Renaissance as Resurrection

The Italian Renaissance has been studied above all as a cultural phenomenon related to the 15th-century rediscovery of ancient philosophy, literature, and art. The present volume significantly recalibrates that view, looking at the humanist concept of 'rebirth' in relation to the Christian belief in resurrection. Many of the articles deal specifically with the most explicit expression of this ideal equation, Leon Battista Alberti's evocation of Christ's Sepulchre in the Florentine church of San Pancrazio, a masterpiece in which the 'new life' given to classical architecture, becomes a visual metaphor for the Easter event. This association of ideas, operative in numerous other Florentine works, offers modern students a hermeneutical key reflective of 15th-century church history.