As a young man, Miguel de Cervantes left his home in Spain and travelled extensively through Italy, experiencing all that the Italian Renaissance had to offer. In his later writings, Cervantes sought to recapture his experience through literature, and literary critics have often pointed to Italian texts as models for Cervantes' writing. The art of the period, however, has seldom been examined in this context.

Focusing on Don Quixote, Frederick A. de Armas unearths links between Cervantes' text and frescoes, paintings, and sculptures by Italian artists such as Cambiaso,...