PENGUIN CLASSICS : THE CIVILIZATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY PB B FORMAT – JACOB BURCKHARDT-PETER BURKE-S. MIDDLEMORE

For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world – a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics. In this landmark work he depicts the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice and Rome as providing the seeds of a new form of society, and traces the rise of the creative individual, from Dante to Michelangelo. A fascinating description of an era of cultural transition, this nineteenth-century masterpiece was to become the most influential interpretation of the Italian Renaissance, and anticipated ideas such as Nietzsche s concept of the Ubermensch in its portrayal of an age of genius.