This interdisciplinary volume gathers essays by leading international scholars in the fields of Italian Renaissance literature, music, history and history of art to address the fertile question of the relationship between religious change and shifting cultural forms in sixteenth-century Italy. Each contribution examines the effects of the profound religious changes that took place in the period on cultural forms, seeking to establish an 'aesthetics of reform' for the sixteenth century.

Contents: Introduction, Abigail Brundin and Matthew Treherne; Swarming with hermits: religious friendship in Renaissance Italy, 1490-1540, Stephen Bowd; Manuscript collections of spiritual poetry in 16th-century Italy, Antonio Corsaro; Literary production in the Florentine academy under the first Medici dukes: reform, censorship, conformity, Abigail Brundin; Pontormo's lost frescoes in San Lorenzo, Florence: a reappraisal of their religious content, Chrysa Damianaki; Defining genres: the survival of mythological painting in counter-Reformation Venice, Tom Nichols; The representation of suffering and religious change in the early cinquecento, Harald Hendrix; Aretino, Titian and 'La Humanità di Cristo', Raymond B. Waddington; Varieties of experience: music and reform in Renaissance Italy, Iain Fenlon; Church reform and devotional music in 16th-century Rome: the influence of lay confraternities, Noel O'Regan; Liturgy as a mode of theological discourse in Tasso's late works, Matthew Treherne; Index.

Abigail Brundin is based at the University of Cambridge, UK and Matthew Treherne at the University of Leeds, UK.