In 1873, Walter Pater enshrined the aesthetic achievements of the Renaissance as the master paradigm of all art, as art for art's sake, which “propos[es] frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to [our] moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake” (p. 159). In its “intimacy, its languid sweetness, its rebellion, its subtle skill in dividing the elements of human passion, its care for physical beauty, its worship of the body” (p. 19), Renaissance culture circumvented those political, social, and theological discourses that had, until then, impeded the efflorescence of an art whose sole purpose was its own expression and self-actualization. Seen through Pater's eyes, the Renaissance takes on the guise of a flawlessly resolved cultural adolescence in which vast stores of narcissistic energy—what Jakob Burckhardt called the Renaissance's “unbridled subjectivity”—were put at the service of achieving individuation and identity.