LONDON

SMITH, ELDER & CO

1899





PREFACE[1]


This third volume of my book on the "Renaissance in Italy" does not
pretend to retrace the history of the Italian arts, but rather to define
their relation to the main movement of Renaissance culture. Keeping this,
the chief object of my whole work, steadily in view, I have tried to
explain the dependence of the arts on mediaeval Christianity at their
commencement, their gradual emancipation from ecclesiastical control, and
their final attainment of freedom at the moment when the classical revival
culminated.

Not to notice the mediaeval period in this evolution would be impossible;
since the revival of Sculpture and Painting at the end of the thirteenth
century was among the earliest signs of that new intellectual birth to
which we give the title of Renaissance. I have, therefore, had to deal at
some length with stages in the development of Architecture, Sculpture,
and Painting, which form a prelude to the proper age of my own history.