The Beauty and the Terror: Professor Catherine Fletcher (1492)
1492 is our destination in this episode of Travels Through Time as Professor Catherine Fletcher guides us through the year in three pivotal moments: two deaths and one discovery.
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The last decade of the fifteenth century was turbulent and exhilarating, especially in Italy where the Renaissance was in full swing against a backdrop of political intrigue and vicious warfare.
Presenting these two aspects of history in contrast to one another is the main theme of Catherine’s new book, The Beauty and the Terror, An Alternative History of the Renaissance.
Her aim is to locate the wonders of Renaissance art within the brutal historical reality of Italy in this period – two subjects that are often siloed off from one another in modern scholarship. Her book begins, as does this episode, in the year 1492. This is a year instantly familiar to many from the childhood rhyme, ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.’ But what else was happening in that fabled and consequetial year?
Catherine Fletcher is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University. According to Simon Sebag Montefiore, her new book reveals, “the filth and thuggery, slavery, sex, slaughter and skulduggery behind the exquisite art of Leonardo and Michelangelo.”
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Click here to order Catherine Fletcher’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Listen to the podcast here
Show notes
Scene One: In an ornate villa in Careggi on the outskirts of Florence Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’ de’ Medici lies dying, surrounded by beautiful works of art – some ancient and others made recently by the great artists of the day. The death of this great patron of Renaissance arts and letters and the ruler of the city-state of Florence leaves the city under the shaky rule of his son Piero, who was swiftly exiled and came to be known as ‘the Unfortunate’.
Scene Two: The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Pope Innocent VIII, whose territories spanned a swathe of the peninsula from Rome to Ravenna on the Adriatic coast, has died so the traditional process of conclave begins in the Sistine Chapel. Cardinals flock from across Europe to shut themselves away and vote for the next Pope. The Chapel is partitioned, and beds, candles, food and cooking equipment are brought in to service them during their deliberations, which are supposed to be completely sealed. After much discussion and deal-making, they settle on, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, now infamous for all the wrong reasons. He takes the name Pope Alexander VI.
Scene Three: Friday 12th October, the Bahamas in the West Indies. Christopher Columbus sights land and arrives on the coast of an island called Guanahaní with his crew of explorers. They initially believe they have reached the eastern coast of Japan and are delighted by the ‘trees, very green, many streams and a large variety of fruits.’ Columbus unfurls the banner of his patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain; the conquest of the new world has officially begun. The explorers later encounter the native peoples with whom they barter glass beads and bells in return for parrots and spears.
Memento: A handful of Lorenzo’s extraordinary collection of antique jewellery.
People
Presenter: Peter Moore
Interview: Violet Moller
Guest: Professor Catherine Fletcher
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
See where 1492 fits on our Timeline
Cantino Planisphere (1502)
The Cantino Planisphere was made by an unknown cartographer in 1502. It shows the world, as it became known to the Europeans after the early exploration voyages of Columbus, Da Gama and others at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century to the Americas, Africa and India. It is widely-considered one of the most precious cartographic documents in existence. It is kept in the Biblioteca Universitaria Estense, Modena, Italy. Source: WikiCommons
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Click here to order The Beauty and the Terror by Catherine Fletcher from our friends at John Sandoe’s Books.
A superb narrative of the ‘underside’ of the Italian Renaissance: the Genoese and Neapolitans; the women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, engineers, prostitutes, farmers and citizens who all lived alongside the familiar names.
Featured image from ColorGraph
Taken 1896, San Francisco, California, United States
(Library of Congress)
"Chinese migrants flocked to San Francisco as early as 1850 were welcomed by San Francisco's first mayor, John Geary. By the 1880s, over four hundred Chinese businesses were trading in the area. Arnold Genthe, the photographer, started shooting Chinatown soon after he moved to San Francisco after finding gainful employment as a tutor for a local wealthy citizen. 200 or so photographs he took are in circulation, some of the only surviving examples of San Francisco before the calamitous earthquake of 1906."