Introduction to Classical
Humanism
Cimabue 1280
Veneziano 1445
The Madonna and Child with
Saints 1445
Appropriation of Greek
and Latin classics
• Worth and dignity of individual
• New program of study: grammar, logic,
rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,
and music. Focus on secular, not sacred
(although never do they exclude Catholic
faith)
• Life on earth no longer a vale of tears but an
opportunity for talent and ability
Uffizi Gallery
World View from Classicism
• This-world view rather that St. Augustine’s
focus on City of God
• Civic responsibility (Cicero and Aristotle)
was hallmark of cultivated individual
• Studiolo: manuscripts, musical instruments,
and artifacts of scientific inquiry
El Duomo
Florence, Italy
Italy: Birthplace of Renaissance
(1300-1600)
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Trade
Least feudalized
Profit from Crusades
Florence shopkeepers introduced
double-entry bookkeeping
• Pursuit of money and leisure
Climate of anticlericalism and
intellectual skepticism
• Avignon Papacy and Great Schism
• Middle class
• Medici family in Florence supported
scholarship and patronized the arts
Artists supported by Medici
Family
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Brunelleschi
Botticelli
Verrocchio
Michelangelo
On Botticelli
• “This beautiful female form, with its
diaphanous shapes and pure outlines,
constitutes a rejection or a sublimation of its
physical aspects. It is like a challenge on
the part of the intellect—a challenge thrown
in the face of sensuality.” Argan
• “…Matter is transfigured into intellect…”
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Petrarch: Father of Humanism
• Devoted life to recovery, copying, and editing of
Latin manuscripts
• Tireless popularizer of classical studies
• Epistolary tradition revived: he used letters to
describe admiration for antiquity
• Passion for antiquity and eagerness to rescue it
from neglect
• Motivated the printing press within 100 years of
his death)
Ficino’s Platonic Academy in
Florence (c. 1475)
• Love is exalted as a divine force
• Platonic (spiritual) love attracted the soul to
God
• Such love is inspired by physical beauty
Pico della Mirandola
• Efforts to recover the past and reverence for
the power of human knowledge
• Typified individualism
• Affirms perfectibility of the individual
• Rational person at the center of a rational
universe
To Pico, man was created by the
“Divine Artificer.”:
– His answer to the need for a creature who
“might comprehend the
– meaning of so vast an achievement [as the
creation of the world],
– [and] might be moved with love at its beauty
and smitten with
– awe at its grandeur.”