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Zusatztext “The greatest single book on the history of Italy between 1350 and 1550.”— Hajo Holborn Informationen zum Autor 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 . Klappentext Published in 1860, Burckhardt's great work redefined our sense of the European past, wholly reinterpreting what has since been known simply as the Italian Renaissance. With unsurpassed erudition, Burckhardt illuminates a world of artistic and cultural ferment, innovation, and discovery; of revived humanism; of fierce tensions between church and empire; and of the birth of both the modern state and the modern individual. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy remains the single most important and influential account of this crucial moment in the history of the West. Introduction This work bears the title of an essay in the strictest sense of the word. No one is more conscious than the writer with what limited means and strength he has addressed himself to a task so arduous. And even if he could look with greater confidence upon his own researches, he would hardly thereby feel more assured of the approval of competent judges. To each eye, perhaps, the outlines of a given civilization present a different picture; and in treating of a civilization which is the mother of our own, and whose influence is still at work among us, it is unavoidable that individual judgement and feeling should tell every moment both on the writer and on the reader. In the wide ocean upon which we venture, the possible ways and directions are many; and the same studies which have served for this work might easily, in other hands, not only receive a wholly different treatment and application, but lead also to essentially different conclusions. Such indeed is the importance of the subject that it still calls for fresh investigation, and may be studied with advantage from the most varied points of view. Meanwhile we are content if a patient hearing is granted us, and if this book be taken and judged as a whole. It is the most serious difficulty of the history of civilization that a great intellectual process must be broken up into single, and often into what seem arbitrary categories, in order to be in any way intelligible. It was formerly our intention to fill up the gaps in this book by a special work on the “Art of the Renaissance”—an intention, however, which we have been able to fulfill only in part.1 *1. Burckhardt’s History of Architecture and Decoration of the Italian Renaissance was first printed in 1867. His Notes on Renaissance Sculpture were posthumously published in 1934, as a part of Vol. XIII of his Collected Works. Of his intended History of Renaissance Painting three chapters only were finished: “The Art Collectors,” “The Altar-piece,” “The Portrait”; in fact, three very fine essays, published in 1898, a year after the author’s death. The struggle between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen left Italy in a political condition which differed essentially from that of other countries of the West. While in France, Spain and England the feudal system was so organized that, at the close of its existence, it was naturally transformed into a unified monarchy, and while in Germany it helped to maintain, at least outwardly, the unity of the empire, Italy had shaken it off almost entirely. The Emperors of the fourteenth century, even in the most favourable case, were no longer received and respected as feudal lords, but as possible leaders and supporters of powers already in existence; while the Papacy, with its creatures and allies, was strong enough to hinder national unity in the future, but n...
