The Renaissance was one of the great periods of creative and intellectual achievement. This age of genius, from its origins in the thirteenth century to its zenith in sixteenth-century Rome, produced some of the most fascinating and dynamic artists of all time - Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Leonardo da Vinci.
This adventurous book takes a fresh look at this most exciting period in art history and challenges many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding the Renaissance. The Italian scholars who first dreamed of a Renaissance wished to revive the spirit of classical antiquity after the darkness - as they saw it - of the medieval and Byzantine periods. However, this book argues that the Renaissance represented a culmination rather than a complete rejection of these earlier influences.
It also outlines the historical context - a time of great social as well as artistic change - in which the artists were working: the power struggles between the Renaissance rulers of the Italian city states; the French invasions of Italy; the invention of printing; and the Protestant Reformation.
