A personal view by Kenneth Clark

The architect Leon Battista Alberti addressed man in these words: "To you is given a body more graceful than other animals, to you power of apt and various movements, to you most sharp and delicate senses, to you wit, reason, memory like an immortal god."

Kenneth Clark visits Florence, where European thought was first given a new impetus by the re-discovery of the classical past, and continues his journey to the palaces of Urbino and Mantua, centres of Renaissance civilisation.
(Book £4.75, paperback £2.25: see p 55)