sentenced to the newly invented electric chair at Sing Sing, where she is also the first female prisoner. Behind the scenes, a corporate war raged for the monopoly of electricity pitting two giants, Edison and Westinghouse with Nikola Tesla at his side, against each other. Enter Cora Slocomb, an American-born Italian aristocrat and activist, who launched the first campaign against the death penalty to save Maria. Rallying the New York press, Cora reached out across the social divide—from the mansions of Fifth Avenue to the tenements of Little Italy. Maria’s “crime of honor” quickly becomes a cause celebre, seizing the nation’s attention. Idanna Pucci, Cora’s great-granddaughter, masterfully recounts this astonishing story by drawing on original research and documents from the US and Italy. This dramatic page-turner, interwoven with twists and unexpected turns, grapples with the tragedy of immigration, capital punishment, ethnic prejudice, criminal justice, corporate greed, violence against women, and a woman’s right to reject the role of victim. Over a century later, this story is as urgent as ever.

An exploration of the career and creations of the Italian fashion designer.

An exploration of ways of looking in Renaissance Florence, where works of art were part of a complex process of social exchange Renaissance Florence, of endless fascination for the beauty of its art and architecture, is no less intriguing for its dynamic political, economic, and social life. In this book Patricia Lee Rubin crosses the boundaries of all these areas to arrive at an original and comprehensive view of the place of images in Florentine society. The author asks an array of questions: Why were works of art made? Who were the artists who made them, and who commissioned them? How did they look, and how were they looked at? She demonstrates that the answers to such questions illuminate the contexts in which works of art were created, and how they were valued and viewed. Rubin seeks out the meeting places of meaning in churches, in palaces, in piazzas--places of exchange where identities were taken on and transformed, often with the mediation of images. She concentrates on questions of vision and visuality, on "seeing and being seen." With a blend of exceptional illustrations; close analyses of sacred and secular paintings by artists including Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Filippino Lippi, and Botticelli; and wide-ranging bibliographic essays, the book shines new light on fifteenth-century Florence, a special place that made beauty one of its defining features.

**Skipping Stones Honor Award Winner** The true story of a prince from Bali, whose fascinating life was shaped by uncommon events and exotic places. Born in 1919, Prince Made Djelantik witnessed pivotal moments of history: the twilight of a feudal age, the Second World War in Nazi-occupied Holland, Indonesia's long battle for independence from four hundred years of Dutch colonial rule, and finally, the great changes provoked on his island by unbridled development. Driven by an early passion for medicine, the prince set sail for Europe on the eve of WWII to study at the University of Amsterdam. His calling then took him to far-flung corners of the planet, where he encountered everything from a pirate ambush in the South China Sea and a night attack by a famished army of rats, to a deadly volcanic eruption and his arrest by Saddam Hussein's secret police. When he returned to Bali in the mid-1970s, his public identity as a doctor took precedence over his royal lineage and he was known simply as "Dr. Djelantik" on the island. The doctor implemented the successful campaign which finally eradicated malaria from Bali and established the island's first hospital. Author Idanna Pucci's evocative narrative of this unusual life is told in short story form, making The World Odyssey of a Balinese Prince an easy read for anyone who finds themselves dreaming of distant places. More than 40 of Dr. Djelantik's own watercolors--done when he was in his 80s--help to illustrate his adventures in vivid detail.