Urban gang wars were invented in the Italian Renaissance. I’m speaking literally.
To start with, it’s not actually Machiavelli. It’s a Botticelli painting from the early 1480’s called “Portrait of a Young Man” or “Portrait of a Youth.” Nobody’s sure what’s going on with the hand, but according to some wikipedia links, some guesses have been that he has juvenile arthritis or Marfan’s syndrome.
ETA: More on the subject from the paper in the journal “Arthritis and Rheumatism” discussed in the first link (no longer online itself apparently): “As for the actual positioning of the fingers, the paper notes that the third and fourth finger were often painted together for aesthetic reasons by many artists of the Renaissance, and the fifth finger was often bent as well. (The Wikipedia article is a bit misleading on this subject, as its wording suggests the hand gesture itself is considered to be a symptom of arthritis.) For example, a similar gesture can be seen in the left hand of the subject of Botticelli’s painting Fortitude, which represents one of the seven virtues (with painting below).”
Indeed! Montagues and Capulets, what!
West Side Story indeed!
Sorry, too many "indeed"s. 
Total load of crap about arthritis. Modigliani favored female sitters with freakishly long necks? Don’t even get me started on the medical conditions and resulting malformations of Picasso’s subjects.
Botticelli Birth of Venus.
Have you listened to his The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory? That was one of his best albums! Hail Mary, Life Of An Outlaw, Me and My Girlfriend, etc. He did it reppin westside; start to end.
[
](- YouTube)
Sooo… Did anybody else expect a picture of an Italian renaissance philosopher regurgitating musical paraphernalia?
Tupac. Duh.
“Machiavelli up in this bitch. Killumanati. All through your body. Blows like a 12-guage shotty…”
Related: One minute rap Hamlet.
This kind of post is why I browse the Dope.
Maybe this will suffice.
Contemporaneous with Botticeli:
Earthly Delights
False.
Johanna, sorry for being so abrupt.
After all, what is Aut Caesar Aut Nihil but Get Rich or Die Tryin’?
feeeeel me!
I laughed way too hard at that
I laughed way too hard at that