Why did Italy produce so much art in the Renaissance? In this book, historian Richard Goldthwaite finds new answers to this question by focusing on the demand for art as an economic phenomenon. Offering a broad interpretation of the forces behind the economic and cultural event known as the Renaissance, Goldthwaite shows how the extraordinary increase in artistic production arose out of circumstances unique to Italy. It was only in Renaissance Italy, he writes, that art was separated out of material culture in general as something distinct in its own right. Goldthwaite begins by exploring the ways in which Italy's special place in the economic world of late medieval Europe led to the generation of surplus wealth among both merchant and noble families and religious institutions. He shows how the unprecedented founding of new religious institutions and organizations contributed to the demand for art simply because their new buildings had to be decorated and furnished. And he explains the role of secular patrons, the newly rich merchants and nobility, who purchased works of art for homes and public places to consolidate their new-found status and power. Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy represents a new departure from previous studies, both in its focus on demand and in its emphasis on the history of the material culture of the West. By demonstrating that the roots of modern consumer society can be found in Renaissance Italy, Goldthwaite offers a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the history of modern consumerism - a movement which he regards as a positive force for the formation of new attitudes about things that is a defining characteristic of modern culture. Richard A. Goldthwaite is the author of Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence: A Study of Four Families and The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History.