Antwerp in the Renaissance

Download or read book Antwerp in the Renaissance written by Bruno Blonde and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-19 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages with Antwerp in the Renaissance. Bringing together several specialists of sixteenth-century Antwerp, it offers new research results and fresh perspectives on the economic, cultural and social history of the metropolis in the sixteenth century. Recurrent themes are the creative ways in which the Italian renaissance was translated in the Antwerp context. Imperfect imitation often resulted from the specific social context in which the renaissance was translated: Antwerp was a metropolis marked by a strong commercial ideology, a high level affluence and social inequality, but also by the presence of large and strong middling layers, which contributed to the city's 'bourgeois' character. The growth of the Antwerp market was remarkable: in no time the city gained metropolitan status. This book does a good job in showing how quite a few of the Antwerp 'achievements' did result from the absence of 'existing structures' and 'examples'. Moreover, the city and its culture were given shape by the many frictions, and uncertainties that came along with rapid urban growth and religious turmoil.