Italian Renaissance Illuminations.

Cloth, large 8vo, 29 cm, 118 pp, 40 colour plates. From the blurb: "The intellectual, moral, spiritual, and artistic rebirth of Europe, the revival of ancient classical influences, the rise of a new impulse in culture, in literature and art arose in Italy during the early part of the fifteenth century, and there was a transformation in book illumination. The unreal creatures of the Middle Ages became men and women of flesh and blood; the modelling of flesh became three-dimensional; the medieval censorship of nakedness was discarded. Here are pages glowing with gold from the masterpieces of the Renaissance, selected from the major manuscripts of the period by J.J.G. Alexander of the University of Manchester, who has provided the Introduction and Commentaries on the individual folios reproduced here." Good in used and slightly torn dustwrapper.