he word "Renaissance" is a French word that means “rebirth.” From about 1350 to 1600, a
revival of interest in the values and arts of Greece and Rome led to a golden age of cultural blending
and innovation. This Renaissance transformed Western European life. During this period, Italy was
divided into city-states ruled by prominent families who were elevated to power through wealth
acquired by new trade routes with the East. A merchant class emerged to provide goods and services
such as banking to the upper class. Ruling families and the Catholic Church began to commission
artists and architects to create masterpieces that would beautify their daily existence and remind one
of the greatness that was once Rome.
he Renaissance is divided into two sections: the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance.
In the early period, painters and sculptors such as Giotto, Botticelli, Masaccio, and Donatello created
works that inspired later artists Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. These new ideas spread
northward through the trade routes and the Renaissance began to flourish in the kingdoms to the
north as well. The ideas continued to migrate northward. Flemish painters, Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
the Van Eyck brothers, and German painter, Albrecht Dürer, used the newly invented oil paint and
added another dimension of deep color to paint. Another dimension followed in the addition of
dramatic light and shadow called chiaroscuro.
uring the Renaissance, the Western European world image shifted from a religious view to a
humanist, or individual, outlook due in part to the discovery of the “New World” and new contact
with the ancient civilizations further East. Renaissance intellectuals, Sir Thomas More and Erasmus
of Rotterdam, had a growing confidence in individual human spirit and abilities. This new focus on
personal worth of the individual was called "humanism." Writers began to use their native language
(called their vernacular) rather than Latin to express their ideas beyond the upper class. Petrarch,
Boccaccio, and Dante were the earlier writers who practiced this style. As the Renaissance spread
northward, other writers followed their lead: Cervantes in Spain, Rabelais in France, and the everpopular Shakespeare of England. The invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg (1445) not
only facilitated the printing of books, but also helped to teach the master printers and their
apprentices to read and made books much cheaper to purchase, thus spreading Renaissance ideas to
the middle classes.