Art in Renaissance Italy

Art mattered in the Renaissance... People expected painting, sculpture, architecture, and other forms of visual art to have a meaningful effect on their lives,” write the authors of this introduction to Italian Renaissance art.

A glance at the pages of Art in Renaissance Italy shows at once its freshness and breadth of approach, which includes thorough explanation into how and why works of art, buildings, prints, and other forms of visual production came to be. The authors also discuss how men and women of the Renaissance regarded art and artists, why works of Renaissance art look the way they do, and what this means to us. Unlike other books on the subject, this one covers not only Florence and Rome, but also Venice and the Veneto, Assisi, Siena, Milan, Pavia, Padua, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, Urbino, and Naples—each governed in a distinctly different manner, every one with individual, political, and social structures that inevitably affected artistic styles. Spanning more than three centuries, the narrative brings to life the rich tapestry of Italian Renaissance society and the art that is its enduring legacy. Throughout, special features, including textual sources from the period and descriptions of social rituals, evoke and document the people and places of this dynamic age.

Art mattered in the Renaissance... People expected painting, sculpture, architecture, and other forms of visual art to have a meaningful effect on their lives," write the authors of this introduction to Italian Renaissance art.

A glance at the pages of Art in Renaissance Italy shows at once its freshness and breadth of approach, which includes thorough explanation into how and why works of art, buildings, prints, and other forms of visual production came to be. The authors also discuss how men and women of the Renaissance regarded art and artists, why works of Renaissance art look the way they do, and what this means to us. Unlike other books on the subject, this one covers not only Florence and Rome, but also Venice and the Veneto, Assisi, Siena, Milan, Pavia, Padua, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, Urbino, and Naples--each governed in a distinctly different manner, every one with individual, political, and social structures that inevitably affected artistic styles. Spanning more than three centuries, the narrative brings to life the rich tapestry of Italian Renaissance society and the art that is its enduring legacy. Throughout, special features, including textual sources from the period and descriptions of social rituals, evoke and document the people and places of this dynamic age.

John T. Paoletti is Kenan Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus and Professor of Art History, Emeritus at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He has published widely on the patronage of the Medici family in Florence and on Michelangelo. He has also written on art since 1945. He was formerly editor of The Art Bulletin of the College Art Association.

Gary M. Radke is a renaissance specialist and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He has published on 13th-century Italian architecture, 15th-century sculpture, and the patronage of nuns in Renaissance Venice.