Renaissance Conceptions and Treatments of Madness

Abstract

Renaissance (literally rebirth) was a term introduced by the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors (Florence, 1550) to designate the renewal in the artsand, to a lesser extent, in literaturethat had taken place in that period in Florence and other cultural centers in Italy, that is, a return to antiquity and its splendor after the alleged darkness of the Middle Ages.