• Describe the characteristics of the Renaissance and
understand why it began in Italy.
• Identify Renaissance artists and explain how new ideas
affected the arts of the period.
• Understand how writers of the time addressed
Renaissance themes.
• The Renaissance was the rebirth of the Greek and Roman
culture and arts.
• The Renaissance was a time of creativity and change in
many areas – political, social, economic, culture, and the
way people viewed themselves and their world.
• Spurred by a reawakened interest in the classical learning
of Greece and Rome, creative Renaissance minds set out
to transform their own age.
• This era, they felt, was a time of rebirth after what they
saw as the disorder and disunity of the medieval world.
• In reality, Renaissance Europe did not break completely with its
medieval past.
• After all, monks and scholars of the Middle Ages had preserved much
of the classical heritage.
• Latin has survived as the language of the church and the educated
people.
• The mathematics of Euclid, the astronomy of Ptolemy, and the works
of Aristotle were known to late medieval scholars.
• The Renaissance did produce new attitudes toward
culture and learning.
• Unlike medieval scholars, who were more likely to focus
on life after death, Renaissance thinkers explored the
riches and variety of human experience in the here and
now.
• There was a new emphasis on individual achievement.
• The Renaissance began in Italy, then spread north to the
rest of Europe.
• The Renaissance was marked by a new interest in the
culture of ancient Rome.
• Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance for several
reasons.
• Because Italy had been the center of the Roman empire.
• Architectural remains, statues, coins, and inscriptions – all
were visible remains of Roman grandeur.
• Italy differed from the rest of Europe in other ways.
• Its cities survived the Middle Ages.
• In the north, city-states like Florence, Milan, Venice, and
Genoa grew into prosperous centers of trade and
manufacturing.
• Rome, in central Italy, and Naples, in south, along with a
number of smaller city-states, also contributed to the
Renaissance cultural revival.
• A wealthy and powerful merchant class in these citystates further promoted the cultural rebirth.
• These merchants exerted both political and economic
leadership, and their attitudes and interests helped the
Italian Renaissance.
• They also spent lavishly to support the arts.
• Florence, more than any other city, came to symbolize the
energy and brilliance of the Italian Renaissance.
• It produced a dazzling number of gifted poets, artists,
architects, scholars, and scientists in a short span of time.
• In the 1400s, the Medici family of Florence organized a
successful banking business.
• Before long, the family expanded into wool
manufacturing, mining, and other ventures.
• The Medicis ranked among the richest merchants and
bankers of Europe.
• Money translated into culture and political power.
• Cosimo de’ Medici gained control of the Florentine
government in 1434.
• The Renaissance supported a spirit of adventure and a
wide-ranging curiosity that led people to explore new
worlds.
• Based on the study of classical culture, humanism
focused on worldly subjects rather than on the religious
issues that had occupied medieval thinkers.
• Most humanist scholars were pious Christians who hoped
to use the wisdom of the ancients to increase their
understanding of their own time.
• Humanists believed that education should stimulate the
individual’s creative powers.
• They returned to the humanities, the subjects taught in
ancient Greek and Roman schools.
• The Renaissance attained its most glorious expression in
its paintings sculpture, and architecture.
• Wealthy patrons played a major role.
• Humanist Concerns: Renaissance art reflected humanist
concerns.
• Like artists in the Middle Ages, Renaissance artists portrayed
religious figures. However they often set these figures against
Greek and Roman backgrounds.
• Painters also produced portraits of well-known figures of the
day.
• Renaissance artists studied ancient Greek and Roman works
and revived many classical forms.
• New Techniques: Roman art had been very realistic, and
Renaissance painters developed new techniques for
representing both humans and landscapes in a realistic
way.
• Renaissance artists learned the rules of perspective. By making
distant objects smaller then those close, artists make scenes
appear three-dimensional.
• Use shades to make shapes look round and real.
• Painters and sculptors studied human anatomy and drew from
live models.
• Architecture: Renaissance architects rejected the Gothic
style of the late Middle Ages as cluttered and disorderly.
• They adopted the columns, arches, and domes that had been
favored by the Greeks and Romans.
• Renaissance Florence was home to many outstanding
painters and sculptors.
• The three most celebrated Florentine masters were:
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Michelangelo
• Raphael.
• Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452.
• He made sketches of nature and of models in his studio.
• He dissected corpuses to learn how bones and muscles
work.
• His most popular painting is
the Mona Lisa
• The Last Supper, showing
Christ and his apostles on the
night before the crucifixion.
• Leonardo thought of himself as an artist, but his talents
and accomplishments ranged over many areas. His
interests extended to botany, anatomy, optics, music,
architecture, and engineering. He made sketches for
flying machines and undersea boats centuries before the
first airplane or submarine was actually built.
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Only 17 paintings
Notebooks
Drawings of unfinished works
Diverted rivers to prevent flooding
Principles of turbine
Cartography
Submarine
Flying machine
Parachute
…And much more….
• Like da Vinci, Michelangelo was a many –sided genius –
sculptor, engineer, painter, architect, and poet.
• He shaped marble into masterpieces like the Pieta, which
captured the sorrow of Mary as she cradles the dead
Christ on her knees.
• Michelangelo’s status of David, the biblical shepherd who
killed the giant Goliath, recalls the harmony grace of
ancient Greek tradition.
• One of Michelangelo’s greatest projects was painting a
huge mural to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in
Rome.
• It was an enormous task, depicting the biblical history of the
world, from the Creation to the Flood.
• For four years, the artist lay on his back on a wooden platform
suspended few inches below the chapel ceiling.
• Michelangelo was also a talented architect. His most
famous design was the dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral in
Rome.
• It served as a model for many later structures, including the
United States Capitol building in Washington D.C.
• World’s greatest sculptor
• See the figure inside the stone and remove
excess
• Painter
• Mannerism
• Poet
• Architect
• Engineer
• Raphael studied the works of those great masters.
• His paintings blend Christian and classical styles.
• He is probably best known for his tender portrayals of the
Madonna, the mother of Jesus.
• In The School of Athens, Raphael pictures an imaginary
gathering of great thinkers and scientists, such as Plato,
Aristotle, Socrates, and the Arab philosopher Averroes.
• With typical Renaissance self-confidence, Raphael
included the faces of Michelangelo, Leonardo and
himself.
• Poets, artists, and scholars mingled with politicians at the
courts of Renaissance rulers.
• A literature on “how-to” books sprung up to help
ambition men and women who wanted to rise in the
Renaissance world.
• The most widely read of these handbooks was The Book
of the Courtier.
• Its author, Baldassare Castiglione, describes the manners,
skills, learning, and virtues that a member of the court should
have.
• Castiglion’s ideal courtier was a well-educated, well-mannered
aristocrat who mastered many fields, from poetry to music to
sports.
• Castiglione’s ideal differed for men and women.
• The ideal man, he wrote, is athletic but not overactive.
• He is good at games but not a gambler.
• He plays a musical instrument and knows literature and
history but is not arrogant.
• An ideal woman offers a balance to men. She is graceful and
kind, lively but reserved.
• Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a different kind of handbook.
• Machiavelli had served Florence as a diplomat and had
observed kings and princes in foreign counts. He also had
studied ancient Roman history.
• The Prince, published in 1513, Machiavelli combined his
personal experience of politics with his knowledge of the
past to offer a guide to rulers on how to gain and
maintain power.
• The Prince looked at real rulers, such as the Medicis, in
an age of ruthless power of politics.
• Machiavelli stressed that the end justifies the means. He
urged rulers to use whatever methods were necessary
The Prince
Machiavelli believed:
“One can make this generalization
about men: they are ungrateful, fickle,
liars, and deceivers, they shun danger
and are greedy for profit”
Machiavelli observed city-state rulers
of his day and produced guidelines for
the acquisition and maintenance of
power by absolute rule.
He felt that a ruler should be willing to
do anything to maintain control
without worrying about conscience.