The work aims to open new directions ot research and to offer a broad picture of a field of studies still largely unexplored: the influence exercised by the civilization of the Italian Renaissance in Europe and the role played by the various European countries on the development of Renaissance Italy. The different political and economic realities of the Peninsula have been taken into account in order to fully evaluate these issues. Indeed, one of the principal objectives of the project is that of stressing the polycentric character of the Renaissance. The volumes cover an ample arc of time, approximately from the beginning of the Trecento to the middle of the Seicento. Many of the essays, however, will focus on the period that runs from the late fifteenth century to the early seventeenth, a span of time that has been neglected for too long by historians. Each volume will pay particular attention to the circulation of people and the transfer of knowledge, in order to reconstruct that dense network of exchanges that led to the formation of a common European civilization. It has been decided to look closely at the many theoretical, scientific, artistic and technical spheres in which Italy for sa long had a leading role, and to areas of research that only recently have begun to be systematically explored, such as, for example, the role of Italy in the development of technology, noble life and the life of the court, and of that whole complex of cultural and economic phenomena - ranging from fashion to furnishing to luxury consumption - that goes under the name of 'material culture'. The work does not have an encyclopaedic approach; scholars have been rather asked to be selective and speculative by giving greater weight to themes in which interactive elements played a larger part and that were crucial for the development of Italian and European civilization in the Renaissance. At a time when the European Community is expanding geographically without succeeding in reaching a unanimous agreement about its cultural foundations and its true identity, the publication of this work in 12 volumes will help the understanding of the common roots of Western civilization and of the role played in the long process of its construction by Italian culture.