Why did Renaissance art come to matter so much, so widely, and for so long? Patricia Emison's answer depends on a recalibrated view of the long Renaissance - from 1300 to 1600 - synthesizing the considerable evolution in our understanding of the epoch since the foundational nineteenth-century studies of Burckhardt and Wölfflin.

Patricia Emison recalibrates our view of the Renaissance, synthesizing the evolution of the concept since the beginnings of art history.