The Story of the Renaissance

Artists strived to depict people and objects in a true-to-life way. They used techniques, such as perspective, shadows and light to add depth to their work.

The Renaissance

Emotion was another quality that artists tried to infuse into their pieces. While many artists and thinkers used their talents to express new ideas, some Europeans took to the seas to learn more about the world around them. In a period known as the Age of Discovery, several important explorations were made. Voyagers launched expeditions to travel the entire globe.

Humanism encouraged Europeans to question the role of the Roman Catholic church during the Renaissance. As more people learned how to read, write and interpret ideas, they began to closely examine and critique religion as they knew it. Also, the printing press allowed for texts, including the Bible, to be easily reproduced and widely read by the people, themselves, for the first time. In the 16th century, Martin Luther , a German monk, led the Protestant Reformation — a revolutionary movement that caused a split in the Catholic church.

Luther questioned many of the practices of the church and whether they aligned with the teachings of the Bible. As a result, a new form of Christianity , known as Protestantism, was created. By the end of the 15th century, numerous wars had plagued the Italian peninsula. Spanish, French and German invaders battling for Italian territories caused disruption and instability in the region. Also, changing trade routes led to a period of economic decline and limited the amount of money that wealthy contributors could spend on the arts.

The Story of the Italian Renaissance, 2nd Edition | Wayside Publishing

Later, in a movement known as the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic church censored artists and writers in response to the Protestant Reformation. Many Renaissance thinkers feared being too bold, which stifled creativity. Furthermore, in , the Council of Trent established the Roman Inquisition , which made humanism and any views that challenged the Catholic church an act of heresy punishable by death. By the early 17th century, the Renaissance movement had died out, giving way to the Age of Enlightenment.

The Renaissance, History World International. Facts About the Renaissance, Biography Online. Facts About the Renaissance Period, Interestingfacts. International Humanist and Ethical Union. Why Did the Italian Renaissance End? The Story of the Middle Ages. The Book of the Ancient World. The Story of the Romans Yesterday's Classics.

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Please try again later. Love Guerber's histories, and as I understand it Miller's changes just corrected some things. Throughout our history studies we've read both, but not compared the original and edited of a certain one side by side yet. One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone — is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi — and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti — that perspective was formalized as an artistic technique.

The development of perspective was part of a wider trend towards realism in the arts. Underlying these changes in artistic method was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature and to unravel the axioms of aesthetics , with the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that were much imitated by other artists.

In the Netherlands , a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed. The work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck was particularly influential on the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the introduction of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism in representation see Renaissance in the Netherlands.

Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life. In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains of ancient classical buildings. With rediscovered knowledge from the 1st-century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics , Brunelleschi formulated the Renaissance style that emulated and improved on classical forms.

His major feat of engineering was building the dome of the Florence Cathedral. Andrew in Mantua , built by Alberti. The outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance was the rebuilding of St. During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and entablatures as an integrated system. The Roman orders types of columns are used: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. These can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against a wall in the form of pilasters.

One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy — by Brunelleschi. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a monumental. Renaissance vaults do not have ribs; they are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault, which is frequently rectangular.

Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired antiquity and kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past. His Annunciation , from the Baptistry at Pisa , demonstrates that classical models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary movement [57]. The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of more widely distributed ideas. In the first period of the Italian Renaissance , humanists favoured the study of humanities over natural philosophy or applied mathematics , and their reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe.

Writing around , Nicholas Cusanus anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus , but in a philosophical fashion. Science and art were intermingled in the early Renaissance, with polymath artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature. Da Vinci set up controlled experiments in water flow, medical dissection, and systematic study of movement and aerodynamics, and he devised principles of research method that led Fritjof Capra to classify him as the "father of modern science".

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A suitable environment had developed to question scientific doctrine. The discovery in of the New World by Christopher Columbus challenged the classical worldview. The works of Ptolemy in geography and Galen in medicine were found to not always match everyday observations. As the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation clashed, the Northern Renaissance showed a decisive shift in focus from Aristotelean natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological sciences botany, anatomy, and medicine.

Some view this as a " scientific revolution ", heralding the beginning of the modern age, [61] others as an acceleration of a continuous process stretching from the ancient world to the present day. De humani corporis fabrica On the Workings of the Human Body , by Andreas Vesalius , gave a new confidence to the role of dissection , observation, and the mechanistic view of anatomy. Another important development was in the process for discovery, the scientific method , [64] focusing on empirical evidence and the importance of mathematics , while discarding Aristotelian science.

Early and influential proponents of these ideas included Copernicus, Galileo, and Francis Bacon. Applied innovation extended to commerce.

Renaissance

At the end of the 15th century Luca Pacioli published the first work on bookkeeping , making him the founder of accounting. During the Renaissance, extending from to [70] , every Continent was visited and mostly mapped by Europeans, except the south polar continent now known as Antarctica. He accidentally stumbled upon the Americas, but believed he had reached the East Indies. He charted about km of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland.

More than thirty Dutch expeditions followed, mapping sections of the north, west and south coasts. In , Abel Tasman circumnavigated the continent, proving that it was not joined to the imagined south polar continent. By , Dutch cartographers had mapped most of the coastline of the continent, which they named New Holland , except the east coast which was charted in by Captain Cook. The long-imagined south polar continent was eventually sighted in Throughout the Renaissance it had been known as Terra Australis , or 'Australia' for short.

However, after that name was transferred to New Holland in the nineteenth century, the new name of 'Antarctica' was bestowed on the south polar continent. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school. The development of printing made distribution of music possible on a wide scale. Demand for music as entertainment and as an activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons , motets , and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style that culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Palestrina , Lassus , Victoria and William Byrd.

The new ideals of humanism, although more secular in some aspects, developed against a Christian backdrop, especially in the Northern Renaissance. Much, if not most, of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the Church. The Renaissance began in times of religious turmoil. The late Middle Ages was a period of political intrigue surrounding the Papacy , culminating in the Western Schism , in which three men simultaneously claimed to be true Bishop of Rome.

Although the papacy eventually emerged supreme in ecclesiastical matters by the Fifth Council of the Lateran , it was dogged by continued accusations of corruption, most famously in the person of Pope Alexander VI , who was accused variously of simony , nepotism and fathering four children most of whom were married off, presumably for the consolidation of power while a cardinal. Churchmen such as Erasmus and Luther proposed reform to the Church, often based on humanist textual criticism of the New Testament.

Humanism and the Renaissance therefore played a direct role in sparking the Reformation, as well as in many other contemporaneous religious debates and conflicts. Pope Paul III came to the papal throne — after the sack of Rome in , with uncertainties prevalent in the Catholic Church following the Protestant Reformation. Nicolaus Copernicus dedicated De revolutionibus orbium coelestium On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres to Paul III, who became the grandfather of Alessandro Farnese cardinal , who had paintings by Titian , Michelangelo , and Raphael , as well as an important collection of drawings, and who commissioned the masterpiece of Giulio Clovio , arguably the last major illuminated manuscript , the Farnese Hours.

By the 15th century, writers, artists, and architects in Italy were well aware of the transformations that were taking place and were using phrases such as modi antichi in the antique manner or alle romana et alla antica in the manner of the Romans and the ancients to describe their work.

In the s Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua ancient and to the Christian period as nova new. Humanist historians argued that contemporary scholarship restored direct links to the classical period, thus bypassing the Medieval period, which they then named for the first time the " Middle Ages ". The term first appears in Latin in as media tempestas middle times.

It was not just the growing awareness of classical antiquity that drove this development, according to Vasari, but also the growing desire to study and imitate nature. In the 15th century, the Renaissance spread rapidly from its birthplace in Florence to the rest of Italy and soon to the rest of Europe. The invention of the printing press by German printer Johannes Gutenberg allowed the rapid transmission of these new ideas.

As it spread, its ideas diversified and changed, being adapted to local culture. In the 20th century, scholars began to break the Renaissance into regional and national movements. The word "Renaissance" is borrowed from the French language, where it means "re-birth". It was first used in the eighteenth century and was later popularized by French historian Jules Michelet — in his work, Histoire de France History of France.

A factor that promoted the spread of secularism was the inability of the Church to offer assistance against the Black Death. Francis I imported Italian art and artists, including Leonardo da Vinci , and built ornate palaces at great expense. Though she became famous and infamous for her role in France's religious wars, she made a direct contribution in bringing arts, sciences and music including the origins of ballet to the French court from her native Florence.

In the second half of the 15th century, the Renaissance spirit spread to Germany and the Low Countries , where the development of the printing press ca. In the early Protestant areas of the country humanism became closely linked to the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation, and the art and writing of the German Renaissance frequently reflected this dispute. After Italy, Hungary was the first European country where the Renaissance appeared.

The relationship between Hungarian and Italian Gothic styles was a second reason — exaggerated breakthrough of walls is avoided, preferring clean and light structures. The new Italian trend combined with existing national traditions to create a particular local Renaissance art. Acceptance of Renaissance art was furthered by the continuous arrival of humanist thought in the country.

Many young Hungarians studying at Italian universities came closer to the Florentine humanist center, so a direct connection with Florence evolved. The growing number of Italian traders moving to Hungary, specially to Buda , helped this process. King Matthias Corvinus r. After the marriage in of King Matthias to Beatrice of Naples , Buda became one of the most important artistic centres of the Renaissance north of the Alps. Matthias Corvinus's library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana , was Europe's greatest collections of secular books: His library was second only in size to the Vatican Library.

However, the Vatican Library mainly contained Bibles and religious materials. In , Bartolomeo della Fonte of Florence wrote that Lorenzo de' Medici founded his own Greek-Latin library encouraged by the example of the Hungarian king. Culture in the Netherlands at the end of the 15th century was influenced by the Italian Renaissance through trade via Bruges , which made Flanders wealthy. Its nobles commissioned artists who became known across Europe. In art, Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting ranged from the strange work of Hieronymus Bosch [92] to the everyday life depictions of Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

While Renaissance ideas were moving north from Italy, there was a simultaneous southward spread of some areas of innovation, particularly in music. At the end of the 16th century Italy again became a center of musical innovation, with the development of the polychoral style of the Venetian School , which spread northward into Germany around The paintings of the Italian Renaissance differed from those of the Northern Renaissance. Italian Renaissance artists were among the first to paint secular scenes, breaking away from the purely religious art of medieval painters.

Later, the works of Pieter Bruegel influenced artists to paint scenes of daily life rather than religious or classical themes. It was also during the Northern Renaissance that Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck perfected the oil painting technique, which enabled artists to produce strong colors on a hard surface that could survive for centuries. This movement had started in Italy with the decisive influence of Dante Alighieri on the development of vernacular languages; in fact the focus on writing in Italian has neglected a major source of Florentine ideas expressed in Latin.

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An early Italian humanist who came to Poland in the midth century was Filippo Buonaccorsi. Ruled by the Jagiellon dynasty , the Kingdom of Poland from known as the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth actively participated in the broad European Renaissance. The multi-national Polish state experienced a substantial period of cultural growth thanks in part to a century without major wars — aside from conflicts in the sparsely populated eastern and southern borderlands.

The Reformation spread peacefully throughout the country giving rise to the Polish Brethren , while living conditions improved, cities grew, and exports of agricultural products enriched the population, especially the nobility szlachta who gained dominance in the new political system of Golden Liberty. The Polish Renaissance architecture has three periods of development. The greatest monument of this style in the territory of the former Duchy of Pomerania is the Ducal Castle in Szczecin. Although Italian Renaissance had a modest impact in Portuguese arts, Portugal was influential in broadening the European worldview, [98] stimulating humanist inquiry.

Renaissance arrived through the influence of wealthy Italian and Flemish merchants who invested in the profitable commerce overseas. In architecture, the huge profits of the spice trade financed a sumptuous composite style in the first decades of the 16th century, the Manueline , incorporating maritime elements. Travel literature especially flourished: Renaissance trends from Italy and Central Europe influenced Russia in many ways. Their influence was rather limited, however, due to the large distances between Russia and the main European cultural centers and the strong adherence of Russians to their Orthodox traditions and Byzantine legacy.

Prince Ivan III introduced Renaissance architecture to Russia by inviting a number of architects from Italy , who brought new construction techniques and some Renaissance style elements with them, while in general following the traditional designs of Russian architecture. In the Bolognese architect Aristotele Fioravanti came to rebuild the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin , which had been damaged in an earthquake.

Fioravanti was given the 12th-century Vladimir Cathedral as a model, and he produced a design combining traditional Russian style with a Renaissance sense of spaciousness, proportion and symmetry. In Ivan III commissioned the building of the royal residence, Terem Palace , within the Kremlin, with Aloisio da Milano as the architect of the first three floors.

He and other Italian architects also contributed to the construction of the Kremlin walls and towers. The small banquet hall of the Russian Tsars , called the Palace of Facets because of its facetted upper story, is the work of two Italians, Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario , and shows a more Italian style. He may have been the Venetian sculptor, Alevisio Lamberti da Montagne. He built 12 churches for Ivan III, including the Cathedral of the Archangel , a building remarkable for the successful blending of Russian tradition, Orthodox requirements and Renaissance style.

It is believed that the Cathedral of the Metropolitan Peter in Vysokopetrovsky Monastery , another work of Aleviz Novyi, later served as an inspiration for the so-called octagon-on-tetragon architectural form in the Moscow Baroque of the late 17th century. Between the early 16th and the late 17th centuries, an original tradition of stone tented roof architecture developed in Russia. It was quite unique and different from the contemporary Renaissance architecture elsewhere in Europe, though some research terms the style 'Russian Gothic' and compares it with the European Gothic architecture of the earlier period.

The Italians, with their advanced technology, may have influenced the invention of the stone tented roof the wooden tents were known in Russia and Europe long before. According to one hypothesis, an Italian architect called Petrok Maly may have been an author of the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoye , one of the earliest and most prominent tented roof churches. By the 17th century the influence of Renaissance painting resulted in Russian icons becoming slightly more realistic, while still following most of the old icon painting canons , as seen in the works of Bogdan Saltanov , Simon Ushakov , Gury Nikitin , Karp Zolotaryov and other Russian artists of the era.

In the mid 16th-century Russians adopted printing from Central Europe, with Ivan Fyodorov being the first known Russian printer. In the 17th century printing became widespread, and woodcuts became especially popular. That led to the development of a special form of folk art known as lubok printing, which persisted in Russia well into the 19th century.

A number of technologies from the European Renaissance period were adopted by Russia rather early and subsequently perfected to become a part of a strong domestic tradition. Mostly these were military technologies, such as cannon casting adopted by at least the 15th century.