This enlightening volume offers a new interpretation of the Renaissance, a major movement in the history of art. Guided by one of the world's leading Renaissance art history scholars, readers embark on a journey of discovery that will transform their understanding of these transformative years in the history of civilization. Detailed interpretations of works of art and architecture that were produced during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy help us to understand the true meaning of this term. Eschewing jargon and lengthy footnotes, the author frames the aesthetics of the Renaissance as a struggle between scientifically inspired problem-solving and irrational, intuitively based perception. Some artists and architects emerge as thoughtful intellectuals devoted to experimentation (the avant-garde) while others rely on the repetition of older methods (the conservatives). Because these opposite tendencies co-existed and interfaced with each other, it has been difficult to discover the true meaning of the Renaissance.

Accordingly, this richly illustrated work teaches its readers a visual method for "reading" and making sense of works of art and architecture, focusing on their characteristics as they were invented and developed throughout the Italian peninsula from Venice to Sicily, in order to understand their development and fully appreciate their significance. The events that occurred in the world of Italian art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries reveal the breathtaking modernity of Renaissance art and debunk the old-fashioned idea that Renaissance art is "old fashioned." On the contrary, they suggest that what happened in Italy in the Renaissance art world is of fundamental importance to understanding the struggles within the modern art of our own time.