This title was first published in 2000: Michelangelo gave his painting of "Leda and the Swan" to an apprentice rather than hand it over to the emissary of the Duke of Ferrar, who had commissioned it. He was apparently disgusted by the failure of the emissary - who was probably more used to buying pigs than discussing art - to accord the picture and the artist the value they deserved. Any discussion of works of art and material culture implicitly assigns them a set of values. Whether these values be monetary, cultural or religious, they tend to constrict the ways in which such works can be discussed. The variety of potential forms of valuation becomes particularly apparent during the Italian Renaissance, when relations between the visual arts and humanistic studies were undergoing rapid changes against an equally fluid social, economic and political background. In this volume, 13 scholars explicitly examine some of the complex ways in which a variety of values might be associated with Italian Renaissance material culture.

Warfare and Politics: Cities and Government in Renaissance Tuscany and Venice brings together a group of prominent contributors to consider the topics of government and warfare in Tuscany and Venice in the Renaissance. The essays cover a remarkably broad geographical and topical range as they analyse the economic, military, political, and diplomatic history of Florence, Rome, Venice, and the Italian peninsula in general through the Renaissance and early modern period.