The paragons of the Italian Renaissance - Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, Bramante among them - were almost without exception architects, not only in practice but also in the private spheres of their imaginations. Their architectural plans, fantasies and models, as much as the finished buildings, are the records of their extraordinary creative endeavours.

Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, this book presents a panorama of civil and religious masterworks and the ideas behind them, by the geniuses who changed the face of European architecture, in the form of their fascinating models, plans and designs.

Essays by Carl Frommel, Richard Krautheimer, James Ackerman and other distinguished contributors consider architecture, architectural modelling and urban planning in late medieval and Renaissance Italy, reaching as far back as ancient Rome to uncover the roots of this great tradition. The works are analyzed historically from the dual viewpoint of Renaissance humanism and modern critical reappraisal. The essays cover French and German Renaissance architecture as well as Italian, and also consider architecture's relationship with other arts, such as stage design, painting and sculpture.

Numerous designs, projects and manuscripts, some never before published, are reproduced and described. Architecture provided a medium for some of the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance, and their work set the pattern for all subsequent development in Europe. The idiom they created is here given expression in the most complete and detailed corpus ever published on the subject.