Art historians used to believe that Italy was the only game in town during the Renaissance. But new understanding has come: “The picture that has emerged is of a Europe in which the courts of the Burgundian, French and German princes were at least the equal of those of northern Italy in their magnificence and political ambition, and of course the patronage and ostentation by which they were expressed. Europe was open, international travel common, and the traffic and exchange between north and south, as much cultural as commercial, flowed in a constant stream.”