The Renaissance in Italy
A History
Kenneth Bartlett
- 416 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Renaissance in Italy
A History
Kenneth Bartlett
About This Book
The Italian Renaissance has come to occupy an almost mythical place in the popular imagination. The outsized reputations of the best-known figures from the periodâMichelangelo, Niccolo Machiavelli, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Pope Julius II, Isabella d'Este, and so many othersâengender a kind of wonder. How could so many geniuses or exceptional characters be produced by one small territory near the extreme south of Europe at a moment when much of the rest of the continent still labored under the restrictions of the Middle Ages? How did so many of the driving principles behind Western civilization emerge during this periodâand how were they defined and developed? And why is it that geniuses such as Leonardo, Raphael, Petrarch, Brunelleschi, Bramante, and Palladio all sustain their towering authority to this day? To answer these questions, Kenneth Bartlett delves into the lives and works of the artists, patrons, and intellectualsâthe privileged, educated, influential elitesâwho created a rarefied world of power, money, and sophisticated talent in which individual curiosity and skill were prized above all else. The result is a dynamic, highly readable, copiously illustrated history of the Renaissance in Italyâand of the artists that gave birth to some of the most enduring ideas and artifacts of Western civilization.