A New History of Italian Renaissance Art

A Giotto fresco, from the Arena, or Scrovegni, Chapel, showing the betrayal of Christ by Judas

Donatello's bronze of David. Photographs: Michele Falzone/Photographer's Choice/Getty, Apic/Getty and Museo Nazionale del Bargello/Thames Hudson

Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel A New History of Italian Renaissance Art By Stephen J Campbell and Michael W Cole Thames & Hudson, 680pp. £45 Complete review

This is a large book, offering more than 800 illustrations and photographs, yet it is not a coffee-table publication. The tone is serious and the presentation almost sombre, if always accessible. To read it is an education in itself, and such is its range that it helps explain why many historians sigh and shrug off the Renaissance as merely the story of two centuries of Italian art.