Italian Art, 1500–1600 provides a unique view of the development of the literature on art in Italy during the Cinquecento. The selections bring out the close relationship between art theories and the actuality of art and chart a trend from a humanistic orientation to a more technical and professorial one. The documents and commentary reveal the effects that humanistic circles, the courts, and the Church—during the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation—had on the way people wrote and thought about art.