Research Guides: Renaissance Resources : Secondary sources

Bibliographies and Dictionaries

Bibliographies are a great place to start when you are beginning to research a Renaissance topic! These are written by experts in the field and have up-to-date lists of the most relevant publications for the listed topic. Be sure to check the creation date: some are updated continually but if the bibliography is a few years old there may be some recent publications missing.

Iter
Citations in journals, books and reviews related to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700), including Paul Oskar Kristeller's Iter Italicum list of Renaissance humanisitic manuscripts.
Oxford Bibliographies Online
This database includes annotated bibliographies by experts in the listed subject. There is a Renaissance and Reformation category with robust listings across the fields of Art, Economic, Political, and Religious Histories.

Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
Biographical entries + sources on key figures in Italian history, published by the respected Treccani encyclopedia.
History of Art Open Bibliography
A century of western bibliography on art history: OpenBibArt is a bibliographic database born out of a collaboration between the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), the Getty Research Institute (GRI) and the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique of the CNRS (Inist-CNRS).
OpenBibArt reviews the literature on arts from Late Antiquity to the present day, providing access to close to 1.2 million of bibliographic records of periodicals, books, exhibition and auction catalogues, published between 1910 and 2007.

Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance
A dictionary of Renaissance historical terms, including historical figures and events, provided by expert contributors.

Journal Articles, E-books, and Other Digital Publications

Project Muse
Journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
JSTOR
Full-text archive of scholarly publications, including ebooks, in mathematics, science, the arts and humanities, and the social sciences.

Biblioteca dei Classici Italiani
This website contains digital versions of Italian classics from the Middle Ages to today. It is possible to search by keyword or browse by author or time period. There are also digital versions of some criticism related to the primary texts.

Libraries and Physical Books

Kubikat
This search engine, connected to the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. The website is available in German, English and Italian, and links to resources available within the KHI and articles online elsewhere.
Hollis
Hollis is a search engine for Harvard libraries, with a special section available for Biblioteca Berenson, also known as the I Tatti Library in Florence, which hosts a world-renowned collection of books regarding Renaissance art and history.