Charles V and the Princes of the Renaissance: Mary Hollingsworth (1530)
Mary Hollingsworth, author of Princes of the Renaissance
In this sweeping tour of Renaissance century Italy, Mary Hollingsworth takes us to see the most powerful figure of the age: the King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, the Lord of the Netherlands and the soon-to-be-crowned Holy Roman Emperor - Charles V.
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The Italian Renaissance is one of the most magnificent periods in history. It was a time of huge creativity, when beautiful, compelling buildings, paintings and sculptures were created by artists like Raphael, Michelangelo, Romano, da Vinci, Bramante, Mantegna and Titian.
As fascinating as the works themselves is the cultural context from which they arose. Sixteenth-century Italy was a place of many and great divisions. The complex interrelationships between the leading ruling families of this time led to fierce rivalry and, often, armed conflict.
The artist Michelangelo, for instance, is best known for his paintings and sculptures, but during his life he also served as a military office during the Siege of Florence.
This is the compelling contrast of the Renaissance. As the historian Mary Hollingsworth explains, many of the Italian princes spent as much time making war as they did making merry, living lives of often shocking brutality on the battlefield.
In this episode she takes us back to experience all this in the year 1530. This was a fraught time. Rome had been violently sacked three years previously. Many princes were raising money by working as professional soldiers. Mercenaries known as condottiere were fighting for the highest bidder.
No one, though was as powerful as the soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. With the wealth of America and the crown of Spain behind him, 1530 was the year that he turned his attention to Italy.
Here we see Charles’s coronation in Bologna. Hollingsworth tells us about the extravagance and conspicuous consumption, when the courtiers of Mantua, Urbino and Modena floated down the canals of Northern Italy, swathed in luscious fabrics on specially designed barges.
But, as ever, conflict is never far away. Florentines, as Hollingsworth describes, began the year with little food and under seige. 1530 was to be a year when the balance of power shifted irrevocably across the Italian peninsular.
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Show notes
Scene One: Bologna, 24 February, Pope Clement VII crowns Charles V as the Holy Roman Emperor, the last Pope to do so, marking the end of an 800-year tradition that stretched back to Charlemagne.
Scene Two: Mantua, 2 April, Charles V is staying with Federigo Gonzaga at his beautiful court, they play a game of real tennis before sitting down in the great dining hall surrounded by Guilio Romano’s erotic frescos to enjoy an elaborate banquet.
Scene Three: Florence, 15 April (Good Friday) Imperial forces surround the city of Florence, leaving just one access point into the city at Empoli. Inside the gates, the situation is getting more desperate, food supplies are very low, but the spirit of the Florentine Republicans remains undimmed.
Memento: A piece of Florentine plaster daubed with the words “Poor but Free!”
Further reading: Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V, 2019 (Yale University Press)
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Mary Hollingsworth
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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About Mary Hollingsworth
Mary Hollingsworth is the author of the Telegraph Book of the Year, The Medici, she is also the author of specialist art history books including Conclave 1559, The Borgias, The Cardinal’s Hat and Patronage in Sixteenth Century Italy, among others. Mary is an expert on Renaissance art and culture and she has a Ph.D. in art history from the University of East Anglia. Her thesis dealt with the role of the patron in the development of Renaissance art and architecture, a subject she taught to undergraduates and postgraduates at UEA, and which formed the basis of two books.
Her subsequent work on the papers of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, preserved in huge quantities in the Italian state archives at Modena, broadened her horizons and expertise well beyond the confines of art history and into the everyday world of Renaissance Europe - not only the art and the fripperies and baubles we associate with pomp and prestige, but also the soap, the candles, the shoelaces, the cooking pots and the drains, the stuff of everyday life.
She has published widely on all these topics in academic journals and was one of the senior academics on the Material Renaissance Project, a collaborative venture funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Board and the Getty Grant Program, which investigated costs and consumption in Italy 1300-1650. (Follow Mary on Twitter @mmcontrary)
King Charles V as a young man by Bernard van Orley
Source: Wiki Commons
The Renaissance
The Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Piero della Francesca, ca. 1474. Oil on wood panel. (Used with permission)
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