The medieval world ended in a frenzy of applied knowledge—
new medieval knowledge applied to the recreation of 
antiquity.

Renaissance Italy became a kind of Hollywood collection of sets  
of antiquity, and the new visual antiquarianism of the 
Renaissance provided an avenue to power for men of any 
class.

Medieval idols of the king

The invention of typography confirmed and extended the new 
visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first 
uniformly repeatable “commodity,” the first assembly line, 
and the first mass production.