Le dernier des Médicis
Subtitle: roman
By: Dominique Fernandez.
Publisher: B. Grasset
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Paris
Language: fre
Number of pages: 309
Subjects: Gian Gastone, Grand-Duke of Tuscany, 1671-1737 -- Fiction.
Description: The Medici: a family whose glory is confounded with that of Florence. A line of exceptional bankers and patrons, who embodied the perfection of the human spirit. And yet the last of them with which the race was extinguished, Gian Gastone, who died in 1737, remains enveloped in mystery. He was a prince so extravagant and scandalous that the historians passed his reign in silence. The narrator here is his personal physician, who traces the environment in which he grew up, evokes his first incarnations, then his marvelous marriage with a German princess and his transfer to Bohemia. After the fiasco conjugal, return to Tuscany and beginning of a long decline. Painting and music, so important in the life of Florence, played a major role in the evolution of Gian Gastone.