World History
Renaissance Introduction
The word Renaissance means "rebirth." Historically, it refers to a time in Western
civilization (1350–1550) that was characterized by the revival of three things: commerce,
interest in the Classical world, and belief in the potential of human achievement. For
reasons that are both geographical and social, the Renaissance began in Italy where
renewed trade with the East flowed into Europe via the Mediterranean Sea and, therefore,
through the Italian peninsula. The Italian Renaissance flowered for approximately a
century until, as a result of invasions from France and Great Britain, it flowed north into
the rest of Western Europe.
Why did the Renaissance
originate in Italy?
The society of the Italian peninsula between 1350 and 1550 was unique in Western
civilization. The most outstanding characteristic of Italian society was the degree to which
it was urban. By 1500, seven of the ten largest cities in Europe were in Italy. Whereas
most of Western Europe was characterized by large kingdoms with powerful monarchs
and increasingly centralized bureaucracies, the Italian peninsula was made up of numerous
independent city-states, such as Milan, Florence, Padua, and Genoa. These city-states
were, by virtue of their location, flourishing centers of commerce in control of reviving
networks of trade with Eastern empires.
Because the city-states of Italy developed as commercial centers, wealth was not based on
the control of land as it was in the rest of Europe during this period. Instead, wealth was in
the form of capital, and power was the ability to lend it. Accordingly, the traditional
landed aristocracy of the Italian peninsula was not as politically powerful as their other
European counterparts. Rather, powerful merchant families dominated socially and
politically. Their status as the holders of capital also made the commercial elites of Italy
powerful throughout Europe as the monarchs of the more traditional kingdoms had to
come to them when seeking loans to finance their wars of territorial expansion.
The city-states of Renaissance Italy were set up along a variety of models. Some, like
Naples, were ruled by hereditary monarchs; others were ruled by powerful families, such
as the Medicis of Florence; still others, like Venice, were controlled by a military leader.
Prior to the Renaissance, the values of European civilization were based on the codes of
honor and chivalry that reflected the social relations of the traditional feudal hierarchy.
During the Renaissance, these traditional values were transformed to reflect both the
ambition and the pride of the commercial class that dominated Renaissance Italian society.
In contrast to traditional European noblemen, who competed for prestige on the battlefield
or in jousting and fencing tournaments, successful Renaissance men competed with
displays of civic duty that included patronage of philosophy and arts.
At the center of the Renaissance system of values was humanism. Renaissance humanism
combined an admiration for Classical Greek and Roman literature with a new-found
confidence in what modern men could achieve. Accordingly, Renaissance humanism was
characterized by an educational program founded on knowledge of the Classical Latin and
Greek languages. Once these languages had been mastered, the Renaissance humanist
could read deeply in the Classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman authors,
absorbing what the philosophers of the last great Western civilization had to teach them
about how to succeed in life and how to live a good life.
To the Renaissance humanist, the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers were guides, but
guides whose achievements could be equaled and eventually improved upon. The ultimate
goal of the Renaissance humanist program was the truly well-rounded citizen, one who
excelled in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, politics, and moral philosophy. These
scholarly achievements were valued in their own right, as a testament to the dignity and
ability of man, but also for the way in which they contributed to the glory of the city-state.
Prime examples of early Renaissance humanism were Petrarch, who celebrated the glory
What were some of the main
beliefs of the Renaissance?
of ancient Rome in his Letters to the Ancient Dead, and Boccaccio, who compiled an
encyclopedia of Greek and Roman mythology. The best articulation of the belief in the
dignity and potential of man that characterized Renaissance humanism was Pico della
Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486). In the Oration, Pico argued that God
endowed man with the ability to shape his own being, and that man has the obligation to
become all that he can be.
What were some major artistic
developments that reflected the
beliefs of the Renaissance?
By the late Renaissance, humanism lost some of its ideal character, where scholarly
achievements were valued for their own sake, and took on a more cynical quality that
promoted only individual success. This shift is sometimes characterized as a shift from a
"civic ideal" to a "princely ideal," as texts like Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier
(1513–1518) and Machiavelli's The Prince (1513) focused on the qualities and strategies
necessary for attaining and holding social and political power.
The unique structure of Renaissance society and the corresponding system of Renaissance
values combined to give birth to one of the most amazing bursts of artistic creativity in the
history of Western civilization. The wealthy and powerful elites of Renaissance society
patronized the arts for the fame and prestige that it brought them. The competitive spirit of
the competing elites both within and among the Italian city-states meant that artists and
craftsmen were in almost constant demand.
For example, Lorenzo de Medici, who led the ruling family of Florence from 1469 until
his death in 1492, commissioned work by almost all of the great Renaissance artists. As an
art patron, he was rivaled by Pope Julius II, whose patronage of the arts during his papacy
(1503–1513), including the construction of St Peter's Basilica, transformed Rome into one
of Europe's most beautiful cities.
Whereas medieval art had been characterized by religious subject matter, the Renaissance
style took the human being and the human form as its subject. The transition can be seen
in the series of frescos painted by Giotto in the fourteenth century. Although he still
focused on religious subject matter (i.e., the life of St Francis), Giotto depicted the human
characters in realistic detail and with a concern for their psychological reaction to the
events of St Francis's life. The Renaissance artist's concern for the human form in all its
complexity is illustrated by two great sculptures, each nominally depicting the biblical
character of David:
One is Donatello's version (completed in 1432), the first life-size, free-standing nude
sculpture since antiquity, which depicts David in a completely naturalistic way and casts
him as a young Florentine gentleman.
The second version was sculpted by Michelangelo Buonarroti (completed in 1504) and is
characteristic of the last and most heroic phase of Renaissance art. Sculpted from a single
piece of marble, Michelangelo's David is larger than life and offers a vision of the human
body and spirit that is more dramatic than real life, an effect that Michelangelo produced
by making the head and hands deliberately too large for the torso. Upon its completion,
the rulers of Florence originally placed David at the entrance to the city hall as a symbol
of Florentine strength.
In the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance spread to France, Germany,
England, and Spain. The major cause of the spread of Renaissance ideals and values was
the printing press. Invented by Johann Gutenberg in the German city of Mainz about 1445
in response to increased demand for books from an increasingly literate public, the
moveable type printing press allowed for faster, cheaper mass-produced books to be
created and distributed throughout Europe. By 1500, between 15 and 20 million books
were in circulation. Among the ideas that spread with the books were the thoughts and
philosophies of the Renaissance humanists, which were both adopted and transformed in
northern Europe.
What enabled the ideas of the
Renaissance to spread?