The Renaissance, Walter Pater
The Renaissance, Walter Pater
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The Renaissance
Studies in Art and Poetry

Author: Walter Pater

Narrator: Wanda McCaddon

Unabridged: 6 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/14/2014

Categories: Nonfiction, Art

Synopsis

Published to great acclaim in 1873, Walter Paters 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 was Paters cry of art for arts sake that became the manifesto for the aesthetic movement. He believed that art should be sensual and that beauty should rank as the highest ideal. Marked by elegant fluency, Paters essays discuss Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and other artists who, for him, embodied the spirit of the Renaissance. Paters work survives to this day as one of the best pieces of cultural criticism to emerge from the nineteenth century. This collection is criticism as beautiful as the art it considers.

About Walter Pater

Walter Pater (1839–1894) was educated at the Kings’ School, Canterbury, and at Oxford, where he was later elected a fellow of Brasenose College. His publication of The Renaissance in 1873 caused a stir within the walls of the university, as well as outside, for its positive views on hedonism. Despite controversy, he became a formative influence on the aesthetic movement of the late nineteenth century.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill

If you put only one 150 year old book of art essays on your reading list, this is the one I would recommend. It revolutionized British art criticism, inspired—and provided a philosophical basis for--the l'art pour l'art movement, and, most important (for me at least), it expressed a new sensibility......more

Goodreads review by Khush

It is an extraordinary book; anyone who loves writing must read it. The book is a collection of essays on male artists and their art, and more importantly, their friendships. In the preface, Walter Pater tells how to approach a work of art. One must view a work of art in a way that there stands nothi......more

Goodreads review by Roy

That it has given a new sense, that it has laid open a new organ, is the highest that can be said of any critical effort. I had no idea what to expect from these essays. The only reason I became aware of Pater was because a copy of this book was sitting on the bathroom floor in my friend’s father......more

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