In 1605, Robert Dallington published his Survey of … Tuscany, which was based on an early grand tour undertaken in 1596. Dallington’s account concludes with a critical pun: Qui sub Medicis vivit, misere vivit (‘Who lives under the Medici [or doctors], lives wretchedly’). In her beautifully illustrated and scholarly survey of five centuries of the Medici family and its increasingly regal role in running the once-republican city-state of Florence, Mary Hollingsworth tends to be as critical of the Medici as Dallington was.

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