"This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the arts in Rome - architecture, sculpture, painting, and the decorative arts - within their social, religious, and historical contexts from 1300 to 1600. Organized around the patronage of the popes, it examines the decline of the arts during the period of the Great Schism and the exile of the popes in Avignon, and the revival that began with Pope Nicholas V in the middle of the fifteenth century, when Rome began to rebuild itself and reassert its leadership as the center of the Christian world." The most up-to-date assessment of the arts of early modern Rome, this volume is illustrated with 219 halftones and 32 color plates.