From heaven to Arcadia: the sacred and the profane in the Renaissance

Abstract

From the revelations of classical statuary pulled from the Roman soil as the popes began rebuilding the city in the fifteenth century, to the myth of serenity that Venice constructed to conceal its physical and political fragility, to bloody yet cultured Florence under the Medici, Ingrid D. Rowland traces the worldly, unworldly, and otherworldly strivings of artists, writers, popes, and politicians during that great outburst of mental energy we know as the Renaissance. Here are Botticelli, whose illustrations for the Divine Comedy reveal him to be one of Dante's most careful readers; the multifaceted genius of Leonardo; the mastery of Titian and the brilliance of artists like Correggio and Caravaggio; the enigmatic erotic novel Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the decoding of which was the subject of the recent novel The Rule of Four; the Western fascination with Egypt; and the spiritual ferment of late Byzantium, which as it collapsed passed on so many ideas to Renaissance Italy.