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 touch the whole of Italy or the majority of its people and 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. Mackenney also maintains that, in an Italian context, the triumph of artistic and literary diversity and the tragedy of political disunity went hand in hand. Covering art, literature, and music, and providing an exploration of the political and social contexts, this is an essential guide to one of the most fascinating periods of Italian history.

For many generations, the importance of the Italian Renaissance lay in its marking the beginning of modern times by means of a self-conscious break with the middle ages. This book seeks above all to convey the variety of cultural activity in Italy in the period between the fourteenth-century and the seventeenth: at different times within those three centuries, in different places in Italy, in association with different political ideologies. While this involves a measure of deconstruction, it also demands a synthesis that aims to communicate the richness of historical experience in the regions of Italy and the significance of that experience in the history of Europe as a whole.