• The northern Renaissance began in the prosperous cities
of Flounders, a region that included parts of present-day
northern France, Belgium, and Netherlands.
• Spain, France, Germany, and England enjoyed their great
culture rebirth 100 years later, in the 1500s.
• Albrecht Durer traveled to Italy in 1494 to study the
techniques of the Italian masters.
• Returning home, he employed these methods in painting
and, especially, in engravings.
• In this form of art an artist etches a design on a metal
plate with acid. The artist then uses the plate to make
prints.
• Many of Durer’s engravings portray the religious
upheaval of his age.
• Through his art as well as through essays, Durer helped
to spread Italian Renaissance ideas in his homeland.
• Because of his wide-ranging interests, which extended far
beyond art, he sometimes called the “German Leonardo.”
• Among the many artists of Flanders in the 1400s, Jan and
Hubert Van Eyck stand out.
• Their portrayals of townspeople as well as religious
scenes abound in rich, realistic details.
• The Van Eycks also developed oil paint.
• Northern artists used this new medium to produce
strong colors and a hard surface that could survive the
centuries.
• In the 1500s, Pieter Bruegel used vibrant colors to
portray lively scenes of peasant life.
• Bruegel’s work influenced later Flemish artists, who
painted scenes of daily life rather than religious or
classical themes.
• In the 1600s, Peter Paul Rubens blended he realistic
tradition of Flemish painters like Bruegel with the
classical themes and artistic freedom of the Italian
Renaissance.
• Many of his enormous paintings portray pagan figures
from the classical past.
• Like Italian humanists, northern European humanist
scholars stressed education and classical learning.
• At the same time, they emphasized religious themes.
• They believed that the revival of ancient learning should
be used to bring about religious and moral reform
• Dutch priest and humanist Desiderius Erasmus used his
knowledge of classical languages to produce a new Greek
edition of the New Testament.
• He also called for a translation of the Bible into the
vernacular, or everyday language of ordinary people.
• As a priest he was disturbed by corruption in the Church
and called for reform
• In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus used humor to expose
the ignorant and immortal behavior of many people of his
day including the clergy.
• Erasmus’s friend, the English humanist Thomas More,
also pressed for social reform.
• In Utopia, More describes an ideal society in which men
and women live in peace and harmony.
• No one is idle, all are educated, and justice is used to end crime
rather than to eliminate the criminal.
• Scholars like More and Erasmus wrote mostly in Latin.
• In northern towns and cities, the growing middle class
demanded new works in the vernacular.
• The audience particularly enjoyed dramatic tales and
earthy comedies
• The French humanist Francois Rabelais had a varied
career as a monk, physician, Greek scholar, and author.
• In Gargantua and Pantagruel, he chronicle the
adventure of two gentle giants.
• On the surface, the novel is a comic tale on travel and
war. But Rabelais uses his characters to offer opinion on
religion, education, and other serious subjects.
• Between 1590 and 1613 William Shakespeare wrote 37
plays.
• Shakespeare’s comedies, such as Twelfth Night laugh at the
follies of young people in love.
• His history plays, such as Richard III, depict the powerful
struggles of English kings.
• His tragedies show people crushed by powerful forces or their
own weaknesses.
• Wrote 154 sonnets on the subjects of love, beauty &
mortality
• Shakespeare’s love of words vastly enriched the English
language.
• More than 1,700 words appeared for the first time in his works,
including bedroom, lonely, gloomy, heartsick, hurry and
sneak.
• In 1456, Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, printed
the first complete edition of the Bible using the first
printing press and printing inks in the West.
• Within 20 years, the development of movable type made
book production even easier.
• A printing revolution would transform Europe.
• By 1500, more than 20 million volumes had been printed.
• Printed books were cheaper and easier to produce than handcopied work.
• With books more readily available, more people learned how to
read.
• Printed books exposed educated Europeans to new ideas,
greatly expanding their horizons