The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy


The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy
The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt

No other work has had more impact on man's conception of the past than Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. The notion that between the 14th and 16th centuries in Italy a new and unique civilisation was born called 'the Renaissance' seems so familiar, it is hard to believe that it originated in this book. It is to Burckhardt that we owe our abiding picture of the period, when not only the great city-states of Florence, Rome and Venice but even small ducal courts like Ferrara, Urbino and Mantua were sufficiently wealthy to commission great paintings, sculptures and buildings. Everywhere the competition for fame and power gave scope to the 'cult of the individual', as 'the genius of the Italian people' - personified by 'many-sided' men like Dante, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Michelangelo - fashioned a new way of thinking and living. The result was a hotbed of intrigue, violence, eccentricity and creative endeavour. Burckhardt's stories leap off the page: Pope Leo X, patron of Raphael and lover of buffoonery, insisting that two monks and a cripple attend his feasts; Federigo, Duke of Urbino, the cultivated condottiere, who would 'talk of sacred things through the grating with the abbess'; Cesare Borgia, wandering the streets of Rome looking 'to gratify his insane thirst for blood'. . . Originally published in 1860, this classic work has never been surpassed for its accessibility and boldness of thought. 480 Pages; Frontispiece and 32 pages of color plates; Size 10" x 7½".

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