Bram Kempers presents the period of the Renaissance as a process of the developing professionalization of the artist, with a line of patronage stretching from the mendicant orders and city states, through merchant families, princely and ducal rulers, to the great papal courts of Rome. Dr Kempers shows how the unprecedented - and perhaps unsurpassed - creativity of Renaissance art was born out of the dynamics of patronage and professional competition, creating a fruitful balance between individual originality and social control. Illustrated with examples of works from Duccio, Lorenzetti and Simone Martini, through Fra Angelico and Masaccio to Piero della Francesca and Raphael, the book offers a contribution to the understanding of the relationship between art and society in the Renaissance, and of the profound influence of the period on Western art to the present day.