The Florentine Enlightenment 1400-1450

A study of the revolutionary development in art and thought which took place in early fifteenth-century Florence, this book is a new approach to political philosophy, history, art, and architecture that was inspired by the teaching and writings of a group of humanist thinkers who paved the way for the great achievements of the later Renaissance. Holmes explores the ideas of the humanists and traces their influence on the writing of history, political philosophy, and aesthetics. The new humanist secular thought was paralleled, and even directly applied in some cases, by a number of brilliant Florentine artists headed by Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio. In architecture, sculpture, and painting these men produced masterpieces which gave form to the humanist ideal of classical inspiration related to real life. Holmes examines this brief but enlightened phase in the history of art and ideas within its historical context, setting it against the background of Florence's fluctuating relationship with an enfeebled papacy and the wider Italian political scene.