A critical study of the literature on the visual arts produced during the period generally known as the Late Renaissance, Art, Theory, and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy presents a bold reinterpretation of Renaissance art as a whole.

Whereas traditional accounts have emphasized specific concerns with the visible, the centrality of naturalism, and the assimilation of contemporary scientific interests, Robert Williams argues that art comes to be redefined as an all-comprehending form of knowledge, a mode of knowing distinguished by its ability to superintend other modes and thus, ideally, to subordinate all.

Using the writings of artist-theorists such as Vasari, Lomazzo, and Zuccaro, and of literary men such as Aretino, Tasso, and Bocchi, Williams is also able to show that this redefinition, radical and untenable as it may seem, actually documents a real historical event, an increase in the scope and coercive power of presentation that accompanies - and in essential respects defines - the emergence of early modern culture.