Renaissances The Cultures of Italy, 1300-1600 [Paperback]

This highly-illustrated book emphasizes above all the diversity of the Italian Renaissance in the period between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries: the enormously varied forms of cultural achievement and the different circumstances that prevailed in various contexts, both urban and courtly. Richard MacKenney examines why the great revival did not touch the whole of Italy or the majority of its people. He argues that, while the wonder and joy of classical rebirth remained vivid, there was also a dimension of anxiety, especially in the challenge that ancient cultures posed to Christian belief.

List of Illustrations.- Acknowledgements.- A Note on Illustrations and Translations.- Forewords.- Deconstructions.- Reconstructions.- Contexts I: Cities.- Contexts II: Courts.- Sponsors.- Time Travellers.- Space Travellers.- Soundscapes.- Legacies.- Afterwords.- Notes.- Other Works of Art Referred to.- Bibliography.- Index.

RICHARD MACKENNEY is Reader in Early Modern European History at the University of Edinburgh, UK.The Italian Renaissance retains its extraordinary hold on the historical imagination. What began as a rediscovery of the culture and values of the Ancient World came to invent our notion of the 'Middle Ages' and continues to pose sharp and searching questions as to what we regard as the beginning of the 'modern era'. However, what was 'the Italian Renaissance'? Was there a single phenomenon that affected the entire peninsula and had meaning for all or even most of its people from the age of the painter Giotto in the fourteenth century to the age of the astronomer Galileo in the seventeenth?

This richly-illustrated book stresses the plurality of 'the cultures of Italy' and the diversity of the Italian Renaissance: the enormously varied forms of cultural achievement and the different circumstances that prevailed in various contexts, both urban and courtly. Richard Mackenney examines why the great revival did not toul#Ç