Introduction

In Jacob Burckhardt’s essay, in which all aspects of Italian Renaissance civilization are viewed as works of art, artistic purpose and commitment to beauty are defining characteristics of that civilization. As William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden have noted, however, Burckhardt’s Kulturgeschichte was informed by ‘a sensibility nursed in art history’. The shift may also reflect a desire to uphold an idea of absolute beauty in the face of the crucial Enlightenment distinction between absolute and relative beauty, which permitted beauty a history, and allowed for the discovery of the historical perception of art. The lyric poetry of Petrarch is, however, of the utmost importance for the understanding of concepts of beauty and its representation in the Renaissance, for the poet invokes a special relationship between love and the imagination, exalting the latter as a means by which to figure memories. The change that Andrew Morrall traces puts Burckhardt’s view on beauty in a new perspective.