The Renaissance

Studies in Art and Poetry

By: Walter Pater

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Published to great acclaim in 1873, Walter Pater’s compendium of idiosyncratic, impressionistic essays on the Renaissance gained him a reputation as a daring modern philosopher. Oscar Wilde called it the “holy writ of beauty.” It was Pater’s cry of “art for art’s sake” that became the manifesto for the aesthetic movement. He believed that art should be sensual and that beauty should rank as the highest ideal. Marked by elegant fluency, Pater’s essays discuss Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and other artists who, for him, embodied the spirit of the Renaissance. Pater’s work survives to this day as one of the best pieces of cultural criticism to emerge from the 19th century.

This collection is criticism as beautiful as the art it considers.

Public Domain (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“It is not often that we have to welcome a book like this, which brings its readers into fresh and intimate relations with remote phases of life and art, informing these with the vivid glow of a new personality…It is hard to analyze the results of analysis, and to criticize criticism. But if it is necessary to look for the secret of Mr. Pater’s success in The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, it might be stated as lying in a peculiar exquisiteness, distinction, refinement, occupying itself with artistic subjects somewhat remote in character…There is a command of such a style as has not before been written, a wonderful style that sometimes threatens to overstep the limits of prose, delicate, dainty, impassioned, yet certain and chastened.” ( Guardian)

Art history

I found this title when looking for the novel Marius the Epicurean (not available). The performance and content feel didactic to me, not what I look for on and audiobook.

Wanda McCaddon and Pater = 😍

Wanda McCaddon is wonderful. Finding her reading of this work by Pater was fortunate. Some many bookmarked moments. McCaddon is as engaging, natural, and effortless as ever.

Bizarre....no idea what I just listened to.

Listened to in the background at work (was free) but couldn’t tell you a single thing I remember or learned. It was very odd and no idea what organization was. Couldn’t hear the forest thru the trees. Narration had strong English (?) accent, was distracting.