Renaissance Furniture

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Renaissance furniture and notes that the prevailing view that the Renaissance involved a growing interest in classical forms applies to many of the arts but may not apply to the design of furniture, with the ostentatious nature of many furnishings suggesting instead a desire for class distinction based on social and economic changes taking place at the time.

From the Paper:

"The Renaissance was a period seen as a rebirth of learning on the classical model. The modern conception of the Renaissance actually derives from the nineteenth century in the work of Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, who published a pioneering work in 1860 in which he saw the Renaissance as almost purely cultural, as the work of a small Italian elite pioneering a new attitude toward human beings. They now saw human beings as people who had suddenly acquired a new consciousness of their own uniqueness and individuality."

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