"Avoiding the straitjacket of fashionable theory, the book is organized traditionally by period and architect. Social context, technical innovation and aesthetic judgement are all given due weight, with particular emphasis on the way in which each architect balanced individual inspiration with the accepted Vitruvian canon. Generously illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings, plans and reconstructions, it brings into relief the extraordinary flowering of architectural genius between the birth of Brunelleschi and the death of Michelangelo, a turning point in Western culture whose riches and pleasures prove themselves yet again to be literally inexhaustible."--Jacket.