The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance offers material drawn from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries surveying the social, economic, political, cultural, and intellectual history of Renaissance Italy. The diverse documents include court records, poetry, fiction, ricordanze, courtesy books, letters, maxims, histories, and humanist treatises.

Reproduction of the original: The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt

Award-winning lecturer Kenneth R. Bartlett applies his decades of experience teaching the Italian Renaissance to this beautifully illustrated overview. In his introductory Note to the Reader, Bartlett first explains why he chose Jacob Burckhardt's classic narrative to guide students through the complex history of the Renaissance and then provides his own contemporary interpretation of that narrative. Over seventy color illustrations, genealogies of important Renaissance families, eight maps, a list of popes, a timeline of events, a bibliography, and an index are included.

"The Italian Renaissance has come to occupy an almost mythical place in the imaginations of those who appreciate history, art, or remarkable personalities. This book will reinforce the contention that individuals with access to wealth and power can have a profound influence. They matter. And this explains why the Italian Renaissance is often perceived as elitist. Those who commissioned the works of art, often those who produced them, and many of those who appreciated them were privileged, educated, influential members of the Renaissance "one percent." This is meant in no way to denigrate modern interest in the poor and the marginalized, but merely to say that the enduring ideas and artifacts of the Renaissance arose from a highly-rarefied world of sophisticated talent and thought galvanized by individual curiosity and accomplished with practiced skill. And so it is that this book will be an exploration of the Italian Renaissance guided by particular moments and men - and a few remarkable women. It will be a large canvas with broad strokes intended to be seen at a distance for the dynamic sweep of its narrative of ideas and creative genius."

Exploring every aspect of art, philosophy, politics, life and culture between 1450 and 1620, this enthralling panorama examines one of the most fascinating and exciting periods in European history. "A rich, dense book which combines inspiring generalizations with idiosyncratic detail".--The Spectator. Photos.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Germany's bourgeois elites became enthralled by the civilization of Renaissance Italy. As their own country entered a phase of critical socioeconomic changes, German historians and writers reinvented the Italian Renaissance as the onset of a heroic modernity: a glorious dawn that ushered in an age of secular individualism, imbued with ruthless vitality and a neo-pagan zest for beauty. The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination is the first comprehensive account of the debates that shaped the German idea of the Renaissance in the seven decades following Jacob Burckhardt's seminal study of 1860. Based on a wealth of archival material and enhanced by more than one hundred illustrations, it provides a new perspective on the historical thought of Imperial and Weimar Germany, and the formation of a concept that is still with us today.

Building the Italian Renaissance focuses on the competition to select a team to execute the final architectural challenge of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore--the erection of its dome. Although the model for the dome was widely known, the question of how this was to be accomplished was the great challenge of the age. This dome would be the largest ever built. This is foremost a technical challenge but it is also a philosophical one. The project takes place at an important time for Florence. The city is transitioning from a High Medieval world view into the new dynamics and ideas and will lead to the full flowering of what we know as the Renaissance. Thus the competition at the heart of this game plays out against the background of new ideas about citizenship, aesthetics, history (and its application to the present), and new technology. The central challenge is to expose players to complex and multifaceted situations and to individuals that animated life in Florence in the early 1400s. Humanism as a guiding philosophy is taking root and scholars are looking for ways to link the mercantile city to the glories of Rome and to the wisdom of the ancients across many fields. The aesthetics of the classical world (buildings, plastic arts and intellectual pursuits) inspired wonder, perhaps even envy, but the new approaches to the past by scholars such as Petrarch suggested that perhaps the creative classes are not simply crafts people, but men of ideas. Three teams compete for the honor to construct the dome, a project overseen by the Arte Della Lana (wool workers guild) and judged by them and a group of Florentine citizens who are merchants, aristocrats, learned men, and laborers. Their goal is to make the case for the building to live up to the ideals of Florence. The game gives students a chance to enter into the world of Florence in the early 1400s to develop an understanding of the challenges and complexity of such a major artistic and technical undertaking while providing an opportunity to grasp the interdisciplinary nature of major public works.