The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

First published in 1860, this historical study argues that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy produced a new kind of individual and a new idea of the state. Burckhardt treats Italian politics as a workshop of calculated power, then turns to the revival of antiquity, the discovery of landscape and personality, festivals, society, and the mixture of faith, superstition, and skepticism. Popes, condottieri, humanists, and city tyrants appear as types rather than as a year-by-year chronicle. Florence, Rome, Venice, and the smaller courts supply the examples. The book is a cultural essay, not a narrative military history of the peninsula.

Bound in gilt and black image blocked green cloth. Dark green slipcase.