Walter Pater’s enduring work, The Renaissance, ignited impassioned debates and earned profound admiration for its distinctive critique of renowned artists from the French and Italian Renaissance. In eloquent and vibrant prose, Pater explores the creations of luminaries like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli, offering unexpected, idiosyncratic, and sometimes almost erotic insights. His audacious insistence on pleasure as one of life’s primary aims sparked contrasting reactions; some viewed it as a license for hedonism, while others valued his daring perspectives on the appreciation of art. This book, as much a treasure for art and literature enthusiasts as for cultural critics, maintains its timeless allure. Pater’s study of beauty, pleasure, and artistic ecstasy transcends epochs and continues to exude freshness, vitality, and contagious enthusiasm.
This Warbler Classics edition is an unabridged republication of the fourth and final edition of the work and includes the original annotations, an in-depth essay on the influence of Walter Pater on Oscar Wilde, and a detailed biographical timeline.
Table of Content
Contents
Prefacev
Two Early French Stories
Pico della Mirandola
Sandro Botticelli
Luca della Robbia
The Poetry of Michelangelo
Leonardo da Vinci
The School of Giorgione
Joachim du Bellay
Winckelmann
Conclusion
Notes on the Literary Relationship between Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde by Ernst Bendz
Biographical Timeline
About the author
Walter Pater (1839-1894), was an English critic, essayist, and humanist who argued that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose. ‘Art for art’s sake’ is a core principle of Aestheticism, the movement he helped found. Pater’s exquisite writing style and bold ideas exerted a powerful influence on such writers as Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Paul Valéry, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens and has had lasting influence on the field of art criticism.
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