Walter Pater (1839-1894) attained a B.A. degree in Classics from Queen's College, Oxford, followed soon after by a M.A. degree from Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was made a Fellow in 1865. That same year Pater toured Italy, where he discovered what would become a lifelong passion for masters of the Italian Renaissance like Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, among many others. In 1877 he published "The Renaissance: Studies in...

A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The Last Lion. 
From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history,...

Who were the artists of the Renaissance? Why do we still learn from Renaissance art? Using an inquiry-based approach, readers are introduced to the Italian Renaissance as it was experienced by five of the world's most renowned artists: Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. Readers will learn about the biographies of these Renaissance artists through the perspective of three to four major works of art that not only...

As he entered his seventies, the great Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo despaired that his productive years were past. Anguished by the death of friends and discouraged by the loss of commissions to younger artists, this supreme painter and sculptor began carving his own tomb. It was at this unlikely moment that fate intervened to task Michelangelo with the most ambitious and daunting project of his long creative life. 'Michelangelo, God's...