Italian Renaissance Day 26
Warm Up: Italian Renaissance Music
Objective:
Standard:
Homework: 37-43
Italian Renaissance 1300-1500’s
• Renaissance- rebirth
of art and learning
since the classical
period
• Other nations were at
war, while Italy
flourished
Urban Centers
• Italy was made up of
large city-states, urban
areas that allowed for
exchange of ideas
• Because of the Plague,
60% of the population
died, and opened
opportunities (money,
jobs and nobility) for
those who survived.
Merchants and the Medici
• Merchants gained power
through wealth and
believed that they
deserved what they had
• The Medici Family
controlled Florence and
became patrons of the art.
• Focus shifted from Middle
Ages back to traditions of
Greece and Rome
Classical Heritage
• Scholars studied
manuscripts from the
past.
• Renaissance artist
looked down at
Middle Age values
Humanism
• Humanism- focus on
human potential and
individual achievement.
This included study of art,
architecture,history,
literature and philosophy
• Middle Age focused on
rough clothing and plain
food. Then focus changed
from religion centered
philosophy to secular.
Renaissance Man
• Celebrated the
universal man
• Not only great at
painting, must focus
on dance, song,
sculpture, sport,
architecture, medicine
Revolution in the Arts
• New Techniques:
included perspective,
and realistic posture
• Moved away from
ornate Gothic Art of
Middle Ages
The Artists
• Donatello- Relaxed
Realism.
• Leonardo DaVinci
dissected bodies to see
how they worked. Also
gathered any material
• Michelangelo Buonarrotipainter, write, sculptor,
poet
• Raphael- Bright color,
religious themes
Renaissance Humanist Writers
• Most used vernacular
instead of classical Latin
• Francesco Petrarchfamous for writing sonnets
14 line poems.
• Boccaci known for
realistic off color stories
• Cervantes- Made fun of
Middle Ages and chivalry
in Don Quixote
ITALIAN
Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore
quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono,
del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono
fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.
Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me mesdesmo meco mi vergogno;
et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.
English
You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
when I was partly other than I am,
I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
between vain hope and vain sadness,
in those who understand love through its
trials.
Yet I see clearly now I have become
an old tale amongst all these people, so that
it often makes me ashamed of myself;
and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
of how the world's delight is a brief dream.
The Black Plague
Not such were they as in the East, where an issue of blood from the nose was a
manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men and women alike it first betrayed
itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or the armpits, some of
which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less,
which the common folk called gavoccioli. From the two said parts of the body this
deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions
indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or
livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere,
now few and large, now minute and numerous. And as the gavocciolo had been
and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots
on whomsoever they shewed themselves. Which maladies seemed to set entirely at
naught both the art of the physician and the virtues of physic; indeed, whether it
was that the disorder was of a nature to defy such treatment, or that the
physicians were at fault--besides the qualified there was now a multitude both of
men and of women who practised without having received the slightest tincture of
medical science--and, being in ignorance of its source, failed to apply the proper
remedies; in either case, not merely were those that recovered few, but almost all
within three days from the appearance of the said symptoms, sooner or later, died,
and in most cases without any fever or other attendant malady.
Niccolo Machieavelli
• Machievelle wrote a
political guide book The
Prince. Based on the idea
that a king should not do
what was morally right but
must maintain power by
destroying his enemies. “It
is much safer to be feared
then to be loved”
Excerpts from Machiavelli The Prince
A) "is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it
may be possible to make them believe by force. "
B) "For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less,
they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the
flavour of them may last longer."
C) "Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens
will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state
and of him, and then he will always find them faithful. "
D) "a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon
meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil. "
E) "Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how
to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. "
F) "because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is
necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to
be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work
more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men,
because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity
(bold, daring) command her. "
Renaissance Women
• Society generally
restricted women’s
role however some did
become famous
painters (Anguissola,
Gentileschi) and
writers (Castigiolene)
Summary Questions
1) What did you need to become an important patron?
2) What is perspective artistically?
3) If you are speaking in the vernacular are you
speaking a local or classical dialect?
4) The Renaissance is considered to be a rebirth of
what period
Last Supper by Giotto di Bondune
(1276-1337)
Young Woman with a Ferret (1489)
Leonardo Da Vinci
Pieta by Michelangelo Buonarroti
Niccolo Machiavelli by Santi di Tito
(1536-1603)