This book does not pretend to retrace the history of the Italian arts, but rather to define their relation to the main movement of Renaissance culture. Keeping this object in mind, Symonds explains the dependence of the arts on medieval Christianity at their commencement, their gradual emancipation from ecclesiastical control, and their final attainment of freedom at the moment when the classical revival culminated. Poet, essayist, and literary historian, John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) delved into every field of the humanities, writing the celebrated Renaissance in Italy and publishing translations of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and the Sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella; he wrote biographies of Shelley, Sidney, and Jonson, and collaborated with Havelock Ellis on a number of projects in sexology. He is remembered for his untiring efforts to loosen the restraints on homosexuals in England, and his Memoirs are the only diary of a Victorian homosexual of his stature.