“Brian Curran’s learned and eloquent book traces a new path through the art, culture, and scholarship of High Renaissance Italy. He recreates the many roles that versions of Egypt—some imaginary, others based on surprisingly precise observation of original objects—played in Italian culture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And in doing so he reveals an erudition, insight, and imaginative sympathy that would do credit to the great humanists he studies.”
— Anthony Grafton
“A tour de force that is deceptively easy to read. The fluidity of Curran’s writing makes his crystal-clear analysis of stubbornly elusive topics—such as the bizarre forgeries of Annius of Viterbo—look simple and straightforward. There should be no mistake about the fact that he is dancing through a minefield, and doing it with Renaissance sprezzatura. The Egyptian Renaissance will be the definitive study of its kind.”<Ingrid D. Rowland, author of The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery>
— Ingrid D. Rowland, author of The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance For
“A fascinating journey into one of the most intriguing and yet heretofore dimly lit recesses of the Renaissance imagination. Meticulously researched and brilliantly written, this magisterial study illuminates a major aspect of the revival of antiquity and reminds us that it was inspired not only by classical Greek and Roman culture, but also by the mysterious world of the pharaohs.”
— Patricia Fortini Brown, author of Venice & Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past
"[Curran] presents a convincing case that there has always been a fascination with Egyptian culture, even during the Italian Renaissance. . . . A scholarly work, heavily footnoted with a wealth of information."
— Patricia Anne Cross-Laing, Bloomsbury Review
"With its scrupulous cataloguing of Egyptian and Egyptianizing artefacts present in Rome in the fifteenth century, its exhaustive descriptions and detailed lists of sources . . . [Curran's book] is a useful work of scholarship and, with its copious illustrtions, a handsome production."
— Lucy Hughes-Hallett, TLS
"Meticulous research backs up every line, and each topic is covered with admirable clarity. . . . No doubt, the book's scholarly rigor will make it a central text in the study of Renaissance archaeology and antiquarianism. . . . [The] book adds another cultural sphere and another few millennia to the 'antiquity' revived in Renaissance Italy, bringing Egyptology out of its long-lived obscurtity and granting wide acess to a topic at the core of Renaissance antiquarian studies."
— Kathleen Christian, Renaissance Quarterly
"Curran tells the whole story of Italian Egyptomania, from the identification of the pyramids with Joseph's biblical granaries to the Egyptian mysteries in the missal of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna. . . . Well written and illustrated, this is a most valuable resource for cultural historians."
— International Review of Biblical Studies
"This book will be of interest to Renaissance scholars, but also to anyone who is interested to learn about the artistic and architectural legacy of ancient Egypt."
— Ancient Egypt
"The text is packed with information, but the narrative flows easily, leavened with humour. . . . Curran has performed an enormous service in so firmly defining the beginning of this engagement with Egypt as a 'renaissance' in its own right."
— Helen Whitehouse, Journal of the History of Collections
