The Italian Renaissance was one of the most extraordinary periods in the history of Western art, and art lovers from around the world are captivated by the treasures that are held in Italian museums, churches, and galleries. This guide introduces art lovers to the major artists and sights of the Renaissance in a series of art trails-itineraries that cover the most important paintings and sculptures of the period. Written in a friendly, informative style, it is designed for the traveler who is serious-but not stuffy-about art. Not only does it give specialized coverage of the best in Italian Renaissance art, but it will save the traveler the expense of purchasing numerous gallery guides.

Around the year one thousand a sort of cosmic chaos seemed to shake all of Europe with a series of portents and catastrophic events: comets, eclipses, earthquakes,conflagrations, famines, even episodes of cannibalism. The order of the world, as has been noted by Georges Duby,"appeared over-turned by various perturbations [...] which all proceeded from the same deep malaise". By now the hypothesis that the fear per-vading those years sprang exclusively from the apocalyptic mil-lenarian theories on the end of the world has been refuted. Rather it could be said that common man, crushed by a sense of inferi-ority to the forces of nature and still far from placing himself at the center of the cosmos, was constantly aware in those days of the precariousness of existence, which kept him in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Overwhelmed by nature, man's only chance of sal-vation lay in divine protection. Accordingly, while daily work measured his time in the slow rhythms of liturgy, every aspect of life was conditioned by eschatological values- the concept of sin staining the origins of man, punishment and atonement through work, fatigue and suffering. Not by chance did the Medieval imagination, and thus also the figurative arts, lay the foundations,more than at any other period in Western civilization, of a com-plex system of symbols where numbers, colors and musical tones were mystically linked to the harmony (or chaos) of the universe.A deeply fascinating language - whose apparent involution has intrigued 20th century artists such as Chagall, Picasso and Klee-united at least up to the 12th century, albeit with different styles and techniques, almost all of the figurative manifestations of the Christian West, in spite of its dissimilar political situations. In his Histories, tracing the story of the known world from the year 900 to 1044, the Bourgogne monk Radulfus Glaber describes the ap-parition in 1014 of a comet like an enormous sword, and com-ments that "Whenever men see a portent of this kind, it always happens that soon afterward some extraordinary and terrible event befalls them". Accordingly, a fire destroys the Church of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, and in Italy (divided among Imperial, Pontificial and Byzantine rule), violent conflagrations devastate cities, castles and monasteries. Even earlier, at the dawn of the year one thousand, a comet "with a blazing tail" had ap-peared. It is recorded not by a direct witness, but by a chronicler in the 12th century.

  The Middle Ages

  The XV Century

 The XVI Century

The XVII Century

The XVIII Century

 The XIX Century

  The XX Century

INDEX OF NAMES AND WORKS