Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World

Author:
Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish
Publisher:
Anchor Books
Reviewed in:
Summer 2002
Category:

Everyone knows the difficulty of things that are exquisite and well done," the Renaissance philosopher Baldassare Castiglione once remarked. "So to have facility in such things gives rise to the greatest wonder." Italians call that artful facility sprezzatura, a term Mary Desmond Pinkowish, a senior editor at Patient Care, and her co-author maintain well describes the nation's genius.