Giovio, Paolo: Domenichi, Lodovico, translator:
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LA VITA DI CONSALVO FERRANDO DI CORDOVA DETTO IL GRAN CAPITANO. The third Italian edition of this seminal biography of "El Gran Capitán," Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, hero of the Conquest of Granada and the Italian Wars. The text was originally written in Latin in 1549, only a few years earlier, where it formed Book III of noted Italian historian and biographer Paolo Giovio's Vitae Virorum Illustrium. Giovio had by that time become Bishop of Nocera de' Pagani and begun his important coverage of the ongoing Italian Wars, but is most known in the world of travel and exploration for his important De legatione Basilii Magni Principis Moschoviae, which illuminated details of Russia and Muscovy gleaned personally from Russian ambassador Dmitry Gerasimov, who visited Pope Clement VII in 1525.The present work represents an early biography of Córdoba, who died in 1515 in Granada, the territory he helped conquer for Spain. He is credited as one of the first Europeans to make effective use of firearms, and his many victories and shrewd political mind made him a major figure across Europe in the late-15th century. His continual success in the Italian Wars earned him the moniker of "El Gran Capitán," and he enjoyed immense popularity as Viceroy of Naples until removed by Ferdinand II in 1507. In 1522, he was reinterred at the crossing of the Royal Monastery of St. Jerome, which was completed after his death and whose elaborate interior decoration focuses particularly on the Gran Capitán'
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