For many generations, the importance of the Italian Renaissance lay in its marking the beginning of modern times by means of a self-conscious break with the middle ages. This book seeks above all to convey the variety of cultural activity in Italy in the period between the fourteenth-century and the seventeenth: at different times within those three centuries, in different places in Italy, in association with different political ideologies. While this involves a measure of deconstruction, it also demands a synthesis that aims to communicate the richness of historical experience in the regions of Italy and the significance of that experience in the history of Europe as a whole.