How to Get Ahead at Renaissance Court

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BBC Four HD

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Stephen Smith

Basil Comely

Suniti Somaiya

Grace Brassington

Nicholas Franklin

How to Get Ahead: Episode 2: At Renaissance Court

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At Medieval Court

Episode 2

Episode 2: At Renaissance Court

How to Get Ahead

At Renaissance Court

BBC Four - How to Get Ahead, At Renaissance Court

Stephen Smith explores Renaissance Florence under the reign of Grand Duke Cosimo Medici.

Stephen Smith explores Renaissance Florence under the reign of Grand Duke Cosimo Medici, where some of the greatest painters, sculptors and craftsmen in world history served.

Writer, broadcaster and Newsnight arts correspondent Stephen Smith explores Renaissance Florence under the reign of Grand Duke Cosimo Medici. Cosimo's fledgling court prized the finer things in life and some of the greatest painters, sculptors and craftsmen in world history came to serve the Grand Duke. But successful courtiers had to have brains as well as brawn. The canniest of them looked to theorists like Niccolo Machiavelli for underhand ways to get ahead, whilst enlightened polymaths turned their minds to the heavens, and to ice cream.

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Factual: History

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

What it took to prosper in the most artistic, decadent and dangerous royal courts.

Writer and broadcaster Stephen Smith finds out what it took to survive and prosper in the most artistic, decadent and dangerous royal courts in history.

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