This course takes you on a journey to Renaissance Italy to study the major players in artistic production: patrons and artists. We will approach the Renaissance through the 'period eye' of the time to understand the social, political and confessional factors as well as the physical environments that informed art production, display and consumption. Each module of the course focuses on a particular city or court, beginning with Florence and the Medici and then travelling to Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Naples, Urbino, Rome and Venice. The course insists on the importance of an interdisciplinary study of Renaissance art that encompasses social history, political history, religious studies and material culture. The big names in Renaissance art are all here, including Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. The course is largely focused on painting and sculpture but also includes furniture, textiles, plate, ceramics, jewellery and dress. The objective of the paper is for students to experience Italian Renaissance visual and material culture in a vivid, immediate way that is true to the how artworks operated for their original audiences and in their original environments.