Renaissance

The ruling families of the Italian city-states strongly supported the Renaissance. Like the Gonzaga family of Mantua, they employed many leading artists and scholars at their courts.

The Renaissance outside Italy - During the late 1400's, the Renaissance spread from Italy to such countries as France, Germany, England, and Spain. It was introduced into those countries by visitors to Italy, who included merchants, bankers, diplomats, and especially young scholars. The scholars acquired from the Italians the basic tools of humanistic study— history and philology.

Renaissance Italy consisted of about 250 states, most of which were ruled by a city. The Renaissance began during the 1300s in the city-states of northern Italy. Early centres of the Renaissance included the cities of Florence, Milan, and Venice.

Medieval and Renaissance art differed in the portrayal of the human figure. The medieval paint­ing at the left has unlifelike figures that represent religious ideas, not flesh-and-blood people. The Renaissance painting at the right shows realistic figures in a natural setting.

The Pazz Chapel - Florence, Italy was one of the first buildings designed in the Renaissance Style. The chapel was begun in 1429 and completed in 1461. The architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, incorporated arches, columns and other elements of classical architecture into his design. Both the exterior and interior have been praised for the beauty and harmony of their proportions.

Donatello's David was the first large free-standing nude since classical antiquity. The sculptor's emphasis on the subject's physical beauty greatly influenced other Renaissance artists.

The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci reveal the inquiring mind of perhaps the greatest intellect of the Renaissance. Leo­nardo was fascinated by the possibility of human flight. He de­signed a flying machine that used revolving paddles, above.

Raphael's School of Athens portrays an imaginary gathering of ancient Greek philosophers and scientists, including the mathematician Euclid, bending forward, foreground. The paint­ing shows the Renaissance respect for classical culture.

Mythological subjects were popular with Italian artists. Anto­nio del Pollaiuolo painted the Creek hero Hercules killing a monster called the Hydra, above. His portrayal of the human body in vigorous action inspired other Renaissance artists.

A northern Renaissance painting by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck emphasizes lighting, perspective, and details. Van Eyck was one of the first major Renaissance artists outside Italy.

Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch priest and scholar, became a leading Christian humanist during the Renaissance. He often attacked religious superstition and abuses he saw in the church.

Renaissance was a great cultural movement that began in Italy during the early 1300's. It spread to Eng­land, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and other countries in the late 1400's and eventually came to an end about 1600.

The word Renaissance comes from the Latin word renascere and refers to the act of being reborn. During the Renaissance, many European scholars and artists, especially in Italy, studied the learning and art of ancient Greece and Rome. They wanted to recapture the spirit of the Greek and Roman cultures in their own artistic, lit­erary, and philosophic works. The cultures of ancient Greece and Rome are often called classical antiquity. Arabs had taken an interest in Greek and Roman ant­iquity, especially science, but in Europe such knowl­edge became lost The Renaissance thus represented a rebirth of these cultures and is therefore also known as the revival of antiquity or the revival of learning.

The Renaissance overlapped the end of a period in European history called the Middle Ages, which began in the 400's. The leaders of the Renaissance rejected many of the attitudes and ideas of the Middle Ages. For example, European thinkers in medieval times believed that people's chief responsibility was to pray to God and concentrate on saving their souls. They thought that so­ciety was filled with evil temptations. Renaissance think­ers, on the other hand, emphasized people's responsibilities and duties to the society in which they lived. They believed that society could civilize people rather than make them wicked.

During the Middle Ages, the most important branch of learning was theology (the study of God). However, many Renaissance thinkers paid greater attention to the study humanity. They examined the great accomplish­ments of different cultures, particularly those of ancient Greece and Rome.

Medieval artists painted human figures that looked stiff and unrealistic and which often served symbolic re­ligious purposes. But Renaissance artists stressed the beauty of the human body. They tried to capture the dig­nity and majesty of human beings in lifelike paintings and sculptures.

The changes brought about by the Renaissance hap­pened gradually and did not immediately affect most Eu­ropeans. Even at the height of the movement, which oc­curred during the late 1400 s and early 1500's, the new ideas were accepted by relatively few people. But the in­fluence of the Renaissance on future generations was to prove immense in many fields—from art and literature to education, political science, and history. Because of this fact, most scholars have for hundreds of years agreed that the modern era of human history began with the Renaissance.

The Italian Renaissance

Political background. Italy was not a unified country until the 1860's. At the beginning of the Renaissance, it consisted of about 250 separate states, most of which were ruled by a city. Some cities had only 5,000 to 10,000 people. Others were among the largest cities in Europe. For example, Florence, Milan, and Venice had at least 100,000 people each in the early 1300's.

At the dawn of the Renaissance, much of Italy was supposedly controlled by the Holy Roman Empire. How­ever, the emperors lived in Germany and had little power over their Italian lands. The popes ruled central Italy, including the city of Rome, but were unable to ex­tend political control to the rest of Italy. No central au­thority was therefore established in Italy to unify all the states.

During the mid-1300's and early 140ffs, a number of major Italian cities came under the control of one family. For example, the Visconti family governed Milan from the early 1300's until 1447, when the last male member died. Soon after, the Sforza family took control of Milan and governed the city until the late 1400's. Other ruling families in Italy included the Este family in Ferrara, the Gonzaga family in Mantua, and the Montefeltro family in Urbino.

The form of government established by the ruling families of the Italian cities was called the signoria, and the chief official was known as the signore. All power was concentrated in the signore and his friends and rel­atives. An elaborate court slowly grew up around each signorial government At the court, the area's leading artists, intellectuals, and politicians gathered under the sponsorship of the signore.

Other Italian cities had a form of government known as republicanism. In republican cities, a ruling class con­trolled the government Members of the ruling class considered themselves superior to the other residents of the city. The most important examples of republican government were in Florence and Venice.

In the republican government of Florence, about 800 of the city's wealthiest families made up the ruling class. The members of these Florentine families intermarried and lived in large, beautiful palaces built by Renaissance architects. They paid for the construction of great reli­gious and civic buildings and impressive monuments throughout Florence. They also supported artists and in­tellectuals. In addition, the ruling class encouraged the study of ancient Greek and Roman authors in the desire to have their society resemble the cultures of classical antiquity.

By the 1430's, the Medici family dominated the ruling class of Florence. The family controlled the largest bank in Europe and was headed by a series of talented and ambitious men. Under Medici domination, the govern­ment of Florence resembled a signorial government

About 180 families controlled the republican govern­ment of Venice. All government leaders came from these families. A law passed in 1297 restricted member­ship in the Great Council, the principal governing body, to descendants of families that had already sat in the council. Like Florence, Venice became a leading centre of Renaissance art under the support of the ruling class.

Humanism was the most significant intellectual movement of the Renaissance. It blended concern for the history and actions of human beings with religious concerns. The humanists were scholars and artists who studied subjects that they believed would help them better understand the problems of humanity. These sub­jects included literature and philosophy. The humanists shared the view that the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome had excelled in such subjects and thus could serve as models. They believed that people should understand and appreciate classical antiquity to learn how to conduct their lives.

To understand the customs, laws, and ideas of an­cient Greece and Rome, the humanists had first to mas­ter the languages of classical antiquity. The Greeks had used a language foreign to Italians, and the Romans had used a form of Latin far different from that used in the 1300's and 1400's. To learn ancient Greek and Latin, the humanists studied philology (the science of the meaning and history of words). Philology became one of the two principal concerns of the humanists. The other was his­tory, which the humanists saw as the study of great ac­tions taken by courageous, noble, or wise men of classi­cal antiquity.

The interest of the humanists in ancient Greece and Rome led them to search for manuscripts, statues, coins, and other surviving examples of classical civilization. For example, they combed monastery libraries throughout Europe, locating on dusty shelves long neglected manu­scripts by classical authors. The humanists carefully studied these manuscripts, prepared critical editions of them, and often translated them.

Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio were the first Ren­aissance humanists. During the mid-1300’s, the two friends recovered many important but long ignored an­cient manuscripts. Petrarch discovered the most influen­tial of these works. It was Letters to Atticus, a collection of letters on Roman political life by the statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.

As Petrarch and Boccaccio studied the rediscovered classical writings, they tried to imitate the styles of the ancient authors. They urged that people express them­selves accurately and elegantly, characteristics they saw in classical literary style. Petrarch said, "The style is the man." He meant that careless expression reflected care­less thought.

Petrarch became known for his poetry, and Boccaccio for his collection of stories called the Decameron (about 1349-1353). In their works, they tried to describe human feelings and situations that people could easily under­stand. Petrarch and Boccaccio insisted that the duty of intellectuals was to concentrate on human problems, which they believed were more important than an un­derstanding of the mysteries of nature or of God's will. They thought that people could learn how to deal with their problems by studying the lives of individuals of the past.

The ideal courtier. Some Italian humanists spent most of their time in signorial courts. During the late 140ffs, these humanists began to develop ideas about the proper conduct of courtiers— the noblemen and no­blewomen who lived in a royal court. About 1518, an au­thor and diplomat named Baldassare Castiglione com­pleted The Book of the Courtier. Castiglione based the work on his experiences at the court of Urbino. It was translated into several European languages and influ­enced the conduct of courtiers throughout Europe. The Courtier also strongly influenced educational theory in England during the Renaissance.

Castiglione wrote that the ideal male courtier is refined in writing and speaking and skilled in the arts, sports, and the use of weapons. He willingly devotes himself to his signore, always seeking to please him. The courtier is polite and attentive to women. Whatever he does is achieved with an easy, natural style, which reflects his command of every situation. An ideal court woman knows literature and art and how to entertain the court. She exhibits the highest moral character and acts in a feminine manner.

The fine arts. During the Middle Ages, painters and sculptors tried to give their works a spiritual quality. They wanted viewers to concentrate on the deep reli­gious meaning of their paintings and sculptures. They were not concerned with making their subjects appear natural or lifelike. But Renaissance painters and sculptors like Renaissance writers, wanted to portray people and nature realistically. Architects of the Middle Ages designed huge cathedrals to emphasize the majesty and grandeur of Cod. Renaissance architects designed buildings on a smaller scale to help make people aware of their own powers and dignity.

Arts of the 1300's and early 1400's. During the early 1300's, the Florentine painter Giotto became the first art­ist to portray nature realistically. He produced magnifi­cent frescoes (paintings on damp plaster) for churches in Florence, Padua, and Assisi. Giotto attempted to create lifelike figures showing real emotions. He por­trayed many of his figures in realistic settings.

A remarkable group of Florentine architects, painters, and sculptors worked during the early 1400s. They in­cluded the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, the painter Masaccio, and the sculptor Donatello.

Brunelleschi was the first Renaissance architect to re­vive the ancient Roman style of architecture. He incorpo­rated arches, columns, and other elements of classical architecture into his designs. One of his best-known buildings is the beautifully and harmoniously propor­tioned Pazzi Chapel in Florence. The chapel, begun in 1429, was one of the first buildings designed in the new Renaissance style. Brunelleschi also was the first Renais­sance artist to use linear perspective, a mathematical system in which painters could show space and depth on a flat surface.

Masaccio's finest work was a series of frescoes he painted about 1427 in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. The frescoes realistically show Biblical scenes of emotional intensity. Masaccio created the illusion of space and depth in these paintings by using Brunclleschi's mathe­matical calculations.

In his sculptures, Donatello tried to portray the dig­nity of the human body in realistic and often dramatic detail. His masterpieces include three statues of the Bib­lical hero David. In a version completed in the 1430's, Donatello portrayed David as a graceful, nude youth, moments after he slew the giant Goliath. The work, about 1.5 metres tall, was the first large free-standing nude created in Western art since classical antiquity.

Arts of the late 1400's and early 1500's were domi­nated by three men. They were Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo excelled as a painter, architect, and poet. In addition, he has been called the greatest sculp­tor in history. Michelangelo was a master of portraying the human figure. For example, his famous statue of the Israelite leader Moses (1516) gives an overwhelming im­pression of physical strength and spiritual power. These qualities also appear in the frescoes of Biblical and clas­sical subjects that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The frescoes were painted from 1508 to 1512 and rank among the greatest achievements of Renaissance art.

Raphael's paintings are softer in outline and more po­etic than those of Michelangelo. Raphael was skilled in creating perspective and in the delicate use of colour. He painted a number of beautiful pictures of the Ma­donna (Virgin Mary) and many outstanding portraits. One of his greatest works is the fresco School of Athens (1511). The painting was influenced by classical Greek and Roman models. It portrays the great philosophers and scientists of ancient Greece in a setting of classical arches. Raphael was thus making a connection between the culture of classical antiquity and the Italian culture of his time.

Leonardo da Vinci painted two of the most famous works of Renaissance art, the fresco The Last Supper (about 1497) and the portrait Mona Lisa (about 1503). Leonardo had one of the most searching minds in all history. He wanted to know the workings of everything he saw in nature. In more than 4,000 pages of note­books, he drew detailed diagrams and wrote down ob­servations. Leonardo made careful drawings of human skeletons and muscles, trying to discover how the body worked. Because of his inquiring mind, Leonardo has become a symbol of the Renaissance spirit of learning and intellectual curiosity.

A series of invasions of Italy also played a major role in the spread of the Renaissance to other parts of Eu­rope. From 1494 to the early 1500's, Italy was repeatedly invaded by armies from France, Germany, and Spain. The invaders were dazzled by the beauty of Italian art and architecture and returned home deeply influenced by Italian culture.

In Italy, evidence of classical antiquity, especially Roman antiquity, could be seen almost everywhere.

Ruins of Roman monuments and buildings stood in every Italian city. This link between the present and the dassical past was much weaker elsewhere in Europe. In ancient times, Roman culture had been forced upon northern and western Europeans by conquering Roman armies. But that culture quickly disappeared after the Roman Empire in the West fell in the A.D. 400's.

The relative scarcity of classical art affected the devel­opment of European art outside Italy during the 140ffs. Painters had few examples of classical antiquity to imi­tate, and so they tended to be more influenced by the northern Gothic style of the late Middle Ages. The first great achievements in Renaissance painting outside Italy appeared in the works of artists living in Flanders. Most of the Flanders region lies in what are now Belgium and France. Flemish painting was known for its precise de­tails. The human figures were realistic but lacked the sculptural quality that was characteristic of Italian paint­ing.

Political background. During the Renaissance, the political structure of northern and western Europe dif­fered greatly from that of Italy. By the late 1400^rs, Eng­land, France, and Spain were being united into nations

under monarchies. These monarchies provided political and cultural leadership for their countries. Germany, like Italy, was divided into many largely independent states. But Germany was the heart of the Holy Roman Empire, which tended to unify the various German states to some extent.

The great royal courts supported the Renaissance in northern and western Europe much as the cities did in Italy. For example, the French king Francis I, who ruled from 1515 to 1547, tried to surround himself with the fin­est representatives of the Italian Renaissance. The king brought Leonardo da Vinci and many other Italian artists and scholars to France. In England, the House of Tudor became the most important patron of the Renaissance. The Tudors ruled from 1485 to 1603. Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, invited numerous Italian humanists to England. These men encouraged English scholars to study the literature and philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome.

Christian humanism. Renaissance scholars in north­ern and western Europe were not as interested as the Italians in studying classical literature. Instead, they sought to apply humanistic methods to the study of Christianity. These scholars were especially concerned with identifying and carefully editing the texts on which Christianity was based. These texts included the Bible, the letters of Saint Paul, and the works of such great early church leaders as Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, and Augustine. The scholars became known as Christian humanists to distinguish them from those hu­manists who were chiefly involved with the study of classical antiquity.

Desiderius Erasmus and Saint Thomas More were the leading Christian humanists. They were close friends who courageously refused to abandon their ideals.

Erasmus was born in the Netherlands. He was edu­cated in Paris and travelled throughout Germany, Eng­land, and Italy. Fie was an excellent scholar, with a thor­ough knowledge of Latin and Greek.

Erasmus refused to take sides in any political or reli­gious controversy. In particular, he would not support either side during the Reformation, the religious move­ment of the 1500's that gave birth to Protestantism. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants sought Erasmus' sup­port He stubbornly kept his independence and was called a coward by both sides. However, Erasmus did at­tack abuses he saw in the church in a famous witty work called The Praise of Folly (1511). In this book, Erasmus criticized the moral quality of church leaders. Erasmus also accused them of overemphasizing procedures and ceremonies while neglecting the spiritual values of Christianity.

Saint Thomas More was born in England and devoted his life to serving his country. He gained the confidence of King Henry VIII and carried out a number of impor­tant missions for him. In 1529, the king appointed More lord chancellor, making him England's highest judicial official.

Throughout his career, More dedicated himself to the principles that had inspired Erasmus. Like Erasmus, he believed it was important to eliminate the abuses, in­equalities, and evils that were accepted as normal in his day. More's best-known work is Utopia (1516). In this book, More described a society in which the divisions

between the rich and the poor and the powerful and the J weak were replaced by a common concern for the health and happiness of everyone.

More s strong principles finally cost him his life. He objected to Henry VIII's decision to divorce the queen Catherine of Aragon, and remarry. More then refused to take an oath acknowledging the king's authority over that of the pope. In 1535, More was beheaded for trea­son.

The heritage of the Renaissance

The Renaissance left an intellectual and artistic heri­tage that still remains important. Since the Renaissance, scholars have used Renaissance methods of humanistic inquiry, even when they did not share the ideas and spirit of the Renaissance humanists. In literature, writers have tried for centuries to imitate and improve upon the works of such Renaissance authors as Petrarch and Boccaccio.

The influence of Renaissance painters, sculptors, and architects has been particularly strong. The artists of Florence and Rome set enduring standards for painting in the Western world. For hundreds of years, painters have travelled to Florence to admire the frescoes of Giotto and Masaccio. They have visited Rome to study the paintings of Raphael and Michelangelo. The works of Donatello and Michelangelo have inspired sculptors for generations. The beautifully scaled buildings of Brunelleschi and other Renaissance architects still serve as models for architects.

Since the Renaissance, people have also been in­spired by the intellectual daring of such men as Petrarch and Erasmus. Leaders of the Renaissance seemed to be breaking out of intellectual boundaries and entering un­sown territories. It is perhaps no coincidence that some of the greatest explorers of the late 140ffs and early '^{500s were} Italians exposed to the influence of the Renaissance. Christopher Columbus was a Genoese nav­igator who, for his New World voyages, consulted the same scientist who taught mathematics to the architect Brunlleschi. Columbus and fellow Italians John Cabot, Giovanni da Verrazano, and Amerigo Vespucci in many _ways epitomized the spirit of the Renaissance as they ventured to discover new horizons.

Outline

The Italian Renaissance

Political background

The fine arts

Humanism

The Renaissance outside Italy

Political background

Christian humanism

Desiderius Erasmus and Saint Thomas More

The heritage of the Renaissance

Questions

What was the most significant intellectual movement of the Ren­aissance?

What is meant by classical antiquity?

How did the Renaissance spread from Italy?

What are some lasting achievements of the Renaissance?

How did many attitudes and ideas of the Renaissance differ from those of the Middle Ages?

What three men dominated Italian arts during the late 1400's and early 1500’s?

How did the signorial and republican governments of the Italian cities promote the Renaissance?

Why was philology studied during the Renaissance?

What was The Book of the Courtier and why was it important? 
Who were the Christian humanists?