1.) What are some of the qualities and strategies Machiavelli recommends to political leaders in the excerpts you read? How does this represent a break with the past?
Machiavelli’s most lasting literary work called ‘The Prince’ presenting his views on how a prince should behave and how he should rule. There’s a lot of things he states in this piece such as; a prince who behaves according to christian morals just won’t survive, to maintain his power/authority he (the prince) will often be forced to act treacherously, ruthlessly, and inhumanely which leads to his quote about this piece of writing, “Prince must always be prepared to act immorally when it becomes necessary.” The Prince doesn’t include anything about the natural law, the church, or christianity at all, because he believes in the roman ethic. This alarms the church and they don’t approve of his work.
As much as there are negative side to this writing I believe there’s a positive side as well. For example, a prince should be feared but not hated to which I personally find not exactly a bad thing. It makes sense as well, a prince should let people know their place and respect him, but the prince shouldn’t give them a reason to not give respect in other words to hate him. A way that Machiavelli suggests doing so, is whenever he says to not steal the wives of others, for that gets people angry for sure.
2.) Briefly discuss three artists from the early Renaissance (in other words, people from lessons 158 and 159) as well as one major work for each.
- Ghiberti and his flawless precise artwork of ‘The sacrifice of Isaac’ to which he won 1st place in the art contest.
- Giotto one of the greatest artist at the time, whom learned skills from Cimabue (another great artist known for his mosaic of St. John) his work ‘The kiss of Judas’ was very significant and was known for the realism in his artwork pieces.
- Botticelli’s work wasn’t much appreciated until the early 19th century. His work ‘The birth of Venus’ contained some classical mythology.
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