Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.9 / 5.0

Propaganda Masquerading as a Documentary:

Richly costumed, the Medici deserves 4 stars for telling a cursory tale in an enjoyable manner. Unfortunately, the final 30 minutes, focusing on Galileo Galilei, are marred by such reckless disregard for history that the entire "documentary" should be shunned. Why would PBS twist his story into a morality play only a 21st century ideologue would tell and why focus on a man who received less than a page of attention in Hibbert's The House of Medici if not to make a political rather than historical statement?... more info

Great:

This four-hour documentary is the best material on renaissance and Medici family.
I would highly recommend this DVD to everyone who has interest in history, renaissance and cultural development.

Likeable but Lacking...:

With this four hour documentary, and others in the series, PBS hopes to expose a wide audience to culturally and historically significant people and ideas. The Medici family, whose artistic patronage brought into existence much of what we now call "the Renaissance", and whose abuses of power likewise contributed to the Protestant Reformation, are certainly a worthy subject... but in the quest for mass market appeal, the filmmakers cut too many corners, making what could have been a true work of art into... more info

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