2.1 Renaissance
14th century to the 17th century
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in art, architecture, philosophy, literature, music, science, technology, politics, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.
Many argue that the ideas characterising the Renaissance had their origin in Florence at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, in particular with the writings of
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
Petrarch (1304–1374),
Paintings of Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337).
In stark contrast to the High Middle Ages, when Latin scholars focused almost entirely on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural science, philosophy and mathematics,Renaissance scholars were most interested in recovering and studying Latin and Greek literary, historical, and oratorical texts.
Broadly speaking, this began in the 14th century with a Latin phase, when Renaissance scholars such as Petrarch, ColuccioSalutati (1331–1406), Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364–1437), and PoggioBracciolini (1380–1459) scoured the libraries of Europe in search of works by such Latin authors as Cicero, Lucretius, Livy, and Seneca. By the early 15th century, the bulk of the surviving such Latin literature had been recovered; the Greek phase of Renaissance humanism was under way, as Western European scholars turned to recovering ancient Greek literary, historical, oratorical and theological texts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uq9fUmFHL0
1. Humanism
Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanism in Northern Europe, and List of Renaissance humanists
In some ways, Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy but a method of learning. In contrast to the mediaeval scholastic mode, which focused on resolving contradictions between authors, Renaissance humanists would study ancient texts in the original and appraise them through a combination of reasoning and empirical evidence. Humanist education was based on the programme of StudiaHumanitatis, the study of five humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy, and rhetoric.
2 Black Death
One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death, which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th century Italy. Italy was particularly badly hit by the plague, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife.
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art.
European societies underwent huge changes in the 15th century, and so did art. In the 14th century, Italian artists began to revive the heritage of Greek and Roman Antiquity. This is why this period is called the “Renaissance”, a word which comes from the Italian Rinascita, which was first used in the 14th century.
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art.
A general goal of the Renaissance, to connect classical form with Christian faith, helped people see Christianity afresh. Classical literature was used to strengthen the faith, and critique ecclesiastical abuses. An educational task of the Renaissance was to promote reading and study among the laity.
Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world. One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of a highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalised as an artistic technique.
Applied innovation extended to commerce. At the end of the 15th century, Luca Pacioli published the first work on bookkeeping, making him the founder of accounting.
The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of the printing press in about 1440 democratised 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 1450, Nicholas Cusanus anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus, but in a philosophical fashion.
Navigation and geography
During the Renaissance, extending from 1450 to 1650, every continent was visited and mostly mapped by Europeans, except the south polar continent now known as Antarctica. This development is depicted in the large world map Nova TotiusTerrarumOrbis Tabula made by the Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu in 1648 to commemorate the Peace of Westphalia.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain seeking a direct route to India of the Delhi Sultanate. He accidentally stumbled upon the Americas, but believed he had reached the East Indies.
3. Renaissance artists
The four main Renaissance artists were:
Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci.
Donatello lived during the last decades of the Middle Ages and the first decades of the Renaissance. He was primarily known as a sculptor. Raphael was both a painter and architect.
4 Art
Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world. One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of a highly realistic linear perspective.
Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalised as an artistic technique.
Leonardo tried to draw the perfectly proportioned man. (Museum Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice)
The development of perspective was part of a wider trend towards realism in the arts. Painters developed other techniques, studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, human anatomy. 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.Other notable artists include Sandro Botticelli, working for the Medici in Florence, Donatello, another Florentine, and Titian in Venice, among others.
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. Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life
https://www.biographyonline.net/people/famous/renaissance.html
Some major developments of the Renaissance include astronomy, humanist philosophy, the printing press, vernacular language in writing, painting and sculpture technique, world exploration and, in the late Renaissance, Shakespeare's works.
https://www.historycrunch.com/causes-of-the-renaissance.html#/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rfEd1Bxo4k
https://www.historyhit.com/most-important-renaissance-figures/
