Burckhardt's well-known book on The Civilization of the Renaissance in
Italy, which appeared in the German original sixty years ago and in Mr. S. G. C. Middlemore's English version in 1892, has been given a new lease of life in a handsome and very fully illustrated reprint (Harrap, 42s.). A few more notes have been added from the fifteenth German edition; but Burckhardt was too careful a -scholar to need such post- humous assistance. His book still remains the best and most attractive sketch of the wonderful and yet tragic age in which Italy, at great cost to herself, was not merely creating supreme masterpieces of art but was also transforming Europe's whole outlook upon life. The 240 illustrations, some of them in colour, are admirably chosen ; architecture and sculpture as well as painting are well represented, and a large folding plate, from a contemporary woodcut view of Florence about 1470, is peculiarly interesting.
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