Renaissance

The Renaissance was a period of European history and a cultural movement. It took place at the end of the Late Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern era. The word means "rebirth." Historians describe it in different ways. Some say it covered the 15th and 16th centuries. Others say it lasted more broadly from the 14th century to the 17th.

The Renaissance was a time when Europeans rediscovered and revived the literature, philosophy, and art of classical antiquity. It brought big changes to art, architecture, politics, literature, exploration, and technology. It started in the Republic of Florence, then spread to the rest of Italy and later across Europe.

Its ideas were based on humanism. This came from the Roman idea of humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said that "man is the measure of all things." The invention of metal movable type helped ideas spread quickly from the later 15th century. The changes did not happen the same way everywhere. The first signs appeared in Italy as early as the late 13th century, in the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto.

Writers revived literary Latin, and vernacular literatures flourished. This began with a 14th-century revival of learning based on classical sources, which people at the time credited to Petrarch. Artists and thinkers known as polymaths made important work. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo inspired the term "Renaissance man."

The period also saw progress in printing and navigation, the introduction of modern banking, and the field of accounting. In politics, the Renaissance helped shape the customs and rules of diplomacy.

Period

Main article: Italian Renaissance

The Renaissance began in Italy during a difficult time called the crisis of the Late Middle Ages. It looked different, and had different features, north of the Alps and in Spain. In Italy, the period usually ends with the decline of humanism, the start of the Reformation (1517), the Sack of Rome (1527), or the Counter-Reformation (1545). In art, it ends with the Baroque period. Some people who support a "long Renaissance" say that outside Italy it continued into the 17th century. The traditional view focuses on the early modern side of the Renaissance and says it broke from the past. Many historians today focus more on its medieval side and see it as a continuation of the Middle Ages.

The early Renaissance of the 15th century and the Italian Proto-Renaissance happened at the same time as the Late Middle Ages. The Renaissance began in Florence, one of the states of Italy. It ended in 1527, when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V attacked Rome during the war of the League of Cognac. Its influence still lived on in the art of painters like Tintoretto, Sofonisba Anguissola, and Paolo Veronese. Ideas about how it started point to Florence's politics, the support of the Medici family, and the move of Greek scholars to Italy after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. Other important centers included Venice, Genoa, Milan, Rome during the Renaissance Papacy, and Naples. From Italy, the Renaissance spread across Europe and to lands ruled by European powers. Historians have long debated the historiography of the term itself. Some saw the period as nostalgia for classical antiquity rather than progress. Others, focusing on the longue durée, stressed the continuity with the Middle Ages, which Panofsky described as linked "by a thousand ties".

Overview

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that changed European thinking during the early modern period. It began in Italy and spread across Europe by the 16th century. It touched art, architecture, philosophy, literature, music, science, technology, politics, religion, and many other areas of learning. Renaissance humanists like Poggio Bracciolini searched monastery libraries across Europe for old writings from antiquity. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Greek scholars who had fled to the West, known as émigré scholars, brought valuable manuscripts written in ancient Greek. Their focus on literature and history was different from that of the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had studied Arabic and Greek works about nature, philosophy, and mathematics.

Humanists brought back neoplatonism while still following Christianity, and many of the era's greatest works were about it. Greek Christian writings from Byzantium, including the Greek New Testament, reached Western Europe. Humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus encouraged people to go back to the original Greek of the New Testament. This helped prepare the way for the Reformation. In art, Nicola Pisano led an early return to classicism in sculpture. Later, painters in Florence, such as Masaccio, worked to show people and bodies more realistically. They developed new ways to show perspective and light. Political philosophers, especially Niccolò Machiavelli, tried to describe political life as it really was. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote De hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486). Writers also began using everyday languages. With the printing press, more people could read books, especially the Bible. Hans Kohn described this as a time when "Men looked for new foundations." Thomas More was one of those who imagined new spiritual foundations. Sociologist Rodney Stark gives more credit to the earlier Italian city-states of the High Middle Ages. These cities combined good government, Christianity, and the start of capitalism. Stark says that Italian city-republics helped start a Commercial Revolution, which came before and helped pay for the Renaissance. Historian Leon Poliakov studied European ideas about race in his book The Aryan Myth. He argues that Renaissance humanists first used stories about ethnic origins "in the service of a new born chauvinism."

Origins

Main article: Italian Renaissance

See also: Greek scholars in the Renaissance and Transmission of the Greek Classics

Many people believe the ideas of the Renaissance began in Florence around the year 1300. Two famous writers from this time were Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–1374). The painter Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) was another important figure. Some people name a more exact start: 1401. That year, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi competed for the job of making bronze doors for the Baptistery of the Florence Cathedral. Ghiberti won. Others say that artists such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio sparked the creativity of the Renaissance. Why the Renaissance began in Italy, and why it started when it did, is still discussed. Peter Rietbergen suggests that similar movements began in many parts of Europe from about 1300 onward.

Renaissance scholars were most interested in bringing back Latin and Greek books about literature, history, and speech-making. This was very different from the High Middle Ages, when scholars mostly studied Greek and Arabic books about science, philosophy, and mathematics. The Latin phase began in the 1300s. Scholars such as Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364–1437), and Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) searched libraries across Europe for works by Cicero, Lucretius, Livy, and Seneca. By the early 1400s, most surviving Latin literature had been found. Then the Greek phase began. People in Western Europe and in the Islamic Golden Age had studied ancient Greek science and philosophy, usually in translation. However, Greek literature by Homer, Demosthenes, and Thucydides was hardly read in medieval Western Europe. Only Byzantine scholars read them. One of the great achievements of Renaissance scholars was bringing these Greek works back to Western Europe for the first time in a very long time. The movement is usually dated to 1396, when Coluccio Salutati invited the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415) to teach Greek in Florence. Later, Greek scholars who lived in other countries, such as Basilios Bessarion and Leo Allatius, continued this work.

The unusual political setup of Italy in the Late Middle Ages may have helped its rich culture grow. In the early modern period, Italy was not one single country. It was divided into city-states and territories, and it had many busy towns, more than most parts of Europe. Many cities were built among ruins of ancient Roman buildings. This may have connected the classical style of the Renaissance to its start in the heart of the Roman Empire. The city republics valued freedom. Quentin Skinner notes that a German bishop, Otto of Freising (c. 1114–1158), saw that Italy seemed to have moved past feudalism, with society built on merchants and trade. Cities such as the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Florence were merchant republics. They were oligarchical, so power was held by a few people, and they were not like a modern democracy. Still, they had some democratic features and let some people take part in government. This political freedom helped learning and art grow. Trading cities such as Venice became meeting places for ideas, as Merchants brought knowledge from faraway lands, especially the Levant. Wealth from trade paid for large art projects and gave people more time to study.

The Black Death, a deadly disease that spread across Europe between 1348 and 1350, is one factor that has been suggested. Italy was hit hard, and some people believe that seeing so much loss made people focus more on life on Earth than on spirituality and the afterlife. After the illness, food was cheaper and land was easier to get. However, the disease affected all of Europe, so it does not fully explain why the Renaissance happened in Italy. The Renaissance most likely grew there because many factors worked together. In Florence, the government kept working, with a small group of officials handling city affairs when formal meetings stopped. Many people have pointed to the Medici, a banking family who later became a ducal ruling house, as important supporters of the arts. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) asked many leading Florentine artists to create works, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti. The Renaissance was already underway before Lorenzo came to power, and before the Medici family had gained control of Florentine society.

Characteristics

Further information: Printing press § Circulation of information and ideas

Further information: Age of Discovery

Main article: Medical Renaissance

See also: Renaissance dance and List of Renaissance composers

Renaissance humanism was a way of learning more than a set of beliefs. Humanists read ancient books in their original languages and tested ideas using reason and evidence. They studied five main subjects: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy, and rhetoric. Artists learned to show depth and distance in their paintings using perspective. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael became some of the most admired artists of their time. Around 1440, printing began to spread from a single print shop in Mainz, Germany. Printed books made it much easier for people to get learning.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean looking for a route to India. By accident, he reached the Americas. Later, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed straight from Europe to India. The Magellan–Elcano expedition made the first trip around the Earth in history. In religion, Martin Luther published the Ninety-five Theses in October 1517. This led to the Reformation, when some people broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. In natural philosophy, Nikolas Copernicus argued in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium that the Earth moved around the Sun.

Spread

In the 1400s, the Renaissance spread quickly from its start in Florence to the rest of Italy. Soon it reached the rest of Europe. The printing press, invented by German printer Johannes Gutenberg, helped these new ideas travel fast. As the ideas spread, people changed them to fit their own cultures. In the 1900s, scholars began to split the Renaissance into regional and national movements.

Each country had its own Renaissance. In England, the Elizabethan era is often seen as the high point of the English Renaissance. In France, King Francis I brought Italian art and artists to the country. Hungary was the first European country after Italy where the Renaissance appeared.

Main article: English Renaissance

Main articles: French Renaissance and French Renaissance architecture

Main articles: German Renaissance and Weser Renaissance

Main article: Northern Renaissance

Main article: Portuguese Renaissance

Main article: Spanish Renaissance

See also: Spanish Renaissance architecture

Further countries:

• Renaissance in Croatia
• Renaissance in Scotland

Historiography

The Italian artist and critic Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) first used the term rinascita in his book The Lives of the Artists, published in 1550. He believed the arts had declined after the Roman Empire fell. He thought artists from Tuscany, such as Cimabue and Giotto, began to bring them back. He saw Gothic art as crude and ancient art as the key to the rebirth of Italian art. Only in the 19th century did the French word renaissance become popular. French historian Jules Michelet used it in 1855 for a whole period, from Columbus to Copernicus to Galileo. Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt wrote The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). In it, he described the period from Giotto to Michelangelo and saw the rise of modern individuality within the Italian Renaissance. Some recent historians, such as Randolph Starn of the University of California Berkeley, prefer not to see it as one single age or movement.

See also: Continuity thesis

Historians still argue about whether the Renaissance was an improvement on the Middle Ages. Michelet and Burckhardt saw it as progress toward the modern age. Johan Huizinga, in The Autumn of the Middle Ages, argued that it was a time of decline from the High Middle Ages. He said Medieval Latin went back to its classical form, though recent studies question this. Some Marxist historians connect the changes to a shift from feudalism toward capitalism. This created a bourgeois class that had time for the arts. Many historians note that problems such as poverty and war seem to have grown worse. Robert S. Lopez described a deep economic recession. People at the time did not see it as a golden age. George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike questioned how new the scientific progress really was. Joan Kelly argued that women lost influence. Because the word Renaissance suggests a positive rebirth from the Dark Ages, many now prefer the term "early modern". Art historian Erwin Panofsky noticed that those most willing to question the Renaissance were usually not art specialists.

Other Renaissances

The word Renaissance has also been used for periods before the 15th and 16th centuries, during the earlier Medieval period. Charles H. Haskins (1870–1937), for example, argued for a Renaissance of the 12th century. Other historians have suggested a Carolingian Renaissance in the 8th and 9th centuries, an Ottonian Renaissance in the 10th century, and the Timurid Renaissance of the 14th century. The Islamic Golden Age is sometimes called the Islamic Renaissance. The Macedonian Renaissance is the name for a period in the Roman Empire from the 9th to the 11th centuries.

Many later periods of cultural rebirth in Modern times have also been called "renaissances." These include the Bengal Renaissance, the Tamil Renaissance, the Nepal Bhasa renaissance, al-Nahda, and the Harlem Renaissance. The word is also used in films. In animation, the Disney Renaissance was a period from 1989 to 1999, when the studio returned to a level of quality not seen since its Golden Age of Animation. The San Francisco Renaissance was a lively period of experimental poetry and fiction writing in San Francisco in the mid-20th century.