Erwin Panofsky’s assertions in Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960) that a new historical consciousness and a quest for an ‘all’antica’ idiom was manifest in the art and architecture of the period are routinely reiterated in art historical narratives.By formally analyzing fifteenth-century visual culture, however, questions can be raised about what the artists and architects of the period actually used as their models and how they understood and studied the past. Maria Fabricius Hansen juxtaposes in this essay the conventional definitions of the Renaissance, through its endeavors to revive or renew Roman Antiquity, with observations of paintings and buildings of the fifteenth century in order to reconsider the characteristics of Italian visual culture of the time.

• Debate on the ideas of all’antica and classicism in the Italian Renaissance
• Critical review of art historical mappings of causes of inspiration from Roman antiquity
• Discussion of Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960)