ABSTRACT
Rio thus represents the extreme “ right wing” of 19th-century interpreters
of the Italian Renaissance that looked with nostalgia at the lost values of the
Age of Faith. The opposite line, of course, was taken by the spokesmen of the
left wing, the champions o f progress and o f emancipation. For them
the revival o f antiquity signalled the victory over the Dark Ages and the
birth of Modern Man. What both schools of historians had in common was
the conviction of the antithetical nature o f the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. The first was “ spiritual,” “ascetic,” “otherworldly,” the other sen
suous, libertine and realistic. A compromise between these contrasts
appeared to be impossible.
