26th April 1478: The Pazzi family launch their failed plot against the Medici family

[bucolic_frolic]

How the Medicis dealt with an attempt to overthrow them.

[CTyankee]

1. Florence's history is very compelling. In my own art studies, the history of the city was thrilling.

The plague wiped out half its population in the 1300s and the succeeding events taken all together brought on the Italian Renaissance.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. In your studies did you find any reference

to Chinese concubines - servants, cooks, nanny's and the like - in the period before and during the Renaissance?

I ask because I read a book that was categorized as alternative history, and I'm sure I can't find it again, that made that case. And it made sense to me because of those wonderful 'Mona Lisa' eyes, and because my own grandmother had them as well, and the Chinese were seafarers every bit as much as the Vikings and trade routes are usually farther than historians will commit to.

Italy of course was always about city states, and was politically unstable and overrun many times, by Arabs in the Dark Ages and centuries later, and by Normans solicited by the Pope to protect southern Italy and Sicily - Count Roger II and others who built castles.

[CTyankee]

3. No, I didn't. Nor did I hear about it when I traveled to Italy specifically arts oriented.

Sicily, which I have visited/toured twice, had a much more varied story. The island of Sicily was invaded so many times (we still have an air station there) because of its strategic location.