The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873) is Walter Pater’s celebrated collection of essays on figures of the Italian and French Renaissance, from Botticelli and Leonardo to Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola. Its famous portrait of the Mona Lisa and its ‘Conclusion,’ urging readers to burn with a hard, gem-like flame, became foundational texts of the Aesthetic movement.
Pater’s exquisite, impressionistic prose treats art criticism as itself an art and made beauty and intense experience the measure of life. The book deeply influenced Oscar Wilde and a generation of artists. This free EPUB download is cleanly formatted for any e-reader.