17 March 2010
THE RENAISSANCE, 1400-1500
Outline


End of the Medieval Era



Plague
Learning
Social Order and Cultural
Change
Household
 Women
 Trade
 Vernacular Literature

Humanism
Petrarch
 Print
 Civic Humanism


The Origins of the
Renaissance




Origins
Intellectual values
Northern renaissance
Social Order
THE END OF THE MEDIEVAL ERA

Plague, 1348


Loss of up to one-half the
population
Alters dynamics of feudal system



More land meant less reliance on
the upper class to provide for the
peasants
Decreased overall production
BUT:



Increased individual wealth
Increased demand for luxury goods
Falling grain prices led to
diversified crops and better diet for
Europeans
SOCIAL ORDER AND CULTURAL CHANGE

The Household






Small, nuclear families
Shopkeepers and craftsmen live above shops
Rural families shared quarters with livestock
Generally overcrowded
Quick remarriage the norm—why?
Women





Excluded from trade- and craft-controlling guilds
Worked in agriculture and commerce
Engaged in unorganized (no guilds) retail trade: dairy products, textile
production, brewing
Geographical differences: Mediterranean culture marginalized women
more than northern Europe
underclass women were slaves and prostitutes
SOCIAL ORDER AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Trade
 downturn
after religious and civil unrest
 Italian bankers hit after borrowers default on war
loans
 Trade decreases
 merchants
seek to avoid dangerous travel
 Emerging underclass rife with violence and crime
disrupts trade routes
 Looking
for alternate investments, merchants turn
to art and luxury
SOCIAL ORDER AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Rise of Vernacular Literature
 Fourteenth
century
 Urban, middle-class movement
 Write for a literate laity
 Figures include: Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni
Boccaccio in Florence, Geoffrey Chaucer in London
 Royal or noble patronage vital to careers of writers
 Increased focus on classical Latin as the language
of learning
HUMANISM




Studied by scholars, civil servants,
notaries, and rich patricians
Attempts to emulate the virtues and
learning of the ancients gives rise to
humanism
Humanism emphasizes the study of
man: history and literature used to
help scholars identify with the
ancient past
Reject “logic” and abstract language
of medieval era for eloquence and
style in discourse

Imitate Cicero and other Roman
authors
HUMANISM

Humanism celebrated the glory
of human achievements and
was not viewed by humanists as
conflicting with their Christian
faith

Cosimo de Medici even sponsors
the Platonic Academy in Florence
Scholars there argue the concept of
immortal soul is Platonic
 Ancient wisdom prefigured
Christian teaching

PETRARCH

Petrarch viewed the 14th Century as a positive and clear break with the “Dark
Ages,” celebrating a return/rediscovery of the culture of antiquity (humanism)
 You have heard what I think of your life and your genius. Are you hoping to
hear of your books also; what fate has befallen them, how they are
esteemed by the masses and among scholars? They still are in existence,
glorious volumes, but we of today are too feeble a folk to read them, or even
to be acquainted with their mere titles. Your fame extends far and wide;
your name is mighty, and fills the ears of men; and yet those who really
know you are very few, be it because the times are unfavourable, or
because men's minds are slow and dull, or, as I am the more inclined to
believe, because the love of money forces our thoughts in other directions.
Consequently right in our own day, unless I am much mistaken, some of
your books have disappeared, I fear beyond recovery. It is a great grief to
me, a great disgrace to this generation, a great wrong done to posterity. The
shame of failing to cultivate our own talents, thereby depriving the future of
the fruits that they might have yielded, is not enough for us; we must waste
and spoil, through our cruel and insufferable neglect, the fruits of your
labours too, and of those of your fellows as well, for the fate that I lament in
the case of your own books has befallen the works of many another
illustrious man. (“To Cicero”)
HUMANISM

Humanistic ideas are
helped by the development
of moveable type



Johannes Gutenberg, 1440s
Single press could produce
volumes at the rate of one
thousand scribes
Aided the spread of
classical, religious, and
political texts
CIVIC HUMANISM




Florence, 1400-1430
Imitation of ancient
Roman rhetoric leads to
adoption of ancient ideas
Study of humanities leads
to republican ideology
Study of ancient
civilization call to public
service and political action
THE RENAISSANCE


The Renaissance was the selfdeclared break/period (rebirth) of
commercial, financial, political
and cultural awakening that
coincided with the “decline” of the
medieval European world
A political and economic
movement as much it was as an
intellectual and artistic/cultural
one
ORIGINS



Northern Italian cities (Genoa, Venice, Milan,
Florence) went through a period of commercial
renewal in the wake of the Black Death
The merging of Italian feudal nobility with the
commercial aristocracy of the cities led to a new and
powerful social class: the urban nobility
By 1300, members of the urban nobility dominated
Italian city-state politics and the “Renaissance”
reflects their power, wealth, and values
RENAISSANCE INTELLECTUAL VALUES
Individualism – Belief in the intellectual power
and capacity of human beings to think, rather
than feel, their way through the world
 Revival of Ancient values – By reading and
copying ancient texts, Renaissance scholars
took on antiquity values like …?
 Secularism – Such values led Renaissance
scholars to focus in on the material world

NORTHERN RENAISSANCE

Italian influence reached northern Europe and inspired similar
values and ideas

Europeans stressed more in the way of social reform
 Northern Renaissance Humanists sought to create a “perfect” world
 Erasmus:
education makes reform possible; Christianity
comes from within
“from the effort to align the heart and spirit with worldly values”
 focused on developing peaceful kingdoms, based on piety and
learning and charity/good works - curbing the power of “Christian”
princes, clerical corruption

 Thomas

More’s Utopian vision
communal world where an equal distribution of goods/services public schools, communal kitchens, hospitals, nurseries - and no
private property or money allowed people to pursue knowledge
and natural religions
LIFE DURING THE RENAISSANCE

Florence was a major urban
region in north Italy with
260,000 people.

“little people” 60% versus the

“fat people” 30% and the elite
(Medici and friends)
Large wealthy families—why?
Women outnumber men, but
suffer from a lack of privileges

Marriageable commodity
 Widows gain and lose power

PRODUCTS OF THE
RENAISSANCE
THE SHAPING OF MODERN EUROPEAN CULTURE

The Renaissance Looking Back:

Academics
▪

Arts
▪
▪
▪

Pursuit of the Humanities
Private consumption
Secular subjects
Artist as celebrity
The Renaissance Looking Forward:



Politics
Development of States
Exploration and Empire
RENAISSANCE INTELLECTUAL VALUES
Individualism – Belief in the intellectual power
and capacity of human beings to think, rather
than feel, their way through the world
 Revival of Ancient values – By reading and
copying ancient texts, Renaissance scholars
took on antiquity values like …
 Secularism – Such values led Renaissance
scholars to focus in on the material world

THE RENAISSANCE ARTIST

Artists gain social status and individual
authority in Renaissance culture
 Unique
effort to prove “creative genius”
 Conflict between creativity and patronage—who
dictates artistic vision?
 The creative environment: long-term service at
court, piecework, the workshop
GIOTTO’S
SCROVEGNI
CHAPEL, 1305
THE CAREER OF ONE EXTRAORDINARY ARTIST
Michelangelo, March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564
creator of key sculptural works
best known for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
(1508-1512)
RENAISSANCE ART

Focus on human body, “realistic,” symbolism of
secular values set in religious themes, glorification
of antiquity, use of new concepts like linear
perspective
LEONARDO, VIRGIN OF
THE ROCKS, 1483-86
RAPHAEL, MADONNA
AND CHILD, CA. 1505
SANDRO BOTTICELLI. ALLEGORY OF THE SPRING
(PRIMAVERA). C. 1482
SANDRO BOTTICELLI. VENUS AND MARS. C.
1485
THE ARNOLFINI
PORTRAIT, JAN VAN
EYCK, 1434
PORTRAITS: DUKE AND DUCHESS OF URBINO,
1472
DONATELLO, DAVID, CA.
1440
ANDREA DEL
VERROCCHIO. David.
c. 1465-1470
MICHELANGELO, DAVID, 1501-1504
LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
RAPHAEL’S THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS

13: Heraclitus (Michelangelo). 14: Plato holding
the Timaeus (Leonardo da Vinci). 15: Aristotle
R: Apelles (Raphael)
PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA, THE FLAGELLATION
OF CHRIST, 1460
GIORGIO VASARI, LIVES OF THE ARTISTS
On the Mona Lisa:
“seeing that the eyes had that lustre and watery sheen which are always seen in
life, and around them were all those rosy and pearly tints, as well as the
lashes, which cannot be represented without the greatest subtlety. The
eyebrows, through his having shown the manner in which the hairs spring
from the flesh, here more close and here more scanty, and curve according to
the pores of the skin, could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful
nostrils, rosy and tender, appeared to be alive. The mouth, with its opening,
and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face,
seemed, in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one
gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse. And, indeed, it
may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every valiant
craftsman, be he who he may, tremble and lose heart. He made use, also, of
this device: Mona Lisa being very beautiful, he always employed, while he was
painting her portrait, persons to play or sing, and jesters, who might make her
remain merry, in order to take away that melancholy which painters are often
wont to give to the portraits that they paint. And in this work of Leonardo's
there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to
behold; and it was held to be something marvellous, since the reality was not
more alive”

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa,
1503-1506
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI


Born in Florence, 1469
becomes secretary and chancellor
(diplomatic job) in 1498



negotiates with several Italian and
foreign courts, including the Medicis
and several popes
1513, writes On Principalities
(The Prince)
Dies in 1527

The Prince never gaining wide
popularity in his time
CONTEXT
Late Renaissance in Italy
 The work is circulated mainly in Florence

written for a specific ruler
 chastised for being un-diplomatic, shockingly
vulgar, and anti-Christian


Period of rising papal power and fear of foreign
(Spanish and French) takeover – fear that
Italian power/greatness is on its way out
IS IT A HUMANIST (RENAISSANCE) TEXT?



Written in Italian, not elegant Latin
Relies on contemporary examples as it does ancient
literature
Machiavelli openly critiques humanism



suggests that Petrarch and others relied too much on the
“style” of antiquity not on its substance
Humanists never put their writings to practical use
Anti-Christian reform

Machiavelli thought the Church was the cause of problems
in the world and that internal reform of the Church would
not make things better