In this fascinating study, John Stephens inteprets the significance of the immense cultural change which took place in Italy from the time of Petrarch to the Reformation, and considers its wider contribution to Europe beyond the Alps. His important analysis (which is designed for students and serious general readers of history as well as the specialist) is not a straight narrative history; rather, it is an examination of the humanists, artists and patrons who were the instruments of this change; the contemporary factors that favoured it; and the elements of ancient thought they revived.
The purpose of this book is to decide where the achievement of Renaissance art and letters lay, by exploring the needs for which artists and humanists catered and by exploring why their work took place. It is not a history of the Renaissance, but an attempt to define its value.
