England and the Italian Renaissance - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sir John Hale was, until his death, a Fellow of the British Academy and Emeritus Professor of Italian History at University College, London. He is the author of many books, including England and the Italian Renaissance, Italian Renaissance Painting, Renaissance Europe 1480-1520, Florence and the Medici: the Pattern of Control and A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance.

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Renaissance Italy has long exerted a seductive power over the English. Hallowed by classical associations, made respectable by the names of great men, sensational by the éclat of great crimes and universal by the standard of great art – the symbol 'Italian Renaissance', of the birth and re-birth of civilisation, was and is irresistible.

'England and the Italian Renaissance' was first published in 1954. It was the first book of John Hale, now Britain's leading Renaissance historian. As Nicholas Penny states in his introduction, 'a new edition needs no defence, for the book has long been established as a classic, is hard to find second-hand and is missing (presumed stolen) from many libraries'. It is a pioneering study of the love affair between the English and Italy, of the influence upon English minds of Italian literature and art, and of the development of the relationship between the Italian Renaissance and the English by whom it was loved and admired.

Written with Hale's customary lightness of touch, humour, assurance, and skilful treatment of detail, the book enables the reader to understand more fully the idea of Renaissance itself, the elements at the work in the increasing concern of Englishmen for the civilisation of Italy and, most significantly, how their attitudes to Italy were forged. And it does so, as Penny writes, 'deftly, engagingly and with great learning'.

"He displays, humour, learning and sympathetic intelligence… Here, certainly, is a notable and readable contribution to our knowledge."
LISTENER

"The fruits of very wide reading are offered by Mr Hale in an urbane style and his dry humour belongs to a fine academic tradition that is now too rarely maintained."
RAYMOND MORTIMER, 'Sunday Times'