History
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance was a period of cultural, artistic, and intellectual flourishing in Italy from the 14th to the 17th century. It marked a revival of interest in classical learning and the arts, leading to significant advancements in literature, architecture, sculpture, and painting. The era also saw the emergence of influential figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
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10 Key excerpts on "Italian Renaissance"
eBook - PDFWestern Civilization
A Brief History, Volume I: to 1715
- Jackson Spielvogel(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
These general features of the Italian Renaissance were not characteristic of all Italians but were primar-ily the preserve of the wealthy upper classes, who con-stituted a small percentage of the total population. The achievements of the Italian Renaissance were the product of an elite group, not a mass movement. Nevertheless, indirectly it did have some impact on ordinary people, especially in the cities, where so many of the intellectual and artistic accomplishments of the period were most apparent. anxious, pestering Michelangelo on a regular basis about when the ceiling would be finished. Exasperated by the pope’s requests, Michelangelo once replied, according to Giorgio Vasari, his con-temporary biographer, that the ceiling would be com-pleted “when it satisfies me as an artist.” The pope responded, “And we want you to satisfy us and finish it soon,” and then threatened that if Michelangelo did not “finish the ceiling quickly [the pope] would have him thrown down from the scaffolding.” Fearing the pope’s anger, Michelangelo “lost no time in doing all that was wanted” and quickly completed the ceiling, one of the great masterpieces in the his-tory of Western art. The humanists’ view of their age as a rebirth of the classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans ultimately led historians to use the French word Renaissance to identify this age. Although recent his-torians have emphasized the many elements of conti-nuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the latter age was also distinguished by its own unique characteristics. 12-1 MEANING AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE Italian Renaissance Q Focus Question: What characteristics distinguish the Renaissance from the Middle Ages? Renaissance means “rebirth.” Many people who lived in Italy between 1350 and 1550 believed that they were witnessing a rebirth of antiquity or Greco-Roman civilization, marking a new age.
- Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls, Jason Rudy, Claire Waters(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Broadview Press(Publisher)
The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century T he term “Renaissance” has turned out to be a good deal less stable than was once assumed. The word “Rinascenza” (Italian: “rebirth”), from which “Renais-sance” derives, was coined by the Italian historian Giorgio Vasari in 1550 to refer to what Vasari saw as having taken place in Italy over the previous two centu-ries: a rebirth of the ideas and the aesthetic values associated with the classical cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, after a thousand-year-long era in which civilization had gone into eclipse. By the time of Vasari it had already become conventional to think of that thousand-year period as the “Middle Ages” (or, using the Latinized form of the same phrase, the “medieval period”). 1 Subsequently the habit developed of seeing the Renaissance as being followed by another discrete era, the Reformation, a period characterized above all by the challenge presented by Protestantism to the author-ity of the Church of Rome. Recent generations of scholarship have done much to destabilize this conceptual framework. Medievalists have located a variety of “renaissances” in, for example, the ninth and the twelfth centuries, and have thor-oughly debunked the idea that the supposed “dark ages” were lacking intellectual or cultural life.
eBook - ePubWorld History
A Concise, Selective, Interpretive History of the World
- Ali Parsa(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Sentia Publishing(Publisher)
Now, let us get started with the discussion of the European Renaissance. At the outset, I must clarify one of the most common misunderstandings of what Renaissance means. Most people associate the term Renaissance mainly with fantastic art, paintings, and architecture produced by great masters, such as Michelangelo, Rafael, and da Vinci. But in reality, the Renaissance was a much broader intellectual-humanistic transformation that changed the whole worldview of Western Europeans and subsequently the whole world. Art and architecture, as beautiful and publicly enjoyed and appreciated as they are, are only the products of a much bigger change.Renaissance means rebirth. Something must die in order to be born again. That one thing, according to the people who invented the term in the fifteenth century, was the glorious classic era of the Greco-Roman times, before the fall of Rome in the fifth century, when human beings were valued and creativity was rewarded. Out of the ashes of the Late Middle Ages, which were dominated by dogmatism and otherworldliness, a new focus on human beings began.The Renaissance HumanismA good way of understanding the essence of the Renaissance is to break it down into its three major aspects. The first aspect of the Renaissance, as it is most easily understood, is the yearning for the classics. It is not surprising that the Italians, who considered themselves to be descendants of and successors to the great Roman civilization, would be the pioneers of this movement. The father of Renaissance humanism is Francesco Petrarch. Although Italians had become wealthy through international maritime trade, they were politically divided. Feudalism, as had been developed in the rest of Europe, was not as strong in Italy. Instead, an urban economy with a growing middle class was taking shape. Petrarch, who was an erudite man, well versed in classical Latin and possessing a great knowledge of history, should be credited as the first person who tried to awaken the Italians to their glorious past in which human beings were valued and individuals were respected.
eBook - PDFWestern Civilization
Beyond Boundaries
- Thomas F. X. Noble, Barry Strauss, Duane Osheim, Kristen Neuschel(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 356 Chapter 12 The Renaissance Chapter Summary ◆ ◆ How did Italians use classical values to deal with cultural and political issues? The Renaissance was a broad cultural movement that began in Italy in response to a series of crises in the early fourteenth century. It was a cultural and ideological movement based on the assumption that study and imitation of the past was the best method for reform and innovation in the future. The impulse for change arose from the belief, shared by thinkers from Petrarch to Machiavelli, that a great deal could be learned from study of the Roman past. This was the basis for humanistic innovations in language, history, and politics. Even revolutionary thinkers, such as Lorenzo Valla and Niccolò Machiavelli, began with the study of classical literature and history. ◆ ◆ What was “new” about Renaissance art? The same transformation is evident among the artists. Early in the fifteenth century, Florentines who experimented with perspective were intent on recovering lost Roman knowl- edge, and Michelangelo was praised not only for mastering but also for surpassing Roman norms. The artistic innovations of Italy were noted and valued throughout the Mediterranean and northern Europe. Artists like Albrecht Dürer combined their understanding of Italian art with northern ideas. Throughout Europe, art was an important component of religious and political culture. ◆ ◆ In what ways did humanism outside Italy differ from Italian humanism? Humanistic studies outside of Italy were less tied to public life.
eBook - PDFLiving on the Edge in Leonardo’s Florence
Selected Essays
- Gene Brucker(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
The discovery of ancient scientific texts, either lost or known only in fragments, by Euclid, Archimedes, Galen, Pliny, and Ptolemy, contributed to the investigations and speculations that led ultimately to the revolutionary works of Copernicus, Vesalius, and Galileo. In yet an- The Italian Renaissance / 13 other realm, that of religion, the influence of Renaissance humanism has been shown recently to be much greater than Burckhardt allowed. Scholars have pointed to the strong affinities between the Renaissance and the Reformation, both backward-looking movements: the one to antiquity, the other to the early centuries of the church. They have em- phasized, too, the focus by reformers and humanists as the source of di- vine revelation in one case, and of human wisdom in the other. They have also noted the epistemological affinities between humanists and Protestant theologians, both of whom “distinguished between realms, between ultimate truths altogether inaccessible to man’s intellect, and the knowledge that men needed to get along in this world, which turned out to be sufficient for his purposes.” 19 MATURITY AND DECLINE Historians are in general agreement that the fifteenth century repre- sented the mature phase, the apogee, of Italian Renaissance culture. After the crisis conditions of the late fourteenth century, the peninsula experienced a gradual recovery of its population and its economy, most notably in the decades after 1450. Italian politics became somewhat less chaotic, with the gradual formation of five powerful regional states: the republics of Venice and Florence, the signorial regime in Milan, the kingdom of Naples, and the Papal States. With varying degrees of suc- cess, each of these regimes developed larger and more intrusive bureau- cracies, more exploitative fiscal systems, and more rational military structures. In 1454, these states formed a league which brought a lim- ited measure of stability to Italian politics.
eBook - PDF- Frank Kidner, Maria Bucur, Ralph Mathisen, Sally McKee(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 319 B y the early sixteenth century, new forms of governance, record keep-ing, patronage, and economic investment in trade with far-away lands formed the founda-tion of new cultural expressions. Over time, com-merce and industry revitalized the Italian urban economies hurt by crop failures and population loss. A cultural flowering of art and lit-erature had begun in Italy. Further generations would call this period the Renaissance. It was more, however, than an artistic movement. At the same time, new forms of expres-sion affirming faith in God and the worth of human creativity had been developing for more than a century. Even before famine and plague afflicted Italy in the fourteenth century, its intellectuals and artisans had begun to explore new techniques, new ideas, and new ways to analyze old texts, and the hardships ahead did not hinder them. The expanding economy meant that well-to-do and wealthy families furnished their homes with their purchases, like the cassone (cah-SO-nay), or storage chest, pictured here, in which clothes and linens might be stored. A mutually beneficial relationship developed between wealthy families looking to display their high social status and talented schol-ars and artisans. The products of those relationships—extraordinary lifelike paintings and bronze statuary, philosophical treatises displaying great learning, and breathtaking monuments to God or man—caught the attention of the rest of the continent. No longer confined to the world of the clergy, scholars rejected the old methods of analysis in favor of a rigorous, questioning approach to the study of classical and Christian texts. In Italy, intellectuals discovered new joy in reading ancient Latin texts, taking plea-sure foremost in the literary qualities of Cicero and Virgil instead of testing their compat-ibility with Christian doctrine.
eBook - PDFMen and Ideas
History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance
- Johan Huizinga(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
The sixteenth- century sense of a rebirth was too general in character and too strong in ethical and aesthetic content for the intellects of the day to pose the phenomenon to themselves as a philolog- ical question. Returning to the origins, slaking one's thirst at the pure fountains of wisdom and beauty—that was the fundamental note of the sense of rebirth. And if that sense also included the new enthusiasm for the classics and the identification of contemporary times with antiquity, it was because the classical writers themselves appeared to possess that purity and originality of knowledge, those simple norms of beauty and virtue. The first person who clearly looked upon the event of re- birth as a historical fact that had taken place at a certain time in the past, and who at the same time derived the Italian form equivalent to the word Renaissance from the Latin renasci, applying it in particular to the revival in art (thus as a concept in art history), was Giorgio Vasari (1511- 1574), the biographer of the painters. The word rinascita became for him the standard term to indicate the great fact of recent art history. He set himself the task "of writing the lives, describing the works, and setting forth the various re- lations of those who, when art had become extinct, first revived [risuscitate], and then gradually conducted her to that degree of beauty and majesty wherein we now see her." 8 Whoever The Problem of the Renaissance 247 had surveyed the history of art in its rise and fall "will now be able to recognize more easily the progress of her second birth [della sua rinascita] and of that perfection whereto she has risen again in our times." 9 Vasari saw the highest flowering of art in Greek and Roman antiquity, followed by a long period of decay setting in as early as the time of Emperor Constantine. The Goths and Lombards had merely overthrown what was crumbling of its own accord.
eBook - PDFGardner's Art through the Ages
A Global History, Volume II
- Fred Kleiner(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Increasingly, Italians in elite circles embraced the tenets underlying humanism—an emphasis on edu- cation and on expanding knowledge (especially of classical antiq- uity), the exploration of individual potential and a desire to excel, and a commitment to civic responsibility and moral duty. Quat- trocento Italy also enjoyed an abundance of artistic talent. The fortunate coming together of artistic genius, the spread of human- ism, and economic prosperity nourished the Renaissance, forever changing the direction and perception of art in the Western world. For the Italian humanists, the quest for knowledge began with the legacy of the Greeks and Romans—the writings of Plato, Aris- totle, Ovid, and others. The development of a vernacular literature based on the commonly spoken Tuscan dialect expanded the audi- ence for humanist writings. Further, the invention of moveable metal type in Germany around 1445 facilitated the printing and wide distribution of books (see “Printed Books,” page 589). Italians greeted this new printing process enthusiastically. By 1464, Subiaco (near Rome) boasted a press, and by 1469, Venice had established one as well. Among the first books printed in Italy using this new technology was Dante’s Divine Comedy, his epic about Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. The production of editions in Foligno (1472), Mantua (1472), Venice (1472), Naples (1477 and 1478–1479), and Milan (1478) testifies to the widespread popularity of Dante’s work. The humanists also avidly acquired information in a wide range of fields, including botany, geology, geography, optics, medi- cine, and engineering.
- L. Hinojosa(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
The national feeling and historical understanding displayed in six- teenth-century Italian texts influenced national feeling in other regions of Europe. German historians of the 1500s tended to be less nationalistic than the Italians but did frame their histories in terms of general cultural and racial qualities of the Germanic peoples. Rather than delineating different historical ages, Germans saw continuity between Rome, the Middle Ages, and present times (Ferguson 37). Seeing themselves as the initiators of modernity in Christian, univer- sal terms—and the Reformation as the truly new age—Germans uti- lized Italian innovation and classical recovery but tended to give the Italians little credit. These general trends persisted in Germany well into the eighteenth century. France was highly influenced by Italian classical humanism from the beginnings of recovery onward. Unlike the Germans, French scholars tended to admit their debt to the Italians even as they EMERGENCE OF THE RENAISSANCE CONCEPT 33 developed a sense in which a renaissance had begun in their own country during the reign of Francis I. In the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries the French conceived of a secular renaissance des let- tres to describe the classical revival of learning in France, Italy, and elsewhere, and Ferguson tells us that French dictionaries of 1701 and 1718 show the word “renaissance” to be naturalized into the French language (69). At this time, however, “renaissance” referred only to the revival of classical learning, an assumed event in all histories. England was influenced more by German humanism than Italian and gradually developed the term “Revival of Learning” to refer to classi- cal recovery and the Reformation. The English thought the New Learning was providential in that it paved the way for the Reformation to take hold in their country (Ferguson 55). The famous anciens and modernes quarrels occupied French and English men of letters throughout the seventeenth century.
eBook - ePubThe Ascent of the West
From Prehistory Through the Renaissance
- Britannica Educational Publishing, Heather Campbell(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Britannica Educational Publishing(Publisher)
Cities were also markets for culture. The resumption of urban growth in the second half of the 15th century coincided with the diffusion of Renaissance ideas and educational values. Humanism offered linguistic and rhetorical skills that were becoming indispensable for nobles and commoners seeking careers in diplomacy and government administration, while the Renaissance ideal of the perfect gentleman was a cultural style that had great appeal in this age of growing courtly refinement. At first many who wanted a humanist education went to Italy, and many foreign names appear on the rosters of the Italian universities. By the end of the century, however, such northern cities as London, Paris, Antwerp, and Augsburg were becoming centres of humanist activity rivaling Italy’s. The development of printing, by making books cheaper and more plentiful, also quickened the diffusion of humanism.A textbook convention, heavily armoured against truth by constant reiteration, states that northern humanism—i.e., humanism outside Italy—was essentially Christian in spirit and purpose, in contrast to the essentially secular nature of Italian humanism. In fact, however, the program of Christian humanism had been laid out by Italian humanists of the stamp of Lorenzo Valla, one of the founders of Classical philology, who showed how the critical methods used to study the Classics ought to be applied to problems of biblical exegesis and translation as well as church history. That this program only began to be carried out in the 16th century, particularly in the countries of northern Europe (and Spain), is a matter of chronology rather than of geography. In the 15th century, the necessary skills, particularly the knowledge of Greek, were possessed by a few scholars. A century later, Greek was a regular part of the humanist curriculum, and Hebrew was becoming much better known, particularly after Johannes Reuchlin published his Hebrew grammar in 1506. Here, too, printing was a crucial factor, for it made available a host of lexicographical and grammatical handbooks and allowed the establishment of normative biblical texts and the comparison of different versions of the Bible.
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