Download The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry AudioBook Free
Publicized to great acclaim in 1873, Walter Pater's compendium of idiosyncratic, impressionistic essays on the Renaissance gained him a reputation as a daring modern philosopher. Oscar Wilde called it the "holy writ of beauty." It had been Pater's cry of "art for art's sake" that became the manifesto for the cosmetic movement. He thought that art should be sensual and this beauty should get ranking as the highest ideal. Marked by elegant fluency, Pater's essays discuss Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and other performers who, for him, embodied the soul of the Renaissance. Pater's work survives to this day as one of the better pieces of social criticism to emerge from the 19th hundred years. This collection is criticism as stunning as the art it considers.
