The Italian Renaissance
A Cultural History
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:15th Jan '26
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£81.00was £90.00(9781009474245)
Wide-ranging overview of the dazzling cultural novelties of the Italian Renaissance, incorporating fresh perspectives and current research.
The extraordinary creative energy of Renaissance Italy lies at the root of modern Western culture. In this study, Virginia Cox offers a fresh vision of this iconic moment in cultural history. This book explores key artistic, literary and intellectual developments, as well as histories of food and fashion, map-making, exploration and anatomy.The extraordinary creative energy of Renaissance Italy lies at the root of modern Western culture. In this magisterial study, Virginia Cox offers a fresh vision of this iconic moment in cultural history. Her lucid and absorbing book explores key artistic, literary and intellectual developments, as well as histories of food and fashion, map-making, exploration and anatomy. Alongside towering figures from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Leonardo, Machiavelli, and Isabella d'Este, Cox unveils lesser-known Renaissance protagonists including printers, travel writers, actresses, courtesans, explorers-even celebrity chefs. This extensively revised and expanded edition includes an incisive overview of Italy's relationship with the European and non-European worlds, embracing ethnic and religious diversity within Italy, the global dissemination and hybridization of Italian Renaissance culture, and Italian global encounters, including Jesuit missions to Asia. Pulling together the latest scholarship with original research and insight, Cox's book speaks both to general readers and specialists in the field.
'Virginia Cox's rich, thought-provoking and elegantly written introduction to the Italian Renaissance conceives the cultural movement widely and inclusively, and encourages us to see it in new ways. Cox shows how it was rooted in an emulative and endlessly inventive dialogue with the models of ancient Rome and Greece that responded to, and was made more urgent by, the new needs of expanding cities and commerce. The cultural production that she considers includes of course literature, fine art, music and thought, but also material culture (including cooking and fashion), geography and science. Cox argues convincingly that the Renaissance in Italy should be seen as lasting until as late as the start of the seventeenth century, and as multipolar, with important developments emerging as much from princely courts as from the republics of Florence and Venice.' Brian Richardson, University of Leeds, author of Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy
ISBN: 9781009474252
Dimensions: 228mm x 153mm x 16mm
Weight: 540g
338 pages
2nd Revised edition