The Penguin Book of the Renaissance, ed. J.H. Plumb, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, 1978 (1964)

This book is splendidly well-written, a sonorous treat urging one to
read it aloud, a concise collection of insightful and quite extensive 
comments. Its precis only exists by significant exclusion. The poverty
of my human brain inclines me to make this summary, while reminding
myself of the delights of repeatedly reading the original aloud.

The introduction (pp. 9-13) to the volume begins:

   Art reflects society - its asperations, confusions, and inheritance.
   But the future is there as well as the past and the great ages of
   man only have meaning so long as they create modes of expression
   and behaviour which will hold unborn generations in unconscious
   subjection. p. 9

Such an age was the Renaissance. Barbarians had devastated Europe.
Italian cities grew, providing wealth to nourish art. Increased wealth
and technological advances, e.g. the printing press, fostered cultural
growth, such as city theatres and personal libraries. Then increased
individual initiative and search for truth.

"The Dawn of the Renaissance" (pp. 15-30): Mediterranean harmonious
civilization had shattered beneath waves of violent invaders. Ruins
continued, converted to primitive and warlike needs. Europe's clashing
warriors and the mass of peasants sustaining them were embraced by the
Universal Church. Trade existed, its expansion (propelled by population
increase) funding the Renaissance.

Italy dominated Western trade and banking, its disunity forming the
city-state context of Renaissance history and inspiring the higher
visions of its philosophers and poets. Classical, Byzantine and Islamic
influences seeded agile Italian minds. Classical consideration,
comprehension and transcendence revitalized and diffused arts and
humanity.

"The Prince and the State" (pp. 31-53): Craving power created killers
and feuds. Greater politics arranged Pope against Emperor. Guildmembers
exerted civic influence, overtaken by oligarchs and despots. Exiles
were plentiful. City fought city, after 1494 foreign forces joined in.
Rulers preferred mercenaries to arming citizens.

Balance of power and mercantile bargaining experience produced
diplomacy and intelligence gathering. Princes presented patronage,
pageantry, impressive structures, works of art and curiosities. Plague
and war generated religious revivals; political strife and power play
led to pragmatic analyses, epitomized by Macchiavelli's The Prince.

"Macchiavelli" by Garrett Mattingly (pp. 55-75): Florence exemplified
Renaissance humanism and political preoccupation. Macchiavelli was a
Florentine who met Cesare Borgia, noted his effective ruthlessness and
downplayed his deficiencies. Macchiavelli had raised local troops,
although non-citizen peasants. These took Pisa, but failed against
Spanish professionals.

Out of office, Macchiavelli wrote about politics. His serious works
(History of Florence, Art of War and Discourses on the First Ten Books
of Livy) have been overshadowed by The Prince, presenting its idealized
Cesare Borgia. Modern geopolitics resemble those of divided Renaissance
Italy. Macchiavelli was concerned not with Christian spirit, but with
practical means for his state's success.

"The Arts" (pp. 77-97): Rulers, merchants, ecclesiastics sought
artistic prestige, competed for talented artists who vied with each
other in expressing impressively studied technique and attention to
nature. Religious themes continued in religious places. Transalpine
artists' backgrounds, landscapes seized Italian attention, especially
in Venice and Florence. Venice presented pageants and portraits.

   Through perspective, through the introduction of oils, through the
   exploitation of landscape and the human body, Renaissance Italy
   created the traditions of Western art, in which it was to remain
   embedded for centuries. p. 92

Renaissance elites lived lives exquisitely artistic in intricate
detail.

"The Young Michelangelo" by Kenneth Clark (pp. 99-112): Michelangelo
keenly studied anatomy; he was intensely interested in religion. He
conveyed in impressive sculpture human striving in the face of Fate.
Pope Julius II ("a formidable man of action, with a powerful mind and
boundless ambition") commissioned his tomb, interrupting this for the
painting of his church's ceiling.

"Florence: Cradle of Humanism" (pp. 118-135): Florence birthed the
Renaissance. In fertile, attractive country it overcame neighbours'
pressure. Guilds energized Florence, its politics intense:

   To control this complex governmental machine, men fought in the
   streets, assassinated, exiled, pillaged, and destroyed each other
   generation after generation, so that one Florentine gloomily
   remarked that there were enough citizens in exile to populate
   another city. p. 122

In 1402, the unexpected death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti saved Florence,
accenting belief Fortune favoured Florence's Roman Republican virtue.
The Medici deftly attained and retained actual power, while observing
republican forms. Medici were patrons of the arts. Florence's poor
(rural and urban) felt hunger, disease, death and religious enthusiasm.
Savonarola led revolutionary change and ended burned.

"Lorenzo de' Medici" by Ralph Roeder (pp. 137-154): Lorenzo's heritage
was ancestral banking, charity and artistic patronage. Lorenzo's
pageants and masquerades earned popularity. He survived the de Pazzi's
plot with its papal support and brought peace to Italy. He patronized
art, learning, the Platonic Academy, humanism. Savonarola preached
against him. When Lorenzo died, peace went with him.

"Milan: City of Strife" (pp. 155-169): Milan's ambitious dukes schemed
within their families, imposed internal order and extended the city's
reach. Francesco Sforza, a mercenary commander, acquired power and
joined Cosimo de Medici in granting Italy relative peace. Lodovico
Sforza lived in princely splendour, keenly attentive to the wellbeing
of the state. His playing at greater politics eventually failed, his
last years spent as a prisoner in France.

"Leonardo da Vinci" by J. Bronowski (pp. 171-188): Leonardo was
illegitimate, no great matter; many Renaissance individuals achieved by
their own merit. From fourteen to twenty he was an apprentice. He
painted for another decade in Florence. Mathematics, mechanics, anatomy
interested him. His next two decades he served Milan. He transcended
Classical revival, attaining modern originality.

   He painted portraits of Lodovico's mistresses. He designed the
   costumes and devised the trick surprises of scenery for the court
   masques. To celebrate a visit of the King of France, he made an
   automaton shaped like a lion, which spilled a shower of lilies from
   its breast. He drew maps and proposed schemes of irrigation, he
   founded cannon and installed central heating, he planned engines of
   war and palaces, he designed a dozen schemes that Lodovico
   disregarded. p. 179

he left some 5,000 pages of remarkable sketches and penetrating notes.
When Milan fell, Leonardo travelled, serving Cesare Borgia, the Medici
Pope Leo X and finally France's Francis I. Leonardo perceived science's
understanding of the actual dynamic processes of nature.

"Rome: Splendour and the Papacy" (pp. 187-207): Martin V cured the
schism, restored order and renewed trade. Returning to Rome, affording
the best mercenary commanders and companies, the Papacy revived its
control of the City and its hinterland. The pragmatic, worldly heads of
the Church were patrons of those enabling display of their wealth and
power.

Pope Nicholas V, a devoted bibliophile, assembled a library, provided
it befitting accommodation. The wise were welcome at his court. Sixtus
significantly continued this work. Nicholas envisioned Rome rebuilt;
his immediate successors accomplished this project. Italy's greatest
artists and sculptors magnificently adorned Renaissance Rome. Luther
and Charles V's ravaging mercenaries clouded this splendour.

"Pope Pius II" by Iris Origo (pp. 209-225): He was a poor country boy
staying up late copying Classical Latin texts and Petrarch. He was a
secretary and an envoy sent afar. He considered ambition the impulse of
all man's deeds. He wrote much:

   which included treatises on education, on rhetoric, on the Holy
   Roman Empire, and even on horses; histories of Bohemia, of the
   Goths, of the Council of Basle, of the Diet of Ratisbon, and of the
   Emperor Frederick III; and some Lives of Illustrious Men -- and
   finally, after becoming pope, the famous Commentaries. p. 211

He was a humanist, a skilled administrator and diplomat with a keen and
inquiring mind; he died trying to lead an unpopular crusade.

"Venice: the Golden Years" (pp. 227-243): Venice, secretive and
remarkably organized, was wealthy, cosmopolitan and formidable. Venice
acquired detailed and prodigious amounts of information, internally and
globally. Dissent was disallowed. Venice traded everything, especially
light weight luxuries. Her ships transported pilgrims and crusaders.
Venetian glass, mosaics, silk, jewellry and lace were of the highest
quality.

Venice struggled with Turks to the east, Italians to the West. Ever
adaptable, Venice offered latest technology oil paintings, printed
books, inexpensive editions also available. Family workshops turned out
a vast quantity of first class paintings, including portrayals of
pageantry authorities considered beneficial.

"Doge Francesco Foscari" by H.R. Trevor Roper (pp. 245-260): His
predecessor warned against him and his Western adventurism. Highly
ambitious, adroitly political, spectacularly magnificent, he provided
pageants, Italian warfare and patient feuding. His guests included the
Eastern and Western Emperors and scholarly refugees bearing Hellenism.
His prominent Venetian enemies struck at his son and finally forced the
old man from office. He had asserted a Western hinterland in the face
of Italian despots; Venetian oligarchy prevailed against him and his
successors.

"The Images of Man" (pp. 262-278): Construction made cities new;
printed books contained modern writings, including accounts of new
lands being discovered. Capitalist thought of personal risk and
advantage increased. Drama and novels discovered again an individually
human and heroic focus. Sexuality was accepted. Excesses were lampooned
by Aretino moving from court to court, settling in style in Venice,
with Titian epitomizing writer and artist in creative and destructive
freedom.

   In war and politics, if anywhere, man was solitary, alone, without
   friends, and, of necessity, they believed, without principle. To
   survive, to succeed, to kill before being killed, such were their
   destined lives. And this image artists evoked in painting as
   Machiavelli did in prose; the profiles, the faces of the Renaissance
   princes, have a terrible majesty, an aloofness, a dedication beyond
   the reality of common men. pp. 270-271

Upwardly mobile warriors and merchants had Castiglione's advice on how
to be gentlemen.

"Federigo da Montefeltro" by Denis Mark Smith (pp. 279-284): He was
Duke of Urbino, presiding over the cultured court which atracted
Castiglione who immortalized it. Federigo was taught in Mantua by
Vittorino de Feltre. When his half brother was assassinated, Federigo
became ruler. He was remarkably ethical, notably approachable and
concerned with his people's wellbeing.

He hired himself and his soldiers, becoming a most famous mercenary
commander, one who honoured his contracts and seldom lost. In 1474
Sixtus IV named him duke. He died of fever in 1482; Cesare Borgia
looted Urbino's art collection in 1502. Federigo was a rounded person,
his balance reflected in his model court.

"The Spread of the Renaissance" (pp. 295-314): As Italy became a field
for foreign armies and exploration enriched Atlantic countries, art and
learning from Italy attracted outsiders. Northern humanism branched
into Protestantism. Other vernacular languages followed Italian's lead.
Other courts, beginning with France's Francis I's, began to reflect the
cultured splendour of Renaissance Italy.


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