ABSTRACT
Burckhardt began by asking the question why the Renaissance was in origin an Italian phenomenon, and by finding the answer in the unusual political conditions obtaining in the peninsula: unlike northern states such as France or England, Italy was not subject to one monarch, and its northern and central regions were mostly governed by a collection of fiercely competing city-states. Italian social structure was equally marked by openness and fluidity, with talent and ruthlessness rather than noble origins providing the keys to success. In this secular and individualistic world the Renaissance signoRi, such as the Este of Ferrara or the Sforza of Milan, constructed their states like artworks and found natural allies in writers and artists keen to bolster the authority of generous patRons. The Renaissance (‘rebirth’) certainly involved the revival of classical literature and art, but it was the marriage of this with ‘the genius of the Italian people, which achieved the conquest of the Western world’ (Burckhardt 1960, 104). For Burckhardt modernity, which for him involved realism, individualism and a secular worldview, was born in Renaissance Italy.
