The Grace of the Italian Renaissance

(Hardback)

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How grace shaped the Renaissance in Italy "Grace" emerges as a keyword in the culture and society of sixteenth-century Italy. The Grace of the Italian Renaissance explores how it conveys and connects the most pressing ethical, social and aesthetic concerns of an age concerned with the reactivation of ancient ideas in a changing world. The book r

Reviews

"Ita Mac Carthy uncovers all sorts of connections at a time in Italy concerned with what might be described as the reactivation of aspects of the classical past, drawing on the writings of Tullia dAragona, Ariosto, Vittoria Colonna and others, and exploring works by Francesco del Cossa, Michelangelo and Raphael. Throughout, she puts grace at the centre of things, even though it is notoriously difficult to define, endeavouring to show what it signified at the time, and how it permeated style, behaviour and notions concerning society and even salvation."---James Stevens Curl, Times Higher Education
"This thoughtful, elegant text offers new and persuasive readings of several well-known figures and their works." * Choice Reviews *
"Mac Carthys discursive, often meditative style draws us deeply into the complex layers, contradictions, and semantic richness embodied in the idea of grace, one of the most 'beguiling and deceptively powerful of early modern keywords.'"---Frederick J. McGinness, Church History
"[An] ambitious and breathtakingly intricate study. . . . Ita Mac Carthys Grace of the Italian Renaissance is a rich, insightful, and highly nuanced study. It is an inspiringly erudite work that will appeal to students, scholars, and general readers. It promises to serve them all well."---Sarah Rolfe Prodan, Renaissance Studies
"Mac Carthy gives us a rich and perceptive study of grace in word, image, and beyond in sixteenth-century Italy."---Jonathan Locke Hart, Renaissance and Reformation

Author Bio

Ita Mac Carthy is associate professor of Italian and translation studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University. Her books include Cognitive Confusions: Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern Culture, Renaissance Keywords, and Women and the Making of Poetry in Ariosto's "Orlando furioso".