{"product_id":"sprezzatura-isbn-9780385720199","title":"Sprezzatura","description":"A witty, erudite celebration of fifty great Italian cultural achievements that have significantly influenced Western civilization from the authors of \u003ci\u003eWhat Are the Seven Wonders of the World?\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sprezzatura,” or the art of effortless mastery, was coined in 1528 by Baldassare Castiglione in \u003ci\u003eThe Book of the Courtier\u003c\/i\u003e. No one has demonstrated effortless mastery throughout history quite like the Italians. From the Roman calendar and the creator of the modern orchestra (Claudio Monteverdi) to the beginnings of ballet and the creator of modern political science (Niccolò Machiavelli), \u003cb\u003eSprezzatura\u003c\/b\u003e highlights fifty great Italian cultural achievements in a series of fifty information-packed essays in chronological order.\u003ci\u003ePreface \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 Rome gives the world a calendar—twice \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e2 The Roman Republic and our own \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e3 Julius Caesar and the imperial purple \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e4 Catullus revolutionizes love poetry \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e5 Master builders of the ancient world \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e6 “Satire is wholly ours” \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e7 Ovid’s treasure hoard of myth and fable \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e8 The Roman legacy of law \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e9 St. Benedict: Father of Western monasticism, preserver of the Roman heritage \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e10 Salerno and Bologna: The earliest medical school and university \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e11 St. Francis of Assisi, \u003ci\u003e“alter Christus” \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e12 \u003ci\u003e“Stupor mundi”\u003c\/i\u003e: Emperor Frederick II, King of Sicily and Jerusalem \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e13 St. Thomas Aquinas: Titan of theology \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e14 Dante’s incomparable \u003ci\u003eComedy \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e15 Banks, bookkeeping, and the rise of commercial capitalism \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e16 Petrarch: Creator of the modern lyric \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e17 Boccaccio and the development of Western literary realism \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e18 The mystic as activist: St. Catherine of Siena \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e19 Inventors of the visual language of the Renaissance: Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e20 Lorenzo Ghiberti and the “Gates of Paradise” \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e21 Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, grand patrons of art and learning \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e22 Sigismondo Malatesta: The condottiere with a vision \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e23 Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance man, eternal enigma \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e24 A new world beckons: Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, Verrazano \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e25 Machiavelli and the dawn of modern political science \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e26 Michelangelo: Epitome of human artistry \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e27 \u003ci\u003eSprezzatura \u003c\/i\u003eand Castiglione’s concept of the gentleman \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e28 Aretino: Self-publicist, pornographer, “secretary of the world” \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e29 Giovanni Della Casa’s \u003ci\u003eGalateo: \u003c\/i\u003eEtiquette book par excellence \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e30 Andrea Palladio and his “bible” of building \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e31 Catherine de’ Medici: Godmother of French cuisine \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e32 Peri’s \u003ci\u003eEuridice: \u003c\/i\u003eThe birth of opera from the spirit of tragedy \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e33 Galileo frames the foundations of modern science \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e34 Two sonorous gifts: The violin and the piano \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e35 Claudio Monteverdi, father of modern music \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e36 The Baroque splendors of Bernini \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e37 Pioneers of modern anatomy: Eustachio, Fallopio, Malpighi, Morgagni, et al. \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e38 Founder of modern penology: Cesare Beccaria \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e39 Trailblazers in electricity: Galvani and Volta \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e40 Venice: Rhapsody in stone, water, melody, and color \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e41 Europe’s premier poet of pessimism: Giacomo Leopardi \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e42 Giuseppe Garibaldi: A united Italy emerges \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e43 The last “Renaissance” prince—D’Annunzio at Fiume \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e44 \u003ci\u003eLa Dottoressa: \u003c\/i\u003eMaria Montessori and a new era in early childhood education \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e45 Marconi invents the radio\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e46 Enrico Fermi: Father of the atomic age \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e47 Roberto Rossellini: Neorealist cinema and beyond\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e48 An unlikely international bestseller: Lampedusa’s \u003ci\u003eThe Leopard \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e49 Ferrari—on the road to perfection \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e50 \u003ci\u003eLa moda italiana: \u003c\/i\u003eThe art of apparel \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuggested Reading \u003cbr\u003eIndex \u003cbr\u003eAbout the Contributors\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter D'Epiro \u003c\/b\u003eand\u003cb\u003e Mary Desmond Pinkowish\u003c\/b\u003e are the authors of \u003ci\u003eWhat are the Seven Wonders of the World?: And 100 Other Great Cultural Lists--Fully Explicated. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter D'Epiro\u003c\/b\u003e is also the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Firsts: 150 World-Changing People and Events from Caesar Augustus to the Internet. \u003c\/i\u003eHe received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Queens College and his M. Phil. and PH.D. in English from Yale University. He has taught English at the secondary and college levels and worked as an editor and writer for thirty years. He lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey.  \u003cb\u003eMary Desmond Pinkowish\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of numerous articles on medicine and general science for physician and lay audiences.  A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she studied biology and art history, she also earned a master's degree in public health from Yale University.  She works for \u003ci\u003ePatient Care\u003c\/i\u003e magazine and lives in Larchmont, New York.\u003c\/p\u003eOne\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRome gives the world a calendar--twice\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eCaesar called in the best scholars and   mathematicians of his time and, out of the systems he had before him, formed a new   and more exact method of correcting the calendar, which the Romans use to this day,   and seem to succeed better than any nation in avoiding the errors occasioned by the   inequality of the solar and lunar years.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--Plutarch, Lives, \"Life of Julius Caesar\"   (c. a.d. 100)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Despite current use of about forty traditional or religious calendars   (such as the Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese), it is the calendar of Julius Caesar,   as slightly modified by Pope Gregory XIII, that functions as the worldwide civil   norm. Yet it was a long, tortuous road that led to nearly universal adoption of this   rational and elegant tool for measuring the length of the year.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In its earliest   known form, the Roman calendar had only 10 months and 304 days, leaving 61 days in   winter uncounted and unaccounted for. This peculiar method of reckoning time was   attributed to Rome's legendary founder and first king, Romulus (traditionally reigned   753-717 b.c.). In those days, January and February didn't yet exist (at least in   the calendar), since Roman farmers didn't have much fieldwork to do in that dead   part of the year after the last crops had been harvested and stored. After a two-month   hiatus, the new year began in March with preparation of the ground for the next season's   crop.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Although Ovid, in his long poem on the Roman calendar, the Fasti, quips that   Romulus was better at war than at astronomy, at least some of us might wish that   \"the year of Romulus\" had prevailed, with all those discretionary days at the end.   It was too good to last. The religious lawgiver Numa Pompilius, legendary second   king of Rome, was credited with introducing, in about 700 b.c., the months of January   and February at the end of the Roman year, lengthening it by 51 days. However, this   355-day year of what came to be called the Roman republican calendar was more probably   brought to the city by the Etruscan Tarquinius Priscus (616-579 b.c.), traditionally   Rome's fifth king.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The main purpose of this calendar was to ensure proper observance   of forty-five religious festivals and to indicate on which days public business could   or could not be conducted. Four months had 31 days, February had 28, and the rest   had 29. In the attempt to rectify the discrepancy between this lunar 355-day year   and the solar year, an extra month called Mercedonius, which had 27 and 28 days alternately,   was intercalated every other year after February 23. (February 24 through 28 were   apparently not observed in years with intercalations.) This meant that any four-year   cycle contained 1,465 days, with the year averaging 366.25 days. First way too short,   now a tad too long.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Compounding the problem, the intercalations were often haphazard,   as a result of ignorance or political motives. (An artificially short year meant   less time in office for magistrates who had made themselves unpopular with the pontiffs,   the priests responsible for ordering the intercalations.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Lunar calendars like early   Rome's are notoriously troublesome. A year of 12 lunar months, or lunations, each   averaging 29.5 days, consists of only 354 days. (The Roman republican calendar added   an extra day to its year, since the even numbers were considered unlucky.) For a   lunar calendar to remain in sync with the solar year of roughly 365.25 days and the   turning of the seasons, a month of various lengths must be intercalated every few   years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was several months out of whack   with the seasons. But while in Egypt in 48-47 b.c., Caesar discussed the Egyptian   solar calendar with Alexandrian savants. As pontifex maximus, or chief priest, of   the Roman religion, he was familiar with the responsibilities of the College of Pontiffs   to regulate the calendar, including the insertion of intercalary months. But there   had been only one intercalation since 58 b.c.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As dictator of Rome, Caesar was planning   stupendous military campaigns in the East, and he wanted a single official calendar   that would keep in step with the sun. Since January was now occurring in autumn,   the harvest and vintage festivals and the proper times for planting and sailing were   losing all correspondence with the seasons, and anarchic time-reckoning complicated   the empire's legal and commercial transactions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With his chief consultant, Sosigenes,   an Alexandrian Greek astronomer and mathematician, Caesar devised a new calendar   for the new Rome he was to rule, from Spain to the Middle East: a purely solar calendar   of 12 months and 365 days with a leap year occurring every fourth year. Based on   the calendar devised by the Alexandrian astronomer Aristarchus in 239 b.c., this   Julian calendar was adapted by Caesar for the Roman world in 46 b.c. The extra day   of leap years was worked in by repeating February 23 (which had once functioned as   the last day of the Roman year). The length of most months was also changed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Caesar   ordered two intercalations in 46 b.c.: the first, which was normally due to be made   that year under the old system, of 23 days in February; the second, the addition   of 67 days in the fall to realign the calendar with the seasons. The 355-day year   was thus bloated by 90 days, adding up to a truly epic 445 days--\"the last year of   confusion,\" as it was called.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The era of the Julian calendar formally began on New   Year's Day, January 1, 45 b.c. A little more than a year after this epochal reform,   Caesar was assassinated, but not before July was named in his honor (just as August   was later named for his successor, Augustus). July was originally Quintilis (\"fifth   month\") and August Sextilis (\"sixth month\"), harking back to when the Roman year   began in March. The Latin names of our other months were handed down from very early   Roman times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Julian calendar was adopted throughout the Roman Empire and later   by the nascent Christian Church. For more than 1,600 years it served as the calendar   for much of the Western world, and it's essentially the one we use today, but for   the fine-tuning of a late-sixteenth-century pope.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After the Roman world was Christianized,   the most significant calendrical developments in the West were the establishment   of the modern week and the advent of the a.d. dating system. The ancient Romans originally   had an eight-day week. By edict of Constantine the Great in a.d. 321, this was officially   replaced by a seven-day week with Sunday (dies solis) as the first day, which was   confirmed as the Christian day of worship. The account in Genesis of the first seven   days of the world was clearly a major influence on this development.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The practice   of dating events in years after the birth of Christ was devised in the early sixth   century by the Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus, although Jesus himself was probably   born in 4 or 5 b.c. rather than in a.d. 1, as Dionysius had calculated. Dionysius   also neglected to include a year 0, since the concept of zero had not yet been invented.   This explains why 2001, and not 2000, actually marked the beginning of the current   millennium.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The a.d. system is named for the Latin anno Domini (\"in the year of   our Lord\"). Although the Roman scholar and monk Cassiodorus used a.d. dating in a   published work as early as 562, it became widespread in Europe only in the tenth   century. The use of b.c. (\"before Christ\") dating began in the seventeenth century.   Before that, Western scholars counted years before the Christian era by using either   the a.u.c. system (ab urbe condita, \"from the founding of the city [of Rome],\" which   traditionally occurred in 753 b.c.) or the a.m. (anno mundi, \"year of the world\")   reckoning of the Jewish calendar, which dates events from 3761 b.c., the supposed   year of the Creation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the meantime, the average length of the Julian year, 365.25   days, kept right on varying from the true solar year of 365.242199 days. Caesar's   year turned out to be 11 minutes, 14 seconds too long. About every 11*3 centuries,   the surfeit amounts to one day's additional deviation from the true progression of   the seasons. By the sixteenth century the date of Easter, which is calculated with   reference to the moon and the vernal equinox (then occurring on March 11), had drifted   too far from the astronomical beginning of spring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When the canon lawyer Ugo Boncompagni   became Pope Gregory XIII (reigned 1572-85), he inherited a mandate from the Council   of Trent to do something about the scandal of the dating of Easter, the most important   Christian festival. In true modern style, Gregory appointed a committee to study   the question. Among the proposals for revising the calendar was one from a physician   and astronomer, Luigi Lilio (1510-76), who hailed from Calabria and later studied   in Naples and taught at the University of Perugia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In 1576 Lilio's manuscript was   presented to the committee by his brother Antonio, also a physician, since Luigi   had died earlier that year. Four years later, the pope's blue-ribbon panel welcomed   Ignazio Danti (1536-86), a versatile Dominican friar who was a mathematician, astronomer,   mapmaker, artist, and university professor. Danti had constructed a gnomon, a kind   of gigantic sundial, in the church of San Petronio in Bologna, which confirmed the   precise discrepancy of the Julian calendar from the true solar year.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The most prominent   committee member was a Bavarian Jesuit astronomer and mathematician, Christopher   Clavius (1537-1612), who became convinced of the soundness of Luigi Lilio's proposals   and apparently wrote the bulky final draft of the panel's recommendations. To secure   a more accurate length for the year over the long term, Lilio had suggested that   century years not divisible by 400 should not be leap years. This would shave off   3 days of excess Julian-calendar accrual every 400 years, since Caesar's calendar   had stipulated a leap year every four without exception. To correct the Julian calendar   for its drift over more than sixteen centuries, Lilio had proposed either omitting   the extra day from all the leap years slated for the next 40 years or just dropping   10 days from an upcoming year.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On February 24, 1582, the white-bearded octogenarian   Gregory XIII issued the papal bull Inter gravissimas, which instituted the Gregorian   calendar reforms. To catch up with the sun, that year was shorn of 10 days: The day   after October 4 was declared to be October 15. This measure brought the date of the   vernal equinox into conformity with what it had been in the days of the First Council   of Nicaea, which in a.d. 325 had authoritatively ruled on how to use the beginning   of spring to determine the movable feast of Easter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Aside from the 10 days deleted   from 1582, the major change of the Gregorian calendar was its requirement that years   like 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100 should not be considered leap years. In addition,   New Year's Day was definitively established as January 1 (there had been many local   variants), and the extra day of leap years was to be inserted after February 28.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Gregorian calendar was soon adopted in the Catholic world but resoundingly rejected   in all Protestant territories. Only more than a century later, between 1699 and 1701,   did Denmark and the Protestant regions of the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland   accede to the reasonableness of the \"popish calendar.\" Great Britain and its colonies   proved even more stubborn, retaining the Julian calendar until 1752. By that time   11 days had to be dropped to catch up, since 1700 had been a leap year in Britain   but not according to the Gregorian calendar. Thus Parliament decreed that in 1752   the day after Wednesday, September 2, was to be Thursday, September 14. The beginning   of the year was also moved from March 25 to January 1. To avoid all reference to   Pope Gregory, the British had christened his calendar the New Style calendar (N.S.),   while Julian reckoning was dubbed Old Style (O.S.).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Japan adopted the Gregorian   calendar in 1873, Eastern Europe and Russia between 1912 and 1919, Greece in 1924,   Turkey in 1927. China accepted Pope Gregory's calendar in 1912--but not throughout   the entire country until 1949--and its traditional lunar calendar is also used. The   Eastern Orthodox Churches still rely on the Julian calendar for determining Easter   and thus celebrate it on a different day from Roman Catholics and Protestants.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But   the average Gregorian year of 365.2422 days still runs almost 26 seconds faster than   the true year. Since 1582, the surplus has amounted to about 3 hours. A further refinement--that   of omitting a leap day from all years exactly divisible by 4000--will keep the Gregorian   year accurate to within 1 day in 20,000 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Our official year is no longer measured   in days, minutes, and seconds but in the number of atomic oscillations (290,091,200,500,000,000)   of the rare metal cesium. Before humans were capable of feats like that, however,   it was the determination of Julius Caesar and, much later, Luigi Lilio and Pope Gregory   XIII that provided the world with a relatively uncomplicated and scientifically respectable   method for keeping track of all-important time.authors of What Are the Seven Wonders of the World?","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301787160805,"sku":"NP9780385720199","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385720199.jpg?v=1767737127","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/sprezzatura-isbn-9780385720199","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}