I’ve long suspected that the Renaissance was basically a scam that the Italians managed to pull on the rest of Europe, an orchestrated campaign to convince everyone else that their newly adopted styles of art and architecture were a la mode, a sort of early version of FOMO. It’s clear that Professor Plumb, the editor and contributor to this volume, doesn’t agree. He’s a true partisan of the Renaissance, quite convinced that Corinthian columns beat Gothic arches every time. I must say that I prefer Gothic, with its wild designs, its yearning, its openness to transcendence, over the Renaissance gaze at the human, usually naked and over muscled, like a modern gym.

However, given by prejudice against the Renaissance, reading something by a partisan for it was a necessary corrective, and this book does an excellent job of providing an overview of how the Italians managed to transform art and architecture in the Quattrocento, and then spread that everywhere else.