Reviving the Renaissance
Subtitle: The Use and Abuse of the Past in Nineteenth-Century Italian Art and Decoration (Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: June 13, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9780521481519
Subjects: History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900; c 1700 to c 1800; c 1800 to c 1900; History - General; 19th Century Art; Art & Art Instruction; Art; Italy; History - Renaissance; Europe - General; History / Europe / General; Renaissance revival (Art)--Italy; 19th century; Art, Italian; Renaissance revival (Art)
First sentence: There are perhaps few images that convey the cultural attitudes and concrete aims of certain nineteenth-century periodicals as clearly and explicitly as the illustrations that appeared on their covers and title pages in the mid-1800s.
Description: By the time Italy had developed its obsession with neo-Renaissance in the 1870s, collectors and scholars in the rest of Europe had been excited by Renaissance taste and style for several decades. The Renaissance was then promptly reconceptualized, in a forced alignment with the accepted historical version of its birth and development, and its help enlisted in the search for an Italian national identity.

Thus the italianita of the Renaissance was proclaimed. But what represented this neo-Renaissance in Italy, and what aided its diffusion? In an attempt to answer these questions this book explores the many areas marked by neo-Renaissance taste. Its diffusion and development is traced, from the institutions which instructed its chief exponents, to architecture and exhibitions and the publications which disseminated neo-Renaissance designs so effectively.