The Renaissance was one of the great periods of creative and intellectual achievement. This age of genius, from its origins in the thirteenth century to its zenith in sixteenth-century Rome, produced some of the most dynamic and fascinating artists of all time - Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Leonardo da Vinci. In his adventurous new book, lavishly illustrated with 125 colour illustrations, Andrew Graham-Dixon takes a fresh look at this most exciting period in art history, challenging many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding the Renaissance.

The Italian scholars who first dreamed of a Renaissance wished to revive the spirit of classical antiquity after the darkness - as they saw it - of the medieval and Byzantine periods. Graham-Dixon argues, however, that the Renaissance represented a culmination rather than rejection of those influences. Starting in the Middle Ages with the impact of the Franciscan movement on painting in Italy, Graham-Dixon's reappraisal of the Renaissance takes us through the key moments of its development, focusing on the major artists and architects of the time: the early Renaissance in Florence - Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, and Brunelleschi; the Northern Renaissance - Durer, Cranach and Bruegel

Renaissance also outlines the historical context of of this time of great social as well asa artistic change - the power struggles between the Renaissance rulers of Italy's city-states, the French invasions of Italy, the Protestant Reformation, the rise of humanism, the invention of printing. All in all, this is the most thoguth-provoking and illuminating one-volume account of the Renaissance since the time of Jacob Burckhardt.