In this dramatic journey through religious and artistic history, R. A. Scotti traces the defining event of a glorious epoch: the building of St. Peter's Basilica. Begun by the ferociously ambitious Pope Julius II in 1506, the endeavor would span two tumultuous centuries, challenge the greatest Renaissance masters—Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante—and enrage Martin Luther. By the time it was completed, Shakespeare had written all of his plays, the Mayflower had reached Plymouth—and Rome had risen with its astounding basilica to become Europe's holy metropolis. A dazzling portrait of human achievement and excess, Basilica is a triumph of historical writing.

Bartolomeo Scappi (c. 1500-1577) was arguably the most famous chef of the Italian Renaissance. He oversaw the preparation of meals for several Cardinals and was such a master of his profession that he became the personal cook for two Popes. At the culmination of his prolific career he compiled the largest cookery treatise of the period to instruct an apprentice on the full craft of fine cuisine, its methods, ingredients, and recipes. Accompanying his book was a set of unique and precious engravings that show the ideal kitchen of his day, its operations and myriad utensils, and are exquisitely reproduced in this volume. Scappi's Opera presents more than one thousand recipes along with menus that comprise up to a hundred dishes, while also commenting on a cook's responsibilities. Scappi also included a fascinating account of a pope's funeral and the complex procedures for feeding the cardinals during the ensuing conclave. His recipes inherit medieval culinary customs, but also anticipate modern Italian cookery with a segment of 230 recipes for pastry of plain and flaky dough (torte, ciambelle, pastizzi, crostate) and pasta (tortellini, tagliatelli, struffoli, ravioli, pizza). Terence Scully presents the first English translation of the work. His aim is to make the recipes and the broad experience of this sophisticated papal cook accessible to a modern English audience interested in the culinary expertise and gastronomic refinement within the most civilized niche of Renaissance society.

Four generations of the aristocratic Barberini family and its "vassals", clashed over how the early modern Roman countryside should be governed. Villagers sometimes cultivated noble interference, but they frequently resisted it through the strategies of adversarial literacy, political ways of reading and writing that challenged noble hegemony in the village.

Drawing upon poststructuralist theories of nationalism and national identity developed by such writers as Etienne Balibar, Emmanuel Levinas, Julia Kristeva, Antonio Negri, and Slavoj Zizek, noted Renaissance scholar William J. Kennedy argues that the Petrarchan sonnet serves as a site for early modern expressions of national sentiment in Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany. Kennedy pursues this argument through historical research into Renaissance commentaries on Petrarch's poetry and critical studies of such poets as Lorenzo de' Medici, Joachim du Bellay and the Pléiade brigade, Philip and Mary Sidney, and Mary Wroth. Kennedy begins with a survey of Petrarch's poetry and its citation in Italy, explaining how major commentators tried to present Petrarch as a spokesperson for competing versions of national identity. He then shows how Petrarch's model helped define social class, political power, and national identity in mid-sixteenth-century France, particularly in the nationalistic sonnet cycles of Joachim Du Bellay. Finally, Kennedy discusses how Philip Sidney and his sister Mary and niece Mary Wroth reworked Petrarch's model to secure their family's involvement in forging a national policy under Elizabeth I and James I . Treating the subject of early modern national expression from a broad comparative perspective, The Site of Petrarchism will be of interest to scholars of late medieval and early modern literature in Europe, historians of culture, and critical theorists.

Best-known for his sweeping narrative Histories of His Own Times and for his portrait museum on Lake Como, the Italian bishop and historian Paolo Giovio (1486-1552) had contact with many of the protagonists of the great events he so vividly described--the wars of France, Germany, and Spain, and the sack of Rome. He used the information he gleaned from his contacts to carry on an extensive correspondence that became a kind of proto-journalism. With his interests in history, literature, geography, exploration, medicine, and the arts, this man reflects almost the entire spectrum of High Renaissance civilization. In a biography surveying both Giovio's life and his works, T. C. Price Zimmermann examines the historian as a figure formed by fifteenth-century humanism who was caught in the changing temper of the Counter Reformation. Giovio's Histories remained a widely used account of the wars of Italy for nearly two hundred and fifty years, although his objectivity was often questioned owing to the patronage he received. Following Burckhardt, who began to restore Giovio's reputation more than a century ago, Zimmermann reveals a conscientious, independent-minded historian and an astute commentator on the entire Mediterranean world, the first to integrate the contemporary history of the Muslim nations with that of Europe, east and west. The book also stresses the important contributions Giovio made to the ethos of the Renaissance through his biographies and famous portrait museum, both tributes to the emerging sense of individual human personality.