Noble Blood - Renaissance Man (with Peter Weller)

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Frederick II was celebrated as a "renaissance man" who championed education and the arts. But his conflicts with the Pope would lead to multiple excommunications. Actor and historian Peter Weller (RoboCop, author of Leon Battista Alberti in Exile) joins the show to discuss his complicated legacy. Support Noble Blood:— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent. Host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala,

I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. It's unruly, it's unruly, unafraid, it's untraditionally Lala. Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener Discretion Advised. Hi, this is Dana Schwartz. I am so excited to be here today for a very special episode of Noble Blood.

I'm joined by the incredible actor, director, historian, writer, Peter Weller. Just an incredible figure and incredible life you've done so much. We're going to be talking about the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the second, but before we dive in, I would just love to ask, and I think my listeners would love to know, what was your transition like going from the acting world in Hollywood to going back and studying Italian Renaissance art? So I knew nothing about art.

My mother tried to introduce me to art. I didn't really get it. There's a wonderful actress. Most people know it was an actress model. She's actually an art history design degree from Wellesley, was a girl of the year under Diana Brelin, was a stylist for Bogg, a lot of other stuff, Ali McGraw.

And Ali McGraw is one of the great beauties of the world and also one of the smartest people I've ever known. And I did the movie with her, and I usually don't get involved. But after the movie, she asked me to go to see Sweeney Todd, when Sweeney Todd first opened up with Angela Lansbury, I went to see it on St. Patrick's State.

I'll never get it. And then we started up this affair and then we turned into a long-time friendship that goes on and on and on. And she's to this day, one of the first people were like, Thank in my new book, it's because Jessica got into the University Press, about a reticestine's guide.

But Ali is a person that took me by the hand, introduced here at Picasso. Picasso's Guernicca, he would leave New York and go to, once Franco was either passed away and Spain had a social democracy. Picasso wanted this cornerstone piece of anti-fascist art and horror

to go to Spain. And so there was a big exhibition, Dana, at MoMA. and you couldn't get in. But if you were Allie, you could get in because Allie's friends were, people think that she ran with Mooh, no, no, she ran with the Litterata and Glitterata.

She ran with like Halston and Truman Capote and Rheeland and the head of MoMA and the head of the Met, powerful, powerful people in New York, both women had men. So she took me by the hand, threw me into Picasso. I come out of five floors of Picasso. I'm sold. But this bears this embarrassment

because the second person, other than Maria Connelli, who's a great friend and head of FIT and America Folk Art Museum, one of the people got me to the Renaissance. After this happened, I'm at the National Film Festival of Japan with the great Jean Moreau, one of the greatest actors ever,

Mike Meta Boy, one of the great producers ever, produced Robocop, and Vitorio Storaro. And if you haven't heard of him or your listeners haven't heard of him, then they have to leave the show. Because Storaro is the first guy to filter Technicolor, which was against the law to be filtered, If you see visions alike, he's the first guy to experiment, really.

You know, we just take technicality for granted. And if you know Apocalypse Now, or Last Angelo in Paris, or The Sheltering Sky, or Last Emperor, or Dick Tracy, can I go on and on and on? Vittorio is a very elite dude, and was Versace all the time. And he had this Versace Scarpawn, and not playing Mr. Hordeca, because I know, I could talk about Saitwomble, and I could talk about Franketalor and whatever. So I say, Vitoio, who a favoriteo Petor de Tore to do. This is 1992.

I said, who's your favorite painter, 1991? They were Kyoto, and he goes, have you been the Padua to see Joto? In the very first one-by-one-four frames of narrative of light, color perception, dark, emotion, negative space, narrative. I go, what? He says, Joto. I don't know who you're talking about, man.

And he takes his Versace scar, and he flips it. Look, Francis Coppola said, Victoria Soros is the only guy who'd spend two years in the Philippines in a white suit. And he did. And that's Victoria. So he flips his scarf and he says, well, Peter, we cannot talk about it.

And he walks away. Then I say, you're really pretentious, man. And he goes, no, you're like the most Americans. You're pretentious. You have so many people. You can drop all these names. And you don't know Joto. You have no context.

You have no context. He's the one person that's indemnified. in contemporary art. Carlo Corra, Father of Cubism, talks about it, Precisionism, talks about it. Rothko talks about it, Picasso talks about him, Rembrandt. I'm going, I feel like a dummy.

And I go to sit in that church in the Capella Skravenu, which is in my book now. And I find out that that's the one piece, the one name of art in the Western world that is like solidified as a cornerstone and all the art that comes after it in the Western world. Doesn't matter what you're talking about,

you know, post-Cubism, abstract depressionism, Pete Mondrian, whatever, they're all going to go back to Joto. They're all going to go back to that. I call up Ali. I go, look, why didn't you talk about Joto? She says, I did. You had no interest in the Renaissance.

You wanted to do the horny toy New York scene. Like every other idiot. You know, I couldn't get you out of modern art. I couldn't get you out of get there where we are. So that's how I started. Yeah. I said, how do I start this? They said, take your class at Syracuse, do 10 weeks.

You go to Italy anyway, but you know nothing. I was the ugly American, Dana. I'm telling you this on benefit of your podcast. I was the guy who went to Italy and hung out on the piazza, smoking the cigar, walking here and there. Yeah, looking at the thing, look at the Coliseum. But never did a deep dive into it. It took me eight years before I started to look at the art. And now, yeah, PhD, book with Cambridge University Press, but it wasn't for those two people,

shaming me into it. You know, it wasn't like I just kind of went, oh, wow, art. I think I'll do this. I'll flip it to second, Owen Stop, and I think I'll do this. Here's a good segue here. One of the things I get fascinated in when I get my master's degree in a very special program in Syracuse University, where they only take about four or six people a year, is I get fascinated with the Franciscan movement, which is, by the way, contemporary to Frederick II, who we're going to talk about today,

Owen Staufen. So Francis of Issey, we've all heard of him. big saints, statues and gardens all the time. Yeah, big deal. Okay, you connect Joto. Francis is the guy who preaches. Never is a priest, never does a marriage, never holds a mass, Francis. And Francis, man, started walking and talking.

And, you know, I was talking to a guy from Oxford, and I was speaking in a historiography class PhD level at my alma mater, or UCLA, and I say the influence of Francis is a quarter million people following him within eight years without a fax machine. But here's what he's saying. He's saying, look, man, walk the walk of the human Jesus. You don't have to do the seven steps to heaven. If you handle what's in front of you with kindness, if you understand Christ trying to preach kindness and the suffering with it, then you identify with it. That's all you've got to do. You know, and people have been listening to this pulpit crap.

You know, God wins and you don't, man. You're the loser and he's the winner. And all of a sudden, Francis comes up. You ought to follow the dude. I mean, yeah, I'd have gone with him. So anyway, when he dies, there's a whole lot of people really want to follow his thing. And then, of course, the hierarchy of the church gets all of his movement. It says, no, no, no, we got to build churches, make money, la, la, la.

And that's too bad. dog rail. Okay, this is right around the time of Frederick. Frederick has got some towns, and Francis has got some towns that sympathize with the Franciscans and some who sympathize with the Pope and want to make money. So dig this. History of the world simply. Rome falls in Rome. Route 450, they burned the books. You got nothing. You got tribes coming in. We used to call them barbarians, visigas, ostigoths, vandals, et cetera, la, la, they come reading in Italy. Italy. Why does everybody want Italy? Now, that's my question to you. You can answer. Why does all of Europe want Italy? Let's see, is it because it's sort of a strategic stronghold before the Crusades?

Strategic. It's a finger that sticks into the med, and the med is the only systemic of trade in the world. So you've got this thing that sticks into the med that nobody owns because roams down, hey, man, let's go conquer the dude. Got it? Yeah. So by 8-900, Charlemagne takes over and unites the, you know, it becomes Holy Woman of Her and unites all these tribes. But there are still cells and in Muslim groups that have been in Sicily forever. And they're going to give it up. So Charlemagne says, okay, all you tribes are under me now, la, la, la, la, la.

The only one group that doesn't follow him is Venice. I love it. That's a whole other story. I've got to talk about. Venice goes, F you, man. We ain't following no emperor nowhere, man. we are Venetian, Venetian, Venetian, Venetian. They go off and do their own thing.

Yeah. And everybody else has got to follow him, right? So anyway, Charlemagne becomes that. Then his Holy Woman Empire splits up. The next thing you know, there's a crusade. And a crusade is essentially, by the time the late 10 hundreds, a Pope goes, man, you know what? We're doing enough business now with the Levant, which is that you've got to think of like, your Joe Blow out there thinking of what, Islam.

is now with reactionary fundamentalism as opposed to modern and so forth. Islam with the Moors and all the way into the Levant, that's Turkey and Judea, was the most sophisticated civilization of planet Earth. They gave us numbers. They gave us star, science. They brought back science. They brought back medicine, brought back everything. Whatever you may think of any religion when it goes into its crusade stage, Islam at that

point was really sophisticated. Yeah. The Moors are Islamic. They fought against the Arabs. to keep Spain. So you can't just group them all together and go, hey, this is all a bunch of Arabs. No, they're not.

They're tribal. So what happens is they got Follyland. And the Western world wants it. We don't want to do business with it. They want to earn it. It's the place of Jesus and Moses and, you know, Joshua, whatever, man. And so they send a crusade.

They send another crusade. Another than a crusade. Right. Okay. So then just for a brief context for our listeners, we're talking about the Holy Roman Empire. for Frederick the second. And this is going to be early 13th century.

So, you know, early 12th hundreds. Right. Same time as Francis, by the way. And Frederick the second was involved in the sixth crusades, right? Yeah. It's a dicey deal. Because the first crusade, they get stuff. And that's essentially ends the feudal system, you know,

because people leave the land and go, hey, man, they need numbers, guys, and accounts and so forth, the lawyers, la, la, la. That goes to former university. They form university in Bologna and so forth. University of Padua and they start accounts. Then the Second Crusade is kind of dicey.

Then the third crusade is a guy named Frederick Barbaroza. Okay, you know the Robin Hood lends you, right? Robin Hood. Of course. Okay. So Robin Hood is the servant, really, he's looking for the good king to come back. Remember his name?

Richard the Lionheart. Great. And what's wrong with Richard? Why can't Richard come back? Well, I think he was kidnapped. by Germans at some point. Yeah, that's right. So who's the German guy that kidnapped him and said,

hey, you haven't recognized me as the Holy Roman Emperor. And by the way, you owe me some money because you went on this crusade and we financed you. Someone to keep you here. So who's this guy? Is it Frederick?

It's his dad, Henry the Sixth. Oh. And his dad, the Holy Woman Emperor, you know, Charlemagne's the first one, and there's several of them. There's autos and so forth. And then it breaks down. France says,

we don't want to be a Holy Roman Empire. We're going to be France. Germany continues this idea of the Holy Roman Empire. So you've got to starting 800, and by the time you get to 1100, in the Third Crusade, the son of Frederick Barbaroso, Redbeard, okay, I'm going to back up a second. And this period we're talking about, the famous Normans that invaded England, Normans are not just Normandy knights anymore from, you know, Norway or whatever. They are sexually guns for hire

And they really take over Sicily The Norman inclusion of Sicily is amazing And these kings These tankered Norman kings Roger the first or Roger the second These are the guys that bring sovereignty to Sicily By what? By tolerance You're not heard of

You don't do tolerance in the Middle Ages, man You cut out people's eyes and tongues and so forth But Roger the second is a guy who's tolerant of Jews. He's tolerant of Muslims. He's tolerant of like the princes who want their own lands and so forth. So this Norman guy, right, is swinging. Okay. You know, the German guys want, like I said, remember, they want Italy.

Okay, they can't get it. Why? Because in between is a pope going, you can't have the bottom of the world and the top of the world. You can't smash it together. Henry VI, the guy. He's kidnapped Richard Liner gets this great idea. You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to marry Roger the Norman's daughter. Yes, Constance. I'm going to marry her and that way the queen of Sicily and me,

the king of Germany, will own the world together. It's a pretty good plan. I can't imagine the rest of the world is happy about it, but... No, they're not. Florence goes,

wait a minute. You know, The Pips going, hey, man, you know, I got to handle this guy, Francis, man. You know, what are you doing now? You're squeezing me. So, Longstone short, Henry of Six dies, and they have a kid, and they have a kid in a play called Jesse, which is near Ancona in the eastern part of Italy, which is beautiful. And this is Frederick.

And Frederick is, like, taken to Sicily, and Frederick is a kid. Immediately the infiltration of a whole lot of lombards, those are up by Milan. French warrior families come down. I want to take over. Nobody's running Sicily now, man. The Rogers are gone. The Consons can't really do it on our own. This kid is amazingly ferociously.

There's a legend that when a guy named Mark Ward, one of the German thugs came down to take over Sicily, they looked to the kid to kill him or to do what. And he was hiding out. He was five years old that he jumped on Mark Ward. It started to scratch his face and so forth, man. And that's Frederick. I mean, the legend is about Fred's.

requirements. But what he goes on to be is this. He goes on to first tell the Pope, look, the auto dynasty, the wealth, this is factions. Italy's going to turn into Guelphs and Gimbelains, people who support the Pope, people who support the right. I'm jumping out. This is about 12-hundredth. Frederick's born in 1194, about 10 years after the crusade. Then his mother dies. His mother tries to school it. His mother tries to give him tolerance. This is a one-off dude. You've got to learn stuff. You've got to learn languages. You've got to learn Hebrew. You've got to learn Arabic. You've got to learn Greek. You've got to learn these people. Man, these people are around you and you better be talking their lingo if you want something to do with them because you can't just win by domination,

even though you got to remember, despots do live and they are, you know, kings. Yeah. And Frederick II is going to spur a guy to debt, you know, and tell a guy that you're going to have your tongue cut out and so forth. So they're not nice guys at the end of the day. But in the realm of humanism. I'm reading about Franciscanism at Syracuse. And I'm reading about how these certain cities hid the spiritual Franciscans you wanted

to just walk the walk of Francis and not be part of the money thing. And I'm reading about how certain parts of the Pope did not support these spiritual Franciscans, but the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II did. So I get deep dive into Frederick II. And I see that he's into science.

See he's into literature. I see that this guy's obsessed with birds. As he obsessed with writing, that he's a vegetarian, that he weighs the same amount when he was 64 years old and when he died that he didn't run it was 18. I also see that he went and got Germany back with the Pope's approval with a whole lot lesser men and Otto by going in and promising all these princes that I'm not going to get your jam, man. I'm just going to be the Holy Roman Emperor. you guys can continue your act. I don't want to dominate you, scold you complain. You got to pay me the Vig, but you guys can groove. And within two months, they support him. Then he's ordered to go on a crusade. He tells the Pope, hey, I will. I got to go back and make sure Sicily's mind.

And he goes back to Sicily, and he does the same thing. He essentially wins Sicily through diplomacy. Kent Twowicz writes a book on the guy that lionizes him. The great. David Avalofia, who wrote, I think the greatest book on him, who was the mentor to my mentor, Pete Stacey at UCLA, writes a book that, like, say, wait a minute, you've got to put Frederick the second, because by now, Bena, everyone has pasted Frederick the second on it's like something else. But it's like Cyrus the Great with the freedom of the Jews from Babylon and the Cyrus Cylinder. The Cyrus Cylinder says, you know, hey, all you Jews can go back from Babylon and living your home turf because our division

for the Zora has the vision that people want to live on the turf of their homeland. Nobody did this in 526 BC. They killed you or dispersed you or enslaved you. Yeah. But he did it. Once in a while there's a dude or a woman who goes, you know what?

I see that the freedom of people is better than the domination of people. Like allowing people liberty is the way to control your sheep is given a large pasture. And I think that is, essentially what Frederick is famous for. And Frederick, by the way, goes on a crusade, and he wins territory

by diplomacy, and it pisses off the Pope. You say, we don't want this plomacy man. We want, like, dominance. And he goes, I ain't going to do that. And he comes back, and, you know, he's considered the Holy King of Jerusalem

and so forth, and Pope hates that. And he gets into an antagonistic thing with, well, he starts the very first state-endowed university, University in Naples, which is called it called the Universita Federico Secondo, named after him. He does so many things to essentially transform the idea of, and Abilafia, this guy ropes him in. Yeah. And essentially says that Frederick, you cannot divorce Frederick from essentially the guy who was in a clash with Catholicism, as almost all emperors were, you know, until the 1800.

cannot take him out of the context, though, the dude who wanted to be acknowledged as, you know, the dude of it all. But the acknowledgement aside, yeah, which everybody wanted, how he went about it in so many ways, it was so deferential to human rights in many ways, you know. And people say, yeah, okay, man, okay, he looked, he took all the Muslims in Sicily. He didn't kill him.

He gave him 100,000 acres or 10,000 acres in a pool yet. But if I am correct, he does get excommunicated four times. Yes. They forgive him. They bring him back. They say, just kidding. You know how they bring him back? Because he's diplomatic.

Yeah. He's diplomatic with innocent. He's diplomatic with anore is. Ironically, the guy that really hates him is Gregory the Knight. And Gregory the Knight is Ugolino, the guy who championed Francis and Vasisi. He's the guy from Umbria who went with Francis to innocent to Thuriezezi. third and say, man, the guy's preaching, but he's not a priest. I'm going to think of anything why.

He don't kill him, let him walk around. And that's the guy who later becomes the Pope who hates Frederick. And he's a very humanist poem, Oglino, very humanist. But he just can't take it that Frederick is not bowing to him. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?

Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And the entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going.

And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been. better sleepwalk. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban.

Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Santa M'Jou, Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed at it. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me.

Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships. religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think of Frederick the second as sort of the quintessential Renaissance man. You know, this is someone tolerant, spoke multiple languages, a mathematician, a poet, a composer. Obviously, when he's excommunicated multiple times by the Pope, we're going to get some sources vilifying him, these pro-papal chronicles. How would you define his legacy? looking at all of those sources and sort of weighing it all together. You know, I want to be David Avalofia

and say, wait a minute, let's put the reins on the mysticism, you know, the mystic legend of this guy. Yeah. He did kill people. He did kill his best friend, you know, it's pretreason. But it was a brutal time. That's right.

You can't take it out of context. But he did also give people right to civil courts over land distributions or what. I'm thinking that he is the four-run. I mean, in spite of the fact that Dr. Avalofia wants to rein him in, I finish reading Abelavia's book. And I go, you know what, man? The guy is still not like anybody else.

And you acknowledge him so many times in there. Well, come on. Taking 3,000 people into Germany, I guess an army of almost like, you know, 80,000 dudes and like talking your way, diplomacy, diplomatically winning that whole thing back and doing the same thing in Sicily. This is gifted stuff. This is the art of rap. I think that's his great legacy.

His great legacy is diplomacy, I think. And one can bring up all of the footnotes about brutality. But like you said, it's the time you're living in. If somebody tries to kill you, you kill them. That's the way goes. Well, I do have one question about Frederick's legacy. It looks like after he dies, we're going to get the great interregnum with the Holy Roman emperor. There's not going to be a clear,

succession after him. Why is that? I don't think that Manfredi or Manfred or Conrad, Conrad, or Conradine, or grandson, I don't think they had the talent. If you're fatherless and then you're raised by this incredible mother who's like running a show and instills the temperance in you that you're going to live through, that's inured. I mean, that's almost something that you can't be taught. So his jam, which is speaking and coming to terms and let's meet, let's do this, let's do that, is unique to him. And when he goes, I don't think that he's taught that to his kids or his great kids. Bianca's a lover who basically, they say he married, who even Avalofia acknowledges was the one sort of passion in his life.

He probably did marry her before he died. But they never spent time with the kid. I got to go, you know, this is right, this is wrong. Here's what you do. You go here, you do that. I don't know if Frederick had those people, the schoolies kids. I don't think his kid's new international law. I don't think he spoke five languages.

I'm sorry, I don't think they, like, travel with him in all his places. His one kid, Henry, tried to revolt against him. He had to take the guy down. He hadn't imprisoned his own kid in Germany. So he's a great Holy Roman emperor, not a great father. Not a great dad, no Nobody's perfect I know

I know but you know what I gotta remember that My kid and I With the Pompeii My son is the attention span Of an all 13 year old Which is about six feet Until it gets too hot Or the phones are gone or whatever

Hey he's in Pompeii He said hey dad over here Look over here This is where they had the sewage pipes Now I've done historiography on Pompeii I had to present on Pompey I had to take tours not tourists, but school groups through Pompeii,

and I've never seen these sewage pipes. And I say, how did you do that? He says, I found him on TikTok. He found the friggin sewage pipes in Pompeii on TikTok. And then he's got the scholar, Antonio, and shows us. I almost started crying, man. I was so impressed with him. I was so impressed that he was showing me something.

Two days ago, two scholars came up to me, and they were talking about the sewage systems in Rome. I said, where they essentially discovered by Pompey. Yeah, the sewage system Pompey have thought it. I said, my kid taught me about them. He said, what do you mean your kid talking about it? I said about two weeks ago. My kid on TikTok, find out where the sewage systems were in Pompeii and were showing me.

And these guys are like, the 13-year-old kid on TikTok was showing you where the sewage systems were. I said, yeah. And it just stopped us dead, Dana. So good dad, good leader, I don't know. I was in Pompeii a few years ago. and the fun fact about the plumbing that stuck with me, maybe the listeners don't know, maybe it's incredibly obvious. But the elemental symbol for lead is PB,

and that comes from the Latin word for plumbing, plumbum, PB, because their pipes were lead. Their plumbing was lead. Who knew? Did somebody teach you that? I think our tour guide said that. It must have been in the back of my mind when I studied chemistry in college. I only learned PB, meaning lead in Rome with the pipes in Rome.

coming out of places like the Coliseum and down with the history channel. I was at the history channel learning this stuff. I wasn't walking around Pompeii with a 13-year-old. But that's great that you know that. And isn't Pompeii extraordinary? I will say it was one of the historical sites that truly floored me, that exceeded all expectations for me. You have to go back. I've been 29 times now.

But look, 29 times. And now I find out from my kid where the plumbing is. Dr. Peter Weller with your brand new book, Leon Batista Alberti in exile by Peter Roller. And the subtype is tracing the path to the first modern book on painting. Yes. And in it are a ton of photographs and images and so forth. Not to mention at the beginning of it is Joto in the Capella Sgraveni that

Victoria Sderal told me that I was an idiot because I hadn't seen it. which figures hugely in this thing. And I just want to say this to wrap this up is that, you know, the beginning of this in my dissertation and also acknowledgement in this book and in the dissertation, one page, begins with this book owes the debt of inspiration to Alice McGraw, Maria Connelly of the Brooklyn Academy, and cinematographer of Victoria Stariro. That's amazing. This book really quickly, this I'll tell you, is a very famous.

Renaissance guy, he's a polymath, he's an architect, writer. He's like the fallout of Frederick II. He's everything that Frederick II wanted to be. Frederick II also is an amazing architect. You've got to go to right northern Bari and see his castle, which is a circle with steps only this big, so you can actually run up them. Instead of these big, clonky deals,

you can run up and down them so that knights can run with armor and so forth. And these eight torrets around it, it's a astounding piece of architecture, that he supervised himself. So look, in the notice of February 2nd, wanting to be this polymath, which is what he was, a language guy, scientist guy, a bird guy, you know, biologists, architect, everything. You've got this dude here, Leon Vittista Alberti, which I'm sure, who am I sure knew everything about Frederick II?

Because Venduc de Second is like a one-off. And he, they say, somebody scholars said in the 20th century, oh, you know what? His family was exiled, and then he came to Florence, and he ate months. once wrote the first modern book on painting in tripartite Latin Ciceronian ideas and so what and I'm just asking when I was getting my master's going I'm asking all these hoity toward do it I said I can't buy it that this guy just came to Florence and in eight months wrote this astounding book on lines points light art of a they said yeah I did and one guy rab Hatfield was his art great scholar said no everybody knows he can't

came from Caddo, he came from Joto, he came from Bologna, he came through all those stuff. I said, what did you teach that? I said, because Florence is the apex of all things Renaissance, which is horseshit. It's just horseshit. You know, Florence is the apex of all things Renaissance, but it's not the seed of all things Renaissance. Dr. Peter Weller, this has been such a joy. Next time I'm into the Lee. I want you to be my tour guide. This was extraordinary. All you got to do is let us know when you're going. because even if we can't be there with you, we can turn you on and save you a lot of time and money

and saving you essentially a whole lot of energy that you don't need to spend. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. This is Dr. Weller, author of Leon Batiste Alberti in exile. Thank you so much for joining us. This was such a pleasure.

Okay, listen, I want the last thing. I just wanted to say this. Predating Second by David Abilatia is really the book to read on the thing. There's a lot of great books, but this is the book that really takes you, watch you through the good and the bad news about Frederick the 2nd. And by the way, the warrior with the bad news is about Frederick the 2nd, you come away thinking, hey, once in a while there's a hero. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Julia Melani. The show is edited and produced. produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Rima Il Kali and executive producers Aaron Manky, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hello, gorgeous, it's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditionally Lala. Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

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