The Renaissance (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Walter Pater
- First Published: 1873
- Type of Work: Essays
- Genres: Nonfiction, Essays
- Subjects: Nineteenth century, Europe or Europeans, Art or artists, Beauty, Painting or painters, Life, philosophy of, Renaissance, Sculpting or sculptors, Hellenism, Sculpture
Critical Evaluation:
In the preface to The Renaissance, Walter Pater writes, “The subjects of the following studies . . . touch what I think the chief points in that complex, many-sided movement.” The subjects themselves are the French, Italian, and German writers, painters, and sculptors, ranging from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, in whose lives and in whose works Pater finds represented the many sides, the divergent attitudes and aims, of the Renaissance.
Pater’s method is impressionistic. The task of the aesthetic critic, he says, is first to...
[The entire page is 2297 words long]
