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Cover art © Gerald Grace

This is the October 1980 New English Library edition of Renaissance. NEL is a British publisher, and this book is decorated with a typically British cover — accurate to the original, well conceived, and pleasant to look at. The above painting is by Gerald Grace, who did quite a bit of work for NEL in the early '80s.
This, like the Carroll & Graf edition of The House That Stood Still, is another example of a marvelous painting adorning a horrible book. Though this novel is nowhere near as bad as that one, it certainly ranks in the top ten worst SF books.
An interesting irony is that Chapter 27 of this otherwise bad novel is one of the best pieces Van ever wrote. So, buried in this field of chaff is a box of treasure, and Grace has thankfully chosen Chapter 27 as the subject of his illustration: Dr. Grayson, after walking through a teleport to an unknown destination, arrives on a strange planet whose surface resembles an endless, flat slab of orange plastic. Adversely struck by the sheer alienness of the environment, and there being no apparent route back to where he came from, he goes into shock and curls up into a ball. Shortly afterwards, an alien Orsolite approaches — this is the scene in the cover. (The floating women in the background featured in an earlier chapter, and have been thrown in here to better represent the novel as a whole.)
Grace's Orsolite is magnificent. In this instance, Grace has superseded even Barlowe in his ability to depict an alien being so close to the author's description. When I first saw this cover I was simply awestruck by it — the Orsolite looked exactly like how I imagined it to be. That's the only time I've had that happen to me, and I was just amazed.
This used to be my favorite single cover, but over the last few years I've found that I like Daly's cover for The Weapon Shops of Isher more and more each time I look at it.

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