Staff Profile
Publication details for Dr Toby Osborne
2002 Osborne, T Dynasty and Diplomacy in the Court of Savoy: Political Culture and the Thirty Years’ War, Cambridge University Press, 304 pp.- Publication type: Books: authored
- ISSN/ISBN: 0521037913
- Keywords: Abate Alessandro Scaglia, Diplomats, Courtiers, Artists, Seventeenth-century Europe.
- View online: Online version
- Durham research online: DRO record
Author(s) from Durham
Abstract
The following text is taken from the publisher's website.
"This book is the first major study in English of the duchy of Savoy during the period of the Thirty Year' War. Rather than examining Savoy purely in terms of its military or geo-strategic role, Dynasty and Diplomacy in the Court of Savoy comprises three interwoven strands: the dynastic ambitions of the ruling House of Savoy, the family interests of an elite clan in ducal service, and the unique role played by one member of that clan, Abate Alessandro Scaglia (1592 1641), who emerged as one of Europe's most widely-known diplomats. Scaglia, the focus of the book, affords insights not only into Savoyard court politics and diplomacy, but more generally into a diplomatic culture of seventeenth-century Europe. With his image fixed by a remarkable series of Van Dyck portraits, Scaglia is emblematic of an international network of princes, diplomats, courtiers, and artists, at the point of contact between dynasticism, high politics and the arts."
Notes
© Cambridge University Press 2002.