The Myth of the Renaissance

Abstract

‘At the sound of the word “Renaissance”’, wrote the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, ‘the dreamer of past beauty sees purple and gold’ [9]. More exactly, he or she sees in the mind’s eye Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Michelangelo’s David, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Erasmus, the châteaux of the Loire, and the Faerie Queene, all rolled into one, into a composite picture of a golden age of creativity and culture.