Renaissance
• Time of political, social, economic, and
cultural change
• Change in how people viewed selves and
their world
• Saw medieval world as disorder and
disunity
• Latin and mathematics still relevant
Italian Renaissance
• Rebirth; 1300s-1500s, Greek and Roman,
recovery from plague
• Urban societies became political,
economic, and social centers
• New view emphasized individual ability and
worth; well rounded individual capable of
achievements in many areas of life:
Leonardo da Vinci
• Upper class affected more, art
everywhere
Intellectual and Artistic
Renaissance
• Italian Renaissance Humanism- intellectual
movement
• Most apparent were intellectual and artistic
movements, intellectual was humanism
• Based on literary works of ancient Greece and
Rome- focused on worldly subjects rather than
religious issues of medieval thinkers
• Most were Christians who helped to use wisdom
of ancients to increase understanding of own
times
• Petrarch did most to help humanism’s
development, generated movement to find
forgotten Latin manuscripts
Education in the Renaissance
• Humanists believed education changed lives
and should stimulate creative powers
• Liberal studies core of humanist schools,
allowed individuals to reach full potential
• Goal to create complete citizens
• Females rarely attended schools
• Humanities?
• Subjects taught, grammar, rhetoric (study of
using language effectively), poetry, and
history
Italian City States
• Why start in Italy?
• Center of Roman empire with architectural
remains, statues, coins, and inscriptions
• Visible reminders of Roman greatness
• Wealthy merchant classes promotes cultural
rebirth and exerted both political and
economic leadership by stressing education
and individual achievement
Italian States
• Northern and central Italian city-states of
Milan, Venice, and Florence crucial roles
in politics, trade, and manufacturing
• Prospered from trade, linked England,
Netherlands, Byzantine, and
Mediterranean civilizations
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Who were the Medicis? (meh dee chee)
1400s Florence family
Successful banking and other businesses
Gained control of Florentine government in
1434, uncrowned rulers
• Lorenzo held Florence together in late 1400s
during difficult times
• Patron?
• Financial supporter of the arts
Artistic Renaissance in Italy
• Artists sought to portray
nature in their works
• Fresco- done on wet
plaster w/ water based
paints, created depth, 3D
• Religious figures against
Greek or Roman
background
• Perspective?
• Distant objects smaller
than those close to viewer
(appeared 3-D)
• Used geometry to understand perspective,
studied human movement and anatomy,
realistic portrayal of individuals chief aims
• Donatello modeled figures on Greek and
Roman statues
• Filippo Brunelleschi new architecture
based on Roman classical buildings, does
not overwhelm the worshipper, space to fit
human needs, human centered world
• Get away from Gothic style- wanted more
columns, arches, and domes
Brunelleschi
Designed after
Pantheon in Rome
Machiavelli and Statecraft
• Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince,
1513, which is one of the most influential
works on political power in western
world
• How to get and keep political power
• Human nature self-interested
• Not moral, rather interest of state
• Do what is necessary to achieve goals,
this more important than keeping
promises
• Attacked for his views, “Devil”
• Ethical questions
Renaissance Society
• 3 classes
• Noble/aristocrat- have talent, character, and
grace; perform military exercises and gain
classical education and enrich life with art; serve
prince honestly
• Peasants- 85-90%, more legally free
• Townspeople- remainder of people
• 3 subclasses in towns- Patricians had wealth
from trade; Burghers were shopkeepers,
artisans and guild members; while Workers
made pitiful wages
• Arranged marriages sealed deals, dowry
• Father in charge of family, absolute
authority, mother ran household
• High Renaissance (1490-1520), da Vinci,
Raphael, Michelangelo dominated this period
• Leonardo mastered realistic painting, goal to
capture perfection of nature and individual
• Man whose unquenchable curiosity was
equaled only by his powers of invention.
• He is widely considered to be one of the
greatest painters of all time and perhaps the
most diversely talented person ever to have
lived.
• Dissected corpses to learn how muscles and
bones worked
• Anatomy, optics, music, architecture,
engineering were interests
• Sketches of flying machines and undersea
boats
• Raphael- one of Italy’s greatest painters, beauty
surpassing human standards
• School of Athens- imaginary gathering of great
thinkers (Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Averroes,
Michelangelo, Leonardo, and self
• Blending Christian and classical styles
• Michelangelo- painter, sculptor, architect known
for great passion and energy
• Genius sculptor, engineer, painter architect,
and poet
• Pieta as young man (Mary cradles Christ)
• David- harmony and grace of ancient
Greek tradition
• One of the qualities most admired by his
contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense
of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the
attempts of subsequent artists to imitate
Michelangelo's highly personal style that
resulted in the next major movement in
Western art after the High Renaissance,
Mannerism.
Sistine
ChapelJudgment
(4 years to
paint)
St. Peter’s Cathedral in
Rome
Northern Artistic Renaissance
• Present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and
the Netherlands, illustrated books and
wooden panels; Gothic cathedrals didn’t
have enough wall space, small scale
made them masters of detail
• Jan van Eyck first to use oil paint, allowed
wide variety of colors
• German Albrect Durer incorporated laws
of perspective, Adoration of the Magi