"In this study, Hellmut Wohl redefines style in Italian Renaissance art in light of contemporary testimony and close rereading of seminal works. Through analysis of visual and textual evidence, he posits that Renaissance artists and their viewers conceived of art as decoration of surfaces. Their preferences, which were largely shaped by the classical theory of ornate style in rhetoric, provide a useful guide to the stylistic variables in quattrocento and cinquecento art; to the relationship among narrative, figurative, and decorative elements; and to the link between the arts of painting, sculpture, wood and marble intarsie, mosaic, and stained glass. Offering a new approach to the issue of style, Wohl suggests that the scientific dimensions of Renaissance art were less important to contemporaries than their function as decoration and ornamentation."--BOOK JACKET.