1. The concept of the Renaissance. G. Vasari in the 16th century was the first to describe the new tendency in Italian artistic life since the 14th century as rinascitá (the original form of the French renaissance), that is, as the “rebirth” of the tradition of the art of Graeco-Roman antiquity. This had already been understood to be a regeneratio, restauratio or restitutio of classical standards. As a result, the term “Renaissance” was used in modern historiography from Voltaire and J. J. Brucker onwards in a wider sense to denote the setting up by the Hu…