"This collection on early modern aesthetics of doesn't just fill a gap: In its emphatic refusal to cordon off the Renaissance, and in its conviction that art is no passive mirror but a 'matrix through which social reality is established,' it is a welcome corrective. Dante and Ficino, Donne and Shakespeare, Bellori and Caravaggio, Goya and Pater-with Herder, Hegel, Paul de Man and Kierkeegard making memorable cameos-populate an early modernity that looks ahead to modernism." -- -Andrei Pop University of Chicago "A superb and timely collection-rigorous wide-ranging essays demonstrating some of the most compelling trends in their respective fields. It's the sort of collection that gives substance and urgency to interdisciplinary thinking." -- -Christopher Pye Williams College