The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (German:Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien) is an 1860 work on theItalian Renaissance by Swiss historianJacob Burckhardt. Together with hisHistory of the Renaissance in Italy (Die Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien; 1867) it is counted among the classics of Renaissancehistoriography. An English translation was produced by S.G.C. Middlemore in two volumes, London 1878.
Burckhardt sought to capture and define the spirit of the age in all its main manifestations. For him ‘’Kultur’’ was the whole picture: politics, manners, religion...the character that animated the particular activities of a people in a given epoch, and of which pictures, buildings, social and political habits, literature, are the concrete expressions.[1]
Its scholarly judgements are considered to have been largely justified by subsequent research according to historians includingDesmond Seward and art historians such asKenneth Clark.[citation needed]
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is divided into six parts:
Baron, Hans. "Burckhardt's 'Civilization of the Renaissance' a Century after its Publication."Renaissance News 13.3 (1960): 207-222online.
Danson Brown, Richard (2000). "From Burckhardt to Greenblatt: New Historicisms and Old". In Whitlock, Keith (ed.).The Renaissance in Europe: A Reader. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with The OpenUniversity. pp. 4–11.ISBN9780300082234.
Ferguson, Wallace K.The Renaissance and Historical Thought (1948), pp. 179–192online
Garner, Roberta. "Jacob Burckhardt as a Theorist of Modernity: Reading The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy."Sociological Theory (1990): 48-57online alsoonline at JSTOR
