This book attempts to answer two questions. Firstly, what are the essential features of the Renaissance movement that gradually transformed Europe in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries? Secondly, how many of these cultural, artistic, and intellectual transformations continue to influence modern societies today?

Table of Contents

• 1 History and measuring time
• 2 Petrarch and classical culture
• 3 The spread of ideas
• 4 Rising merchant economies
• 5 New forms of authority
• 6 Renaissance painting
• 7 Renaissance sculpture
• 100 Ideas