AP European History
AP European History
The Renaissance occurred mainly in Italy between 1300 and 1550. New learning and changes in styles of art were its two most pronounced characteristics. The Renaissance contrasts with the Middle Ages in that it was more secular. Also, the arts, literature, and scholarship emphasized the individual, not the group, and city life, not the countryside, predominated. Italian city-states, such as Venice. Milan, Padua, Pisa, Rome, and especially Florence, were home to most Renaissance developments, which were limited to the elite of nobles, bankers, worldly upper clergy, and merchants.
Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) made this period popular, contrasting it starkly with the Middle Ages. Subsequent historians have found more continuity with medieval society and its traditions. Whether the term renaissance applies to a cultural event or merely a time period is still debated.
Renaissance French for “rebirth,” the word describes the reawakening or rebirth of interest in the heritage of the classical past.
Classical past Greece and Rome in the years between 500 B.C.E. and 476 C.E. Humanist scholars were most interested in Rome from 200 B.C.E., to 180 C.E.
Humanism The study of writings and ideals of the classical past. Rhetoric was the initial area of study, which soon widened to include poetry, history, politics. and philosophy. Civic humanism was the use of humanism in the political life of Italian city-states. Christian humanism focused on early Church writings instead of secular authors.
Individualism Behavior or theory that emphasizes each person as contrasted with corporate or community behavior. Renaissance individualism sought great accomplishments and looked for heroes of history.
Virtù The essence of being a man by the display of courage and cleverness. One could display this ability in speech, art, politics, warfare, or elsewhere by seizing the opportunities available. For many, the pursuit of virtù was amoral.
Florentine or Platonic Academy Located in a country villa. and supported by the Medici, the leading Florentine political family, this was a group of scholars who initially studied the works of Plato in Greek. The leading members were Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494). They spread such Platonic concepts as the perfection of the circle (see chapter 3) and the plenitude of the universe.
Economics was the primary cause of the Renaissance. Northern Italy was very wealthy from serving as intermediary between the silk and spice-producing East and the consuming West. Also. Italian merchants had built up great wealth in the cloth industry and had often turned to international banking. This wealth gave people leisure to pursue new ideas, and money to support the artists and scholars who produced the new works.
Political interaction also contributed to the sweeping changes. Struggles between the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire. and merchants during the Middle Ages had resulted in the independence of many small city-states in northern Italy. This fragmentation meant no single authority had the power to stop or redirect developments. The governments of the city-states, often in the hands of one man, competed by supporting artists and scholars. In many cities, governments became stronger and were dominated by despots (Milan had the Visconti and later the Sforza: Florence, the Medici) or oligarchies (Venice was ruled by the Council of Ten). Smaller city-states disappeared as continual wars led to larger territories dominated by one large city.
Historical influences played a vital role in encouraging the Renaissance as well. Italian cities were often built on ancient Roman ruins, and citizens knew of their heritage. During the many wars between Italian city-states, contestants sought justification for their actions even in classical history. In Florence, based on new readings of Roman authors, a civic republicanism took hold (circa 1380-1430) with the aim of restoring the Roman republic to its old glory, but in a new setting. The recourse to Roman law during disputes between popes and emperors led to study of other Roman writers. Finally, men fleeing the falling Byzantine Empire brought the study of Greek to Italy. The fusion of Greco-Roman cultures occurred at this time.
After 1447, a series of popes supported the arts in Rome. Often criticized for their own lax adherence to the church’s teachings on sexuality, these popes took more interest in political, military, and artistic activities than in church reform. Sixtus IV (1471-1484) started the painting of the Sistine Chapel, which his nephew. Julius II (1503-1513), whom Sixtus had promoted within the church, finished by employing Michelangelo to paint the ceiling. Julius successfully asserted his control over the Papal States in central Italy. These popes did not cause the Reformation, but they failed to do anything that might have averted it. One wonders, given divergent trends north of the Alps, what could have been done.
Humanists, as orators and poets, were inspired by and imitated works of the classical past. Their literature was more secular and covered more subjects than that of the Middle Ages, though we must except Dante (1265-1321), whose great Commedia (1308-1321) defies cubby-holing. Dante Alighieri was a Florentine writer who spent much of his life in exile after being on the losing side in political struggles in Florence. His Divine Comedy, describing a journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, shows that Reason can take people only so far, then God’s grace and revelation take over. The culmination of the Middle Ages. Dante was not a Renaissance man, though Italians later claimed him as a precursor to their Renaissance.
Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), who wrote in both Latin and Italian, encouraged the study of ancient Rome, collected and preserved the work of ancient writers, and produced much work in the classical literary style. He is best known for his sonnets, including many expressing his love for a married woman named Laura, and is considered the father of humanism.
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) wrote The Decameron, a collection of short stories in Italian, which were meant to amuse, not edify, the reader. The storytellers, having fled the plague in Florence, amuse each other with often bawdy tales written in the Tuscan dialect, which was becoming the basis of the modern Italian language.
Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) wrote The Book of the Courtier, which specified the qualities necessary for a gentleman who would need to lead an active, not contemplative, life, as in the Middle Ages. Abilities in conversation, sports, arms, dance, music, Latin. and Greek, he advised, should be combined with an agreeable personal demeanor. The notion that marks Castiglione’s attitude to manners and life was sprezzatura – a lightness of touch, the ability to do something very well, with seeming ease, though much effort may have gone into the final product. This book, translated into many languages, greatly influenced Western ideas about correct behavior.
Artists broke with the medieval past, in both technique and content. Medieval painting, which usually depicted religious topics and was used for religious purposes, was idealized. Its main purpose was to portray the essence or idea of the topic. Renaissance art still used religious topics but often dealt with secular themes and individuals. Oil paints. chiaroscuro. and linear perspectives an combined to achieve greater realism.
Medieval sculpture was often affixed to churches and its figures designed to teach illiterate believers Bible and saints’ stories. By copying classical models and using freestanding pieces, Renaissance sculptors produced works celebrating the individual and the “pagan” spirit of the day. Though some Renaissance statues were meant for exhibition in churches, many were not, making their way instead to private collections or, as with Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus, into public squares.
Medieval architecture included the use of pointed arches, flying buttresses, and fan vaulting to obtain great heights, while permitting light to flood the interior of the church or cathedral. The result gave a “feeling” for God rather than fostering an approach to him through Reason. Busy details filling every niche and the absence of symmetry also typify medieval work. Renaissance architects openly copied classical, especially Roman, forms, such as the rounded arch and squared angles.
Giotto (1266-1336) painted religious scenes using light and shadow, a technique called chiaroscuro, to create an illusion of depth and greater realism. He is considered the father of Renaissance painting.
Donatello (1386-1466), the father of Renaissance sculpture, produced the first statue cast in bronze since classical times. His David (1440) was also the first nude since antiquity (over a thousand years). No medieval statue dared to be so brazenly naked.
Masaccio (1401-1428) emphasized naturalism in Tribute Money by showing realistic human figures in lifelike poses and by using perspective (the sense that objects that are farther away appear smaller).
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) produced The Last Supper and Mona Lisa, as well as many mechanical designs, though few were constructed.
Raphael (1483-1520). a master of Renaissance grace and style, theory and technique, represented these skills in The School of Athens.
Michelangelo (1475-1564), a universal man, produced masterpieces in sculpture David and painting (the Sistine Chapel ceiling). His work was a bridge to mannerism.
Michelangelo and da Vinci, Alberti earlier and Cellini later, all exemplified the uomo universale – the ideal man who could do everything well, in an worthy fields. A few noble ladies had the resources and talents to be called Renaissance women: the writer Christine de Pizano aristocratic patronesses of the arts and letters Isabella Gonzaga and Beatrice d’Este, the poet Vittoria Colonna, the painter Artemisia Gentilleschi, and others kept the Renaissance from being just an old-boys club.
Scholars sought to know what is good and to practice it, as did those of the Middle Ages. However, Renaissance people sought more practical results and did not judge things solely by religious standards. Manuscript collections enabled scholars to study the primary sources and to reject an traditions that had been built up since classical times. Also, scholars participated in the lives of their cities as active politicians.
Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444). civic humanist, served as chancellor of Florence, where he used his rhetorical skills to rouse the citizens against external enemies. He also wrote a history of his city and was the first to use the term humanism.
Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) authored Elegances of the Latin Language, the standard text in Latin philology, and also exposed as a forgery the Donation of Constantine, which had purported to give the papacy control of vast lands in Italy.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote The Prince, which analyzed politics from the standpoint of reason, rather than faith or tradition. His work. amoral in tone, describes how a political leader can obtain and hold power by acting first in self-interest, but ultimately with the idea of the well-being of his land in mind. For one’s country, one had to be strong at an costs: for both ends, one found reasons of state to do the necessary.