Studying art history is very rewarding; it allows one to enter into the cultural ethos of times and places often far removed from one’s own. Through my years of post-graduate school in Bangalore, I allowed my imagination to wander at will, looking at images and picturising the real settings of art objects and artefacts – paintings, sculptures, murals and architecture existing in museums and cities created by civilisations across the world. It is always ever second or third best to look at a reproduction. The Italian Renaissance is a superlative period, a benchmark against which several streams of artistic development are studied and evaluated.