> Fletcher’s more substantive aim of exhibiting the “terror” lying behind the “beauty” of the Italian Renaissance is in my view less successful. First of all, although awestruck tourists might marvel at the beauty of Italy’s art and architecture without much sense of the blood and suffering that accompanied it (unless, of course, they watched Showtime’s series The Borgias, in which case they would have a sensationalized view), no scholar of the period would be surprised. In this regard, Fletcher is jousting with something of a strawman, or at least a largely mid-19th-century gossamer version of the Renaissance.

Straw man indeed. As a layperson, I didn’t imagine Renaissance Europe to be an abrupt transition from medieval to 21st century living standards or political stability. Of course there were atrocities and quality of life was dramatically poorer and more brutish than it is today. What would be remarkable to my lay mind is some interpretation of that brutishness as a development or consequence of enlightenment developments (as opposed to an extension of medieval conditions); however, I doubt such a case can credibly be made.