   #copyright

Italian Renaissance

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Art


   This is a featured article. Click here for more information.
   "The School of Athens" by Raphael
   Renaissance
   Topics

   Architecture
   Dance
   Literature
   Music
   Painting
   Philosophy
   Science
   Warfare
   Regions

   England
   France
   Germany
   Italy
   Netherlands
   Northern Europe
   Poland
   Spain

   The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a
   period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned
   the period from the end of the 14th century to about 1600, marking the
   transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe. The term
   Renaissance, one should remember, is in essence a modern one that came
   into currency in the nineteenth century, in the work of historians such
   Jacob Burckhardt. Although the origins of a movement that was confined
   largely to the literate culture of intellectual endeavor and patronage
   can be traced to the earlier part of the 14th century, many aspects of
   Italian culture and society remained largely Medieval; the Renaissance
   did not come into full swing until the end of the century. The word
   renaissance (Rinascimento in Italian) literally means “rebirth”, and
   the era is best known for the renewed interest in the culture of
   classical antiquity after the period that Renaissance humanists
   labelled the Dark Ages. These changes, while significant, were
   concentrated in the elite, and for the vast majority of the population
   life was little changed from the Middle Ages.

   The Italian Renaissance began in Tuscany, centered in the cities of
   Florence and Siena. It later had a significant impact in Venice, where
   the remains of ancient Greek culture were brought together, feeding the
   humanist scholars with new texts. The Renaissance later had a
   significant effect on Rome, which was ornamented with some structures
   in the new all'antico mode, then was largely rebuilt by
   sixteenth-century popes. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the late
   15th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into turmoil: see
   Italian Wars. However, the ideas and ideals of the Renaissance spread
   into the rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance centered
   in Fontainebleau and Antwerp, and the English Renaissance.

   The Italian Renaissance is best known for its cultural achievements.
   They include works of literature by such figures as Petrarch,
   Castiglione, and Machiavelli: see Renaissance literature; works of art
   by artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci: see Renaissance
   art; and great works of architecture, such as The Duomo in Florence and
   St. Peter's Basilica in Rome: see Renaissance architecture. At the same
   time, present-day historians also see the era as one of economic
   regression and of little progress in science, which made its great
   leaps forward among Protestant culture in the seventeenth century.

Origins

   History of Italy
   By time period

   Ancient Italic peoples / Prehistoric Italy
   ( Terramare · Villanovan · Etruscan)
   Etruscan civilization
   Magna Graecia
   Ancient Rome
   ( Kingdom · Republic · Empire)
   Late antiquity and the Middle Ages
   Italian Renaissance
   Foreign domination
   Italian Wars
   Risorgimento
   Monarchy and Mussolini
   Italian Republic
   By topic

   Military history
   Cultural history
   Economic history
   Social history

Northern Italy in the High Middle Ages

   By the late Middle Ages, central and southern Italy, once the heartland
   of the Roman Empire, was far poorer than the north. Rome was a city
   largely in ruins, and the Papal States were a loosely administered
   region with little law and order. Partially because of this, the Papacy
   had relocated to Avignon, a papal enclave in France. Naples, Sicily,and
   Sardinia had for some time been under foreign domination.

   The north was far more prosperous, with the states of northern Italy
   among the wealthiest in Europe. The Crusades had built lasting trade
   links to the Levant, and the Fourth Crusade had done much to destroy
   the Byzantine Empire as a commercial rival to the Venetians and
   Genoese. The main trade routes from the east passed through the
   Byzantine Empire or the Arab lands and onwards to the ports of Genoa,
   Pisa, and Venice. Luxury goods bought in the Levant, such as spices,
   dyes, and silks were imported to Italy and then resold throughout
   Europe. Moreover, the inland city-states profited from the rich
   agricultural land of the Po River valley. From France, Germany, and the
   Low Countries, through the medium of the Champagne fairs, land and
   river trade routes brought goods such as wool, wheat, and precious
   metals into the region. The extensive trade that stretched from Egypt
   to the Baltic generated substantial surpluses that allowed significant
   investment in mining and agriculture. Thus, while northern Italy was
   not richer in resources than many other parts of Europe, the level of
   development, stimulated by trade, allowed it to prosper. Florence
   became one of the wealthiest cities of Northern Italy, due mainly to
   its woolen textile production, under the supervision of its dominant
   trade guild, the Arte della Lana. Wool was imported from Northern
   Europe (and in the sixteenth century from Spain) and dyes from the east
   were used to make high quality textiles.

   The Italian trade routes that covered the Mediterranean and beyond were
   also major conduits of culture and knowledge. In medieval times works
   that embodied the classical learning of the Greeks had trickled into
   Western Europe, through Arab translations and treatises, from Toledo
   and from Palermo. The Crusades led to some European contact with
   classical learning, preserved by Arabs, but more important in this
   regard was the Spanish Reconquista of the fifteenth century and the
   resulting translations of Arabic-language works by the Arabists of the
   School of Salamanca. From Egypt and the Levant, the scientific,
   philosophical, and mathematical thinking of the Arabs entered Northern
   Italy. Sparking the new linguistic studies of the Renaissance, from
   Constantinople, after its capture by Ottoman forces in 1453, came Greek
   texts and the scholars who taught Italians how to read them, in revived
   academies in Florence and Venice. Humanist scholars searched monastic
   libraries for ancient manuscripts and recovered Tacitus and other Latin
   authors; with the rediscovery of Vitruvius architectural principles of
   Antiquity could be observed once more, and Renaissance artists were
   encouraged, in the atmosphere of humanist optimism, to excel the
   Ancients, like Apelles, of whom they read.

Thirteenth-century prosperity

   In the thirteenth century, Europe in general was experiencing an
   economic boom. The trade routes of the Italian states linked with those
   of established Mediterranean ports and eventually the Hanseatic League
   of the Baltic and northern regions of Europe to create a network
   economy in Europe for the first time since the third century. The
   city-states of Italy expanded greatly during this period and grew in
   power to become de facto fully independent of the Holy Roman Empire.
   During this period, the modern commercial infrastructure developed,
   with joint stock companies, an international banking system, a
   systematized foreign exchange market, insurance, and government debt.
   Florence became the centre of this financial industry and the gold
   florin became the main currency of international trade.

   This produced a new mercantile governing class, who won their positions
   through financial skill, adapting to their purposes the feudal
   aristocratic model that had dominated Europe in the Middle Ages. A
   feature of the High Middle Ages in Northern Italy was the rise of the
   urban communes that had shaken off control by bishops and local counts.
   In much of the region the landed nobility was consistently poorer than
   the urban patriarchs in the High Medieval money economy, whose
   inflationary rise left land-holding aristocrats impoverished. The
   increase in trade during the early Renaissance enhanced these
   characteristics. The decline of feudalism and the rise of cities
   influenced each other; for example, the demand for luxury goods led to
   an increase in trade, which led to greater numbers of tradesmen
   becoming wealthy, who, in turn, demanded more luxury goods. This change
   also gave the merchants almost complete control of the governments of
   the Italian city-states, again enhancing trade. One of the most
   important effects of this political control was security. Those that
   grew extremely wealthy in a feudal state ran constant risk of running
   afoul of the monarchy and having their lands confiscated, as famously
   occurred to Jacques Coeur in France. The northern states also kept many
   medieval laws that severely hampered commerce, such as those against
   usury, and prohibitions on trading with non-Christians. In the
   city-states of Italy, these laws were repealed or rewritten.

Fourteenth-century collapse

   The fourteenth century saw a series of catastrophes that caused the
   European economy to go into recession. The Medieval Warm Period was
   ending as the transition to the Little Ice Age began. This change in
   climate saw agricultural output decline significantly, leading to
   repeated famines, exacerbated by the rapid population growth of the
   earlier era. The Hundred Years' War between England and France
   disrupted trade throughout northwest Europe, most notably when, in
   1345, King Edward III of England repudiated his debts, leading to the
   collapse of the two largest Florentine banks, those of the Bardi and
   Peruzzi. In the east, war was also disrupting trade routes, as the
   Ottoman Empire began to expand throughout the region. Most devastating,
   though, was the Black Death that decimated the populations of the
   densely populated cities of Northern Italy,, and returned at intervals
   thereafter. The population of Florence, for instance, fell from 90,000
   to 50,000 people. Widespread disorder followed, including a revolt of
   Florentine textile workers, the ciompi, in 1378.

   It was during this period of instability that the first Renaissance
   figures, such as Dante and Petrarch lived, and the first stirrings of
   Renaissance art were to be seen in the opening half of the fourteenth
   century, notably in the realism of Giotto. Paradoxically, some of these
   disasters would help establish the Renaissance. The Black Death wiped
   out a third of Europe's population, and the new smaller population was
   much wealthier, better fed, and, significantly, had more surplus money
   to spend on luxury goods like art and architecture. As incidences of
   the plague began to decline in the early fifteenth century, Europe's
   devastated population once again began to grow. This new demand for
   products and services, and the reduced number of people able to provide
   them, put the lower classes in a more favourable position. Furthermore,
   this demand also helped create a growing class of bankers, merchants,
   and skilled artisans. The horrors of the Black Death and the seeming
   inability of the Church to provide relief would contribute to a decline
   of church influence, another significant contributing factor to the
   Renaissance. Additionally, the collapse of the Bardi and Peruzzi banks
   would open the way for the Medici to rise to prominence in Florence.
   Robert Sabatino Lopez argues that the economic collapse was a crucial
   cause of the Renaissance. According to this view, in a more prosperous
   era, businessmen would have quickly reinvested their earnings in order
   to make more money in a climate favourable to investment. However, in
   the leaner years of the fourteenth century, the wealthy found few
   promising investment opportunities for their earnings and instead chose
   to spend more on culture and art.

   Another popular explanation for the Italian Renaissance is the thesis,
   first advanced by historian Hans Baron, that states that the primary
   impetus of the early Renaissance was the long-running series of wars
   between Florence and Milan: see Italian Wars. By the late fourteenth
   century, Milan had become a centralized monarchy under the control of
   the Visconti family. Giangaleazzo Visconti, who ruled the city from
   1378 to 1402, was renowned both for his cruelty and for his abilities,
   and set about building an empire in Northern Italy. He launched a long
   series of wars with Milan, steadily conquering neighbouring states and
   defeating the various coalitions led by Florence that sought in vain to
   halt the advance. This culminated in the 1402 siege of Florence, when
   it looked as though the city was doomed to fall, before Giangaleazzo
   suddenly died and his empire collapsed.

   Baron's thesis suggests that during these long wars, the leading
   figures of Florence rallied the people by presenting the war as one
   between the free republic and the despotic monarchy, between the ideals
   of the Greek and Roman Republics and those of the Roman Empire and
   Medieval kingdoms. For Baron, the most important figure in crafting
   this ideology was Leonardo Bruni. Baron argues that this time of crisis
   in Florence was the period when most of the major early Renaissance
   figures were coming of age, such as Ghiberti, Donatello, Masolino, and
   Brunelleschi, and that they were inculcated with this republican
   ideology. These and other figures, according to Baron, later went on to
   advocate republican ideas that were to have an enormous impact on the
   Renaissance.

Development

International relations

   Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417–1468), lord of Rimini, by Piero
   della Francesca. Malatesta was a capable condottiere, following the
   tradition of his family. He was hired by the Venetians to fight against
   the Turks (unsuccessfully) in 1465, and was patron of Leone Battista
   Alberti, whose Tempio Malatestiana at Rimini is one of the first
   entirely classical buildings of the Renaissance.
   Enlarge
   Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417–1468), lord of Rimini, by Piero
   della Francesca. Malatesta was a capable condottiere, following the
   tradition of his family. He was hired by the Venetians to fight against
   the Turks (unsuccessfully) in 1465, and was patron of Leone Battista
   Alberti, whose Tempio Malatestiana at Rimini is one of the first
   entirely classical buildings of the Renaissance.

   Northern Italy was divided into a number of warring city-states, the
   most powerful being Milan, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Ferrara, and
   Venice. High Medieval Northern Italy was further divided by the long
   running battle for supremacy between the forces of the Papacy and of
   the Holy Roman Empire: each city aligned itself with one faction or the
   other, yet was divided internally between the two warring parties,
   Guelfs and Ghibellines. Warfare between the states was common, invasion
   from outside Italy confined to intermittent sorties of Holy Roman
   Emperors. Renaissance politics developed from this background. Since
   the thirteenth century, as armies became primarily composed of
   mercenaries, prosperous city-states could field considerable forces,
   despite their low populations. In the course of the fifteenth century,
   the most powerful city-states annexed their smaller neighbours.
   Florence took Pisa in 1406, Venice captured Padua and Verona, while the
   Duchy of Milan annexed a number of nearby areas including Pavia and
   Parma.

   The first part of the Renaissance saw almost constant war on land and
   sea as the city-states vied for preeminence. On land, these wars were
   fought primarily by armies of mercenaries known as condottieri, bands
   of soldiers drawn from around Europe, but especially Germany and
   Switzerland, led largely by Italian captains. The mercenaries were not
   willing to risk their lives unduly, and war became one largely of
   sieges and manoeuvring, occasioning few pitched battles. It was also in
   the interest of mercenaries on both sides to prolong any conflict, to
   continue their employment. Mercenaries were also a constant threat to
   their employers; if not paid, they often turned on their patron. If it
   became obvious that a state was entirely dependent on mercenaries, the
   temptation was great for the mercenaries to take over the running of it
   themselves—this occurred on a number of occasions.

   At sea, Italian city-states sent many fleets out to do battle. The main
   contenders were Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, but after a long conflict the
   Genoese succeeded in reducing Pisa. Venice proved to be a more powerful
   adversary, and while at first relatively equal, the Genoese fleet was
   eliminated in the battle of Chioggia at the mouth of the Venetian
   lagoon, 1380; henceforth Venice was pre-eminent on the seas. As
   Venetian territories in the Aegean were lost one by one to the Turks,
   and the Black Sea trade was closed to them, Venetian interests turned
   towards the terraferma as the Venetian Renaissance opened.

   On land, decades of fighting saw Florence and Milan emerge as the
   dominant players, and these two powers finally set aside their
   differences and agreed to the Peace of Lodi in 1454, which saw relative
   calm brought to the region for the first time in centuries. This peace
   would hold for the next forty years, and Venice's unquestioned hegemony
   over the sea also led to unprecedented peace for much of the rest of
   the fifteenth century.

   In the beginning of the fifteenth century, adventurer and traders such
   as Niccolò Da Conti (1395–1469) traveled as far as Southeast Asia and
   back, bringing fresh knowledge on the state of the world, presaging
   further European voyages of exploration in the years to come.

Florence under the Medici

   In the late fourteenth century, Florence's leading family had been the
   Albizzi. Their main challengers were the Medicis, first under Giovanni
   de' Medici, then under his son Cosimo. The Medici controlled the Medici
   bank - then Europe's largest bank, and a array of other enterprises in
   Florence and elsewhere. In 1433, the Albizzi managed to have Cosimo
   exiled. The next year, however, saw a pro-Medici Signoria elected and
   Cosimo returned. The Medici became the town's leading family, a
   position they would hold for the next three centuries. Florence
   remained a republic until 1537, traditionally marking the end of the
   High Renaissance in Florence, but the instruments of republican
   government were firmly under the control of the Medici and their
   allies, save during the intervals after 1494 and 1527. Cosimo and
   Lorenzo only rarely held official posts, but were the unquestioned
   leaders.

   Cosimo de' Medici was highly popular among the citizenry, mainly for
   bringing an era of stability and prosperity to the town. One of his
   most important accomplishments was negotiating the Peace of Lodi with
   Francesco Sforza ending the decades of war with Milan and bringing
   stability to much of Northern Italy. Cosimo was also an important
   patron of the arts, directly and indirectly, by the example he set.

   Cosimo was succeeded by his sickly son Piero de' Medici, who died after
   five years in charge of the city. In 1469 the reins of power passed to
   Cosimo's twenty-one-year-old grandson Lorenzo, who would become known
   as "Lorenzo the Magnificent." Lorenzo was the first of the family to be
   educated from an early age in the humanist tradition and is best known
   as one of the Renaissance's most important patrons of the arts. Under
   Lorenzo, the Medici rule was formalized with the creation of a new
   Council of Seventy, which Lorenzo headed. The republican institutions
   continued, but they lost all power. Lorenzo was less successful than
   his illustrious forebears in business, and the Medici commercial empire
   was slowly eroded. Lorenzo continued the alliance with Milan, but
   relations with the papacy soured, and in 1478, Papal agents allied with
   the Pazzi family in an attempt to assassinate Lorenzo. Although the
   plot failed, Lorenzo's young brother, Giuliano, was killed, and the
   failed assassination led to a war with the Papacy and was used as
   justification to further centralize power in Lorenzo's hands.

Spread of the Renaissance

   Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance man.
   Enlarge
   Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance man.

   Renaissance ideals first spread from Florence to the neighbouring
   states of Tuscany such as Siena and Lucca. The Tuscan culture soon
   became the model for all the states of Northern Italy, and the Tuscan
   variety of Italian came to predominate throughout the region,
   especially in literature. In 1447 Francesco Sforza came to power in
   Milan and rapidly transformed that still medieval city into a major
   centre of art and learning that drew Leone Battista Alberti. Venice,
   one of the wealthiest cities due to its control of the Mediterranean
   Sea, also became a centre for Renaissance culture, especially
   architecture. Smaller courts brought Renaissance patronage to lesser
   cities, which developed their characteristic arts: Ferrara, Mantua
   under the Gonzaga, Urbino under Federico da Montefeltro. In Naples, the
   Renaissance was ushered in under the patronage of Alfonso I who entered
   conquered Naples in 1443 and encouraged artists like Francesco Laurana
   and Antonello da Messina and writers like the poet Jacopo Sannazzaro
   and the humanist scholar Angelo Poliziano.

   In 1378 the Papacy returned to Rome, but that once imperial city
   remained poor and largely in ruins through the first years of the
   Renaissance. The great transformation began under Pope Nicholas V, who
   became pontiff in 1447. He launched a dramatic rebuilding effort that
   would eventually see much of the city renewed. The humanist scholar
   Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini became pope as Pius II in 1458. As the
   papacy fell under the control of the wealthy families from the north,
   such as the Medici and the Borgias the spirit of Renaissance art and
   philosophy came to dominate the Vatican. Pope Sixtus IV continued
   Nicholas' work, most famously ordering the construction of the Sistine
   Chapel. The popes also became increasingly secular rulers as the Papal
   States were forged into a centralized power by a series of "warrior
   popes".

   The nature of the Renaissance also changed in the late fifteenth
   century. The Renaissance ideal was fully adopted by the ruling classes
   and the aristocracy. In the early Renaissance artists were seen as
   craftsmen with little prestige or recognition. By the later Renaissance
   the top figures wielded great influence and could charge great fees. A
   flourishing trade in Renaissance art developed. While in the early
   Renaissance many of the leading artists were of lower- or middle-class
   origins, increasingly they became aristocrats.

Wider population

   As a cultural movement, the Italian Renaissance affected only a small
   part of the population. Northern Italy was the most urbanized region of
   Europe, but three quarters of the people were still rural peasants. For
   this section of the population, life was essentially unchanged from the
   Middle Ages. Classic feudalism had never been prominent in Northern
   Italy, with the peasants mostly working private farms or as
   sharecroppers. Some scholars see a trend towards refeudalization in the
   later Renaissance as the urban elites turned themselves into landed
   aristocrats.

   In the cities the situation was quite different. They were dominated by
   a commercial elite, which was just as exclusive as the aristocracy of
   any Medieval kingdom. It was this group that was the main patron of and
   audience for Renaissance culture. Below them there was a large class of
   artisans and guild members who lived comfortable lives and had
   significant power in the republican governments. This was in sharp
   contrast to the rest of Europe where artisans were firmly in the lower
   class. Literate and educated, this group did participate in the
   Renaissance culture. The largest section of the urban population was
   the urban poor of semi-skilled workers and the unemployed. Like the
   peasants the Renaissance had little effect on them. Historians debate
   how easy it was to move between these groups during the Italian
   Renaissance. Examples of individuals who rose from humble beginnings
   can be instanced, but Burke notes two major studies in this area that
   have found that the data do not clearly demonstrate an increase in
   social mobility. Most historians feel that early in the Renaissance
   social mobility was quite high, but that it faded over the course of
   the fifteenth century. Inequality in society was very high. An
   upper-class figure would control hundreds of times more income than a
   servant or labourer. Some historians feel that this unequal
   distribution of wealth was important to the Renaissance, as art
   patronage relies on the very wealthy.

   The Renaissance was not a period of great social or economic change,
   only of cultural and ideological development. It only touched a small
   fraction of the population, and in modern times this has led many
   historians, such as any that follow historical materialism, to reduce
   the importance of the Renaissance in human history. These historians
   tend to think in terms of " Early Modern Europe" instead.

End of the Italian Renaissance

   The end of the Renaissance is as imprecisely marked as its starting
   point. For many, the rise to power in Florence of the austere monk
   Girolamo Savonarola in 1497 marks the end of the city's flourishing;
   for others, the triumphant return of the Medici marks the beginning of
   the late phase in the arts called Mannerism. Savonarola rode to power
   on a widespread backlash over the secularism and indulgence of the
   Renaissance – his brief rule saw many works of art destroyed in the "
   Bonfire of the Vanities" in the centre of Florence. With the Medici
   returned to power, now as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the counter movement
   in the church continued. In 1542 the Sacred Congregation of the
   Inquisition was formed and a few years later the Index Librorum
   Prohibitorum banned a wide array of Renaissance works of literature.

   Just as important was the end of stability with a series of foreign
   invasions of Italy known as the Italian Wars that would continue for
   several decades. These began with the 1494 invasion by France that
   wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the
   independence of many of the city-states. Most damaging was the May 6,
   1527, Spanish and German troops' sacking Rome that for two decades all
   but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance
   art and architecture.

   While the Italian Renaissance was fading, the Northern Renaissance
   adopted many of its ideals and transformed its styles.

   A number of Italy's greatest artists chose to emigrate. The most
   notable example was Leonardo da Vinci who left for France in 1516, but
   teams of lesser artists invited to transform the Château de
   Fontainebleau created the school of Fontainebleau that infused the
   style of the Italian Renaissance in France. From Fontainebleau, the new
   styles, transformed by Mannerism, brought the Renaissance to Antwerp
   and thence throughout Northern Europe.

   This spread north was also representative of a larger trend. No longer
   was the Mediterranean Europe's most important trade route. In 1498
   Vasco da Gama reached India, and from that date the primary route of
   goods from the Orient was through the Atlantic ports of Lisbon,
   Seville, Nantes, Bristol, and London. These areas quickly surpassed
   Italy in wealth and power.

Culture

Literature and poetry

   The thirteenth-century Italian literary revolution helped set the stage
   for the Renaissance . Prior to the Renaissance, the Italian language
   was not the literary language in Italy. It was only in the 13th century
   that Italian authors began writing in their native language rather than
   Latin, French, or Provençal. The 1250s saw a major change in Italian
   poetry as the Dolce Stil Novo (Sweet New Style, which emphasized
   Platonic rather than courtly love) came into its own, pioneered by
   poets like Guittone d'Arezzo and Guido Guinizelli. Especially in
   poetry, major changes in Italian literature had been taking place
   decades before the Renaissance truly began.
   Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), the author of The Prince and
   prototypical Renaissance man. Detail from a portrait by Santi di Tito.
   Enlarge
   Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), the author of The Prince and
   prototypical Renaissance man. Detail from a portrait by Santi di Tito.

   With the printing of books initiated in Venice by Aldus Manutius, an
   increasing number of works began to be published in the Italian
   vernacular, in addition to the flood of Latin and Greek texts that
   constituted the mainstream of the Italian Renaissance. The source for
   these works expanded beyond works of theology and towards the
   pre-Christian eras of Imperial Rome and Ancient Greece. This is not to
   say that no religious works were published in this period: Dante
   Alighieri's The Divine Comedy reflects a distinctly medieval worldview.
   Christianity remained a major influence for artists and authors, with
   the classics coming into their own as a second primary influence.

   In the early Italian Renaissance, much of the focus was on translating
   and studying classic works from Latin and Greek. Renaissance authors
   were not content to rest on the laurels of ancient authors, however.
   Many authors attempted to integrate the methods and styles of the
   ancient greats into their own works. Among the most emulated Romans are
   Cicero, Horace, Sallust, and Virgil. Among the Greeks, Aristotle,
   Homer, and Plato were now being read in the original for the first time
   since the fourth century, though Greek compositions were few.

   The literature and poetry of the Renaissance was also largely
   influenced by the developing science and philosophy. The humanist
   Francesco Petrarch, a key figure in the renewed sense of scholarship,
   was also an accomplished poet, publishing several important works of
   poetry. He wrote poetry in Latin, notably the Punic War epic Africa,
   but is today remembered for his works in the Italian vernacular,
   especially the Canzoniere, a collection of love sonnets dedicated to
   his unrequited love Laura. He was the foremost writer of sonnets in
   Italian, and translations of his work into English by Thomas Wyatt
   established the sonnet form in that country, where it was employed by
   William Shakespeare and countless other poets.

   Petrarch's disciple, Giovanni Boccaccio, became a major author in his
   own right. His major work was the Decameron, a collection of 100
   stories told by ten storytellers who have fled to the outskirts of
   Florence to escape the black plague over ten nights. The Decameron in
   particular and Boccaccio's work in general were a major source of
   inspiration and plots for many English authors in the Renaissance,
   including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare.

   Aside from Christianity, classical antiquity, and scholarship, a fourth
   influence on Renaissance literature was politics. The political
   philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli's most famous works are Discourses on
   Livy, Florentine Histories and finally The Prince, which has become so
   well-known in Western society that the term "Machiavellian" has come to
   refer to the realpolitik advocated by the book. However, what is
   ordinarily called "Machiavellianism" is a simplified textbook view of
   this single work rather than an accurate term for his philosophy.
   Further, it is not at all clear that Machiavelli himself was the
   apologist for immorality as whom he is often portrayed: the basic
   problem is the apparent contradiction between the monarchism of the
   Prince and the republicanism of the Discourses. Regardless, along with
   many other Renaissance works, The Prince remains a relevant and
   influential work of literature today.

Science and philosophy

   Petrarch, from the Cycle of Famous Men and Women. ca. 1450. Detached
   fresco. 247 x 153 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Artist:
   Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla (ca. 1423–1457)
   Enlarge
   Petrarch, from the Cycle of Famous Men and Women. ca. 1450. Detached
   fresco. 247 x 153 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Artist:
   Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla (ca. 1423–1457)

   One role of Petrarch is as the founder of a new method of scholarship,
   Renaissance Humanism. Humanism was an optimistic philosophy that saw
   man as a rational and sentient being, with the ability to decide and
   think for himself. This was an implicit rejection of the Roman Catholic
   Church's vision of souls as the only absolute reality, which was then
   seen as mystical and imaginary. Humanism saw man as inherently good by
   nature which is in contrast to the Christian view of man as the
   original sinner who must be redeemed. It provoked fresh insight into
   the nature of reality, questioning beyond God and spirituality, and
   provided for knowledge about history beyond Christian history.

   Petrarch encouraged the study of the Latin classics and carried his
   copy of Homer about, at a loss to find someone to teach him to read
   Greek. An essential step in the humanist education being propounded by
   scholars like Pico della Mirandola was the hunting down of lost or
   forgotten manuscripts that were known only by reputation. These
   endeavors were greatly aided by the wealth of Italian patricians,
   merchant-princes and despots, who would spend substantial sums building
   libraries. Discovering the past had become fashionable and it was a
   passionate affair pervading the upper reaches of society. I go, said
   Cyriac of Ancona, I go to awake the dead.

   As the Greek works were acquired, manuscripts found, libraries and
   museums formed, the age of the printing press was dawning. The works of
   Antiquity were translated from Greek and Latin into the contemporary
   modern languages throughout Europe, finding a receptive middle-class
   audience, which might be, like Shakespeare, "with little Latin and less
   Greek".

   While concern for philosophy, art and literature all increased greatly
   in the Renaissance the period is usually seen as one of scientific
   backwardness. The reverence for classical sources further enshrined the
   Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Humanism stressed
   that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation that was
   not governed by laws or mathematics. At the same time philosophy lost
   much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as
   secondary to intuition and emotion.

   It would not be until the Renaissance moved to Northern Europe that
   science would be revived, with such figures as Copernicus, Francis
   Bacon, and Descartes.

Sculpture and painting

   Detail of The Last Judgement by Michelangelo
   Enlarge
   Detail of The Last Judgement by Michelangelo

   In painting, the false dawn of Giotto's realism, his fully
   three-dimensional figures occupying a rational space, and his humanist
   interest in expressing the individual personaliity rather than the
   iconic images, was followed by a retreat into conservative late Gothic
   conventions. The Italian Renaissance in painting began anew, in
   Florence and Tuscany, with the frescos of Masaccio then the panel
   paintings and frescos of Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello began
   to enhance the realism of their work by using new techniques in
   perspective, thus representing three dimensions in two-dimensional art
   more authentically. Piero della Francesca wrote treatises on scientific
   perspective. The creation of credible space allowed artists to also
   focus on the accurate representation of the human body and on
   naturalistic landscapes. Masaccio's figures have a plasticity unknown
   up to that point in time. Compared to the flatness of gothic painting,
   his pictures were revolutionary. At the turn of the 16th century,
   especially in Northern Italy, artists also began to use new techniques
   in the manipulation of light and darkness, such as the tone contrast
   evident in many of Titian's portraits and the development of sfumato
   and chiaroscuro by Leonardo da Vinci and Giorgione. The period also saw
   the first secular (non- religious themes). Debate has ensued as to the
   secularism of the Renaissance emphasized by early 20th-century writers
   like Jacob Burkhardt due to the presence of these - actually few -
   mythological paintings. Botticelli was one of the main painters whose
   secular work comes down to us today, though he was deeply religious (a
   follower of Savonarola) and painted plenty of traditional religious
   paintings as well.

   In sculpture, Donatello's (1386–1466) study of classical sculpture lead
   to his development of classicizing positions (such as the contrapposto
   pose) and subject matter (like the unsupported nude – his second
   sculpture of David was the first free-standing bronze nude created in
   Europe since the Roman Empire.) The progress made by Donatello was
   influential on all who followed; perhaps the greatest of whom is
   Michelangelo, whose David of 1500 is also a male nude study.
   Michelangelo's David is more naturalistic than Donatello's and has
   greater emotional intensity. Both sculptures are standing in
   contrapposto, their weight shifted to one leg.

   The period known as the High Renaissance represents the culmination of
   the goals of the earlier period, namely the accurate representation of
   figures in space rendered with credible motion and in an appropriately
   decorous style. The most famous painters from this time period are
   Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo Buonarroti. Their images
   are among the most widely known works of art in the world. Leonardo's
   Last Supper, Raphael's School of Athens and Michelangelo's Sistine
   Chapel Ceiling are the textbook examples of this period.

   High Renaissance painting evolved into Mannerism, especially in
   Florence. Mannerist artists, who consciously rebelled against the
   principles of High Renaissance, tend to represent elongated figures in
   illogical spaces. Modern scholarship has recognized the capacity of
   Mannerist art to convey strong (often religious) emotion where the High
   Renaissance failed to do so. Some of the main artists of this period
   are Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino and Raphael's pupil Giulio
   Romano.

Architecture

   St. Peter's Basilica. The dome, completed in 1590, was designed by
   Michelangelo Buonarroti, architect, painter and poet.
   Enlarge
   St. Peter's Basilica. The dome, completed in 1590, was designed by
   Michelangelo Buonarroti, architect, painter and poet.

   In Italy, the Renaissance style, introduced with a revolutionary but
   incomplete monument in Rimini by Leone Battista Alberti, was developed,
   however, in Florence. Some of the earliest buildings showing
   Renaissance characteristics are Filippo Brunelleschi's church of San
   Lorenzo and the Pazzi Chapel. The interior of Santo Spirito expresses a
   new sense of light, clarity and spaciousness, which is typical of the
   early Italian Renaissance. Its architecture reflects the philosophy of
   Humanism, the enlightenment and clarity of mind as opposed to the
   darkness and spirituality of the Middle Ages. The revival of classical
   antiquity can best be illustrated by the Palazzo Ruccelai. Here the
   pilasters follow the superposition of classical orders, with Doric
   capitals on the ground floor, Ionic capitals on the piano nobile and
   Corinthian capitals on the uppermost floor.

   In Milan, Leone Battista Alberti ushered in the new antique style,
   though his culminating work, Sant'Andrea, was not begun until 1472,
   after the arechitect's death.
   Bramante's Tempietto" in San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, 1502
   Enlarge
   Bramante's Tempietto" in San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, 1502

   The High Renaissance, as we call the style today, was introduced to
   Rome with Donato Bramante's |San Pietro in Montorio|Tempietto at San
   Pietro in Montorio]] (1502, illustration, left) and his original
   centrally-planned St. Peter's Basilica (1506), which was the most
   notable architectural commission of the era, influenced by almost all
   notable Renaissance artists, including Michelangelo and Giacomo della
   Porta. The beginning of the late Renaissance in 1550 was marked by the
   development of a new column order by Andrea Palladio. Colossal columns
   that were two or more stories tall decorated the facades.

Music

   In Italy in the 14th century there was an explosion of musical activity
   that corresponded in scope and level of innovation to the activity in
   the other arts. Although musicologists typically group the music of the
   trecento (music of the 1300's) with the late medieval period, it
   included features which align with the early Renaissance in important
   ways: an increasing emphasis on secular sources, styles and forms; a
   spreading of culture away from ecclesiastical institutions to the
   nobility, and even to the common people; and a quick development of
   entirely new techniques. The principal forms were the trecento
   madrigal, the caccia, and the ballata. Overall, the musical style of
   the period is sometimes labelled as the "Italian ars nova." See Music
   of the trecento for more detail on this period.

   From the early 15th century to the middle of the 16th century, the
   centre of innovation in sacred music was in the Low Countries, and a
   flood of talented composers came to Italy from this region. Many of
   them sang in either the papal choir in Rome or the choirs at the
   numerous chapels of the aristocracy, in Rome, Florence, Milan, Ferrara
   and elsewhere; and they brought their polyphonic style with them,
   influencing many native Italian composers during their stay.

   The predominant forms of church music during the period were the mass
   and the motet. By far the most famous composer of church music in 16th
   century Italy was Palestrina, the most prominent member of the Roman
   School, whose style of smooth, emotionally cool polyphony was to become
   the defining sound of the late 16th century, at least for generations
   of 19th- and 20th century musicologists. Other Italian composers of the
   late 16th century focused on composing the main secular form of the
   era, the madrigal: and for almost a hundred years these secular songs
   for multiple singers were distributed all over Europe. Composers of
   madrigals included Jacques Arcadelt, at the beginning of the age,
   Cipriano de Rore, in the middle of the century, and Luca Marenzio,
   Philippe de Monte, Carlo Gesualdo, and Claudio Monteverdi at the end of
   the era.

   Italy was also a centre of innovation in instrumental music. By the
   early 16th century keyboard improvisation came to be greatly valued,
   and numerous composers of virtuoso keyboard music appeared. Many
   familiar instruments were invented and perfected in late Renaissance
   Italy, such as the violin, the earliest forms of which came into use in
   the 1550s.

   By the late 16th century Italy was the musical centre of Europe. Almost
   all of the innovations which were to define the transition to the
   Baroque period originated in northern Italy in the last few decades of
   the century. In Venice, the polychoral productions of the Venetian
   School, and associated instrumental music, moved north into Germany; in
   Florence, the Florentine Camerata developed monody, the important
   precursor to opera, which itself first appeared around 1600; and the
   avant-garde, manneristic style of the Ferrara school, which migrated to
   Naples and elsewhere through the music of Carlo Gesualdo, was to be the
   final statement of the polyphonic vocal music of the Renaissance.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
