The Italian Renaissance - The Essential Readings

The 13 essays assembled in this volume explore the most fundamental aspects of the Italian Renaissance; 11 are extracts from materials previously published between 1979 and 1999. Organized into six thematic sections, they cover an introductory overview of the Italian Renaissance; politics and the Renaissance city-state; crucial aspects of behavior in the cities; the nature of marriage and motherhood and attitudes toward sexuality; intellectual life, including three perspectives on humanism; and patronage as related to the production of art and culture in the 15th and early-16th centuries. Academic, but intended for a general readership. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Paula Findlen is Professor of Italian History at Stanford University. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Nelson Prize from the Renaissance Society of America. Her previous publications include Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (1994), for which she was awarded the 1995 Marraro Prize and the 1996 Pfizer Prize; Merchants and Marvels (2001) with Pamela Smith; and Beyond Florence (2003) with Michelle Fontaine and Duane Osheim. Her most recent book, A Fragmentary Past: The Making of Museums and the Making of the Renaissance, will appear shortly.