Catherine de Medici: The Life & Times of the Serpent Queen
Mary Hollingsworth
Catherine de’ Medici (1519-89) was a redoubtable woman. Orphaned a month after her birth, when her mother died of puerperal fever and her father of syphilis a week later, she was brought up by her grandmother, a haughty Roman aristocrat. The election of her cousin as pope made her a valuable pawn on the marriage market and at the age of fourteen she was betrothed to the second son of Francis I of France. But her future changed abruptly less than three years later when the dauphin died very suddenly, catapulting her into the limelight as queen in waiting.
This is the story of the making of that queen: how she survived the contempt of the French court, notoriously a venomous hive of gossip and intrigue; how she was forced to endure her husband’s very public preference for another woman; and, finally, the extraordinary dilemmas she faced after his death as she fought to keep the kingdom intact for their sons in a country torn apart by the wars of religion.
Book Details:
- Author: Mary Hollingsworth
- Published Year: 2024
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Mary Hollingsworth
Mary Hollingsworth has a B.Sc. in business studies and a Ph.D. in art history. Her doctoral thesis dealt with the role of the architect in Italian Renaissance building projects and led to research on the role of the patron in the development of Renaissance art and architecture, a subject she taught to undergraduates and postgraduates, and published in two books (see below).
Her subsequent work on the papers of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este considerably broadened her horizons, and expertise, well beyond the confines of art history into the everyday world of Renaissance Europe. She has publ...
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Book Reviews
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"What distinguishes Catherine de’ Medici is its close attention to detail, not only in its reconstruction of the lavish and itinerant life of the court with its “truly villainous cast of arrogant, ruthless, devious and self-serving characters” – the dramatis personae is 11 pages long – and careful analysis of the never-ending wars and plots and machinations, but in showing us what Catherine was wearing and eating and thinking on what seems to have been every day of her life ."
Daily Telegraph -
"This expert biography…Hollingsworth’s eloquent prose and fine research sheds light on a Renaissance Queen."
BBC History Magazine -
"Hollingsworth brings to this study of Catherine de Medici her characteristic combination of scholarship and narrative verve. The story bowls along at a lively pace, but there is also space for reflection on Catherine’s differing styles of life at various stages, her clothing and her personal beliefs…offers fresh insights informed by her own grounding in Italian Renaissance history….this engaging account of a remarkable Renaissance woman…"
Literary Review