The Italian Renaissance has been much written about.The author of our core book, Lauro Martines takes up an old theme, the relation between "society" and "culture," with new terms--"power" and "imagination"--in an effort to shed fresh light on the sources of Renaissance artistic and intellectual achievements. Martines argues that the socioeconomic transformations which accompanied the rise of the Italian city-states out of the medieval communes set the foundation for the cultural flowering that marked the 14th to 16th centuries.
In so doing Martines traces the growth of commerce and the evolution of governments; he describes the attitudes, pleasures, and rituals of the ruling elite; and he seeks to understand the period's towering works of the imagination in literature, painting, city planning, and philosophy-not simply as the creations of individual artists, but as the expression of the ambitions and egos of those in power.
While we will not ignore famous artistic and literary Renaissance figures such as Dante, Donatello, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Petrarch, the focus of this sdg will be on Italian history and on the conditions that made the flowering of the Renaissance possible at this time and in this place.
1. Introduction; The Ascent of Communes
2. The Early Commune and Its Nobility; The Commune Around 1200; Popolo and Popular Commune
3. The End of the Popular Commune; The Course of Urban Values
4. Despotism: Signories; The Course of Political Feeling
5. Oligarchy: Renaissance Republics
6. Economic Trends and Attitudes; Humanism Part I
7. Humanism Part II; The Princely Courts
8. Art: An Alliance with Power
9. Invasion: City States; The High Renaissance Part I
10. The High Renaissance Part II; The End of the Renaissance
The core Book is out of print, but many used copies are available. It is also on Kindle.
Martines, Lauro. Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1979, 1988.