> Skip to content
  • Published: 19 June 1990
  • ISBN: 9780140445343
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $27.99

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy




A fascinating description of the beginning of the modern world

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.

  • Published: 19 June 1990
  • ISBN: 9780140445343
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $27.99

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Jacob Burckhardt

Peter Gay is Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University and director of the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. His many books include the three-volume The Enlightenment: An Interpretation; Schnitzler’s Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815–1914; and Freud: A Life for Our Time.

Also by Jacob Burckhardt

See all