John R. Hale 
England and the Italian Renaissance 
The Growth of Interest in its History and Art

This fourth edition of Sir John Hale’s classic history of
England and the Italian Renaissance includes a detailed
introduction by Edward Chaney surveying scholarly developments
since the book was first published.

* * Fourth edition of Sir John Hale’s classic history
of England and the Italian Renaissance, first published in
1954.

* The book’s focus on fundamental issues and basis in
little-read primary sources ensures that it endures as an important
contribution to historical scholarship. Clear, chronological
narrative, beautifully written.

* Provides essential understanding of the period, illuminating
both British and Italian cultural history.

* The fourth edition includes a new introduction by Edward
Chaney who is an expert on Anglo-Italian cultural
relations.

* Chaney surveys the scholarship of the last 50 years and
supplies an up-to-date bibliography.

Table of Content

Table of Contents.

Introduction to the Third Edition: Edward Chaney.

Preface to the First Edition.

1. The Beginnings of Interest: mid-Sixteenth to mid-Seventeenth
Centuries.

2. From Description to Speculation: mid-Seventeenth to Late
Eighteenth centuries.

3. Taste for Italian Paintings: I Sixteenth to Late Eighteenth
Centuries.

4. The Medici and William Roscoe: Late Eighteenth to Early
Nineteenth Centuries.

5. Taste for Italian Paintings: II Late Eighteenth to Early
Nineteenth Centuries.

6. Prejudice and the Term Renaissance: Early to mid-Nineteenth
Century.

7. Taste for Italian Paintings: III Early Nineteenth Century to
Ruskin.

8. John Addington Symonds.

Notes.

Bibliographical Note.

Index

About the author

John Hale was formerly Professor of Italian History at
University College London. He had been a Fellow and Tutor in Modern
History at Jesus College, Oxford; the founding Professor of History
at the University of Warwick; a visiting fellow at the Harvard
Centre for Renaissance Studies, I Tatti, Florence; and Professor of
Italian at University College London. He was a fellow of the
British Academy, a former chairman of the Trustees of the National
Gallery and was knighted for ‘services to learning and the
arts’ in 1984. His books include England and the Italian
Renaissance (1954), Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy
(1961), Renaissance Exploration (1968), Renaissance War
Studies (1983), War and Society in Renaissance Europe
1450-1620 (1985) and The Civilization of Europe in the
Renaissance (1993). Professor Hale died in 1999.

Edward Chaney is Professor of Fine and Decorative Arts
and founding Chair of the History of Collecting Research Centre at
the Southampton Solent University. He is the author or editor of
several book on Anglo-Italian relations, including The Evolution
of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the
Renaissance (1998) and The Evolution of English Collecting:
Receptions of Italian Art in the Tudor and Stuart Periods
(2003).