At the heart of this groundswell is a return to passion not mere profit, and a renaissance period of the crafts and craftsmanship that once fueled our nation and the world.

FORBES: How Communication's 'Creative Destruction' Will Drive Business Growth

Her sensitivity for place and her intimate knowledge of the period is partly the legacy of her marriage to the late Sir John Hale, a distinguished historian of the Renaissance, for whom she began working in 1965.

ECONOMIST: The greatest painter of the Venetian Renaissance