Renaissance=rebirth. A time when people
began to take a new interest in Ancient
Greece and Rome
 1.
Why the Renaissance started in Italy
 2. Importance of patrons and examples
 3. Developments in painting
 4. Renaissance Artist in Italy: Da Vinci
 5. Renaissance Artist OUTSIDE Italy: Bruegel
 6. Renaissance Sculptor: Michelangelo
 7. Changes to Renaissance architecture
 8. Importance of the Printing Press
 9. Renaissance Writer: Shakespeare
 10. Renaissance Scientist: Galileo
 11. Results of the Renaissance
The invention of the
printing press meant
books were cheaper
and ideas spread
quicker
Italy was divided
into city-states.
These were open to
new ideas and very
competitive
Italian merchants
also brought new
ideas and became
critical of old ways
of doing things
The ruins of the
Roman Empire
inspired people to
restore Rome to its
former glory
Why did the
Renaissance
start in
Italy?

Wealthy Italian
merchants that
brought silks and
spices from Asia had
money to spend on
buildings and art
Greek scholars that
came to Italy brought
manuscripts with
them. This made the
Romans interested in
Greek ideas.
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Lorenzo de Medici was a famous patron of the arts during
the Renaissance. He ruled the city-state of Florence. The
Medicis were extremely wealthy bankers. Their family
loaned money even to kings and popes.
Lorenzo became the ruler of Florence at the young age of
20. He was extremely talented as a ruler and banker but
also as a poet and an athlete.
He was known as ‘Lorenzo the Magnificant’ because he
invited great painters and sculptors to his palaces and paid
them to produce great works of art.
One Italian artist under Lorenzo was Michelangelo who
produced the famous statue of David.
Lorenzo also paid people to buy or copy manuscripts
abroad and then stored these manuscripts in his library
which became the first public library in Europe
 Why
were patrons important?
 These
were wealthy people who were willing
to pay for artists/sculptors to create works
of art
 Cosimo
de Medici and Lorenzo the
Magnificent are examples of patrons
 Julius
II and Leo X are example of popes who
were patrons
 1.
Medieval
paintings were
usually flat and
lifeless
Renaissance artists created very
lifelike paintings because:
- They used perspective to
make background objects seem
far away. This gave depth to
paintings
- They studied anatomy (human
body) and so could paint people
with better accuracy
Medieval art
usually dealt
with
religious
subjects
only
3.
Medieval
artists used
egg-whites
to bind their
paintings
Renaissance artists often
painted ordinary people,
scenes from nature, or
classical themes from
ancient Greece or Rome
Renaissance artists used oils
instead of egg-white to bind their
paints. Oil dries more slowly than
egg-whites, which meant artists
could improve their paintings by
making changes to them
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Anatomy: artists cut up dead bodies to find out about
bones and muscles. Painting were made more real as
a result
Perspective: adding depth to a painting. It made
some objects small (far away) and other objects big
(closer)
Portraits: these became popular e.g. Mona Lisa
Sfumato: adding shading to a painting. Made realistic
shadows and skin tones
Oil Paintings: used oil paint instead of egg whites to
mix their colours. This dried slower so mistakes could
be fixed.
Canvas: paint dried more slowly on these so were less
likely to crack
Frescos: paintings on wet plaster.
 What
is a fresco?
A fresco is a painting done on
damp plaster so that the painting
became part of the plaster e.g.
Michelangelo’s ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel
http://vatican.com/tour/sistine_chapel_3D
 Stumato
is a painting technique which
Leonardo used to blur the outlines of figures
and blend them into their surroundings
 E.g. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa
 1.
Art:
 2. Architecture:
 3.Sculpture:
 4. Printing:
 5. Science and Medicine:
http://stpaulscollege.ie/history/leonardo-davinci
 Renaissance man
 Master Verrocchio
 Mona Lisa-Sfumato
 The Last Supper-experimented with oils
 Painters Guild
 Worked for Duke of Sforza
 Notebooks-5,000 pages
 Dissected 30 bodies
 Discoveries-how rocks were formed and dating of
trees
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 Pieter
Bruegel-Netherlands
 Son of a poor peasant
 Pieter Coecke Van Aelst
 ‘The Gloomy Day’
 Ordinary people
 ‘Children’s Games’
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Born near Florence in 1475
Apprenticed to Ghirlandaio
Sculptured statues in gardens of the Medici family
Lorenzo de Medici became his patron
Sculptured the Pieta-statue of the dead Christ in his
mother’s arms
Sculptured the 5 metre high statue of David in white
marble
Hired by Pope Julius II to paints scenes from the Old
Testament on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapelfresco-took him 4 years
The Last Judgement-on the wall behind the alter of
the Sistine Chapel
Before he died he designed the dome of St. Peter’s
Basilica in Rome
During the Renaissance, Gothic architecture
went out of fashion and there was a return to
the old Roman style of building. Large domes,
rounded arches and tall pillars became
fashionable again
 Filippo Brunelleschi, an Italian, designed the
largest and most famous dome of all time. This is
the dome of the cathedral in Florence, and it
still dominates the skyline of that city.
 Andrea Palladio, another Italian, was famous for
designing large houses called villas. His
‘Palladian style’ was used throughout the world
to build houses for wealthy people.
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 Goldsmith
from Germany
 Invented the moveable printing press.
The importance of printing:
 This meant books were more easily available
so more people began to read and write
 Books became much cheaper
 New ideas spread more easily
Born Stratford-on-Avon
 At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway
 When to London where he became an actor and
writer
 Formed a theatre group called ‘The King’s Men’
 They performed in the ‘Globe Theatre’
 His plays were performed before Queen
Elizabeth I
 Tragedies=Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth
 Comedies=Merchant of Venice
 Wrote 150 sonnets (14 line poems)
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Galileo
 Professor of Maths in Pisa
 Discovered that objects of different weights fell
at the same speed
 Also invented a telescope that was powerful
enough for him to discover the moons of the
planet Jupiter
Nicolas Copernicus
 Copernicus was a Polish priest who discovered
that the Earth turned on its own axis and moved
around the sun. He published his beliefs in a
book called ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Spheres’
 William
Harvey was an English doctor who
wrote a famous book called ‘On the Motion
of the Heart and Blood’. In this book he
proved that the heart was a kind of pump
that pumped blood around the body.
 Andreas Vesalius was the private doctor of
the King of Spain. He dissected dead bodies
so that he could learn what the human
skeleton looked like. His findings were
published in a book called ‘On the Fabric of
the Human Body’. The book was so famous
that Vesalius became known as ‘the father of
modern anatomy’
1. The printing press led to increased education
and literacy. It also spread new ideas.
 2. People began to question and old ideas were
no longer accepted without question.
 3. This questioning spirit led to the Age of
Exploration, the Reformation and to new
scientific discoveries.
 4. The result was new knowledge in geography,
science, medicine and astronomy.
 5. There were also new developments in
painting, sculpture and architecture. These
included perspective, sfumato and classical
architecture.
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