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Jacob Burckhardt, 19th Century Historian – THE EXPLOSION OF THE RENASSIANCE Burckhardt established the thesis that Renaissance art represented a break with the past, wherein representation became scientific, realistic, individualistic and humane; the visual analogue to the birth of the modern sensibility, one which left behind the superstitious mindset of the Dark Ages. With qualifications, that thesis remains more or less the rule in the present, and is one reason that museums, such as the Uffizi in Florence, generally display works of art chronologically: so multitudes of students and aficionados can follow, with their own eyes, the elevation of art from its Gothic, one dimensional, iconic forms to its Renaissance, three dimensional, individualistic representations. Although qualified historians no longer speak of “the Dark Ages,” they still refer to the period before the fourteenth century as the Middle Ages or the Mediaeval Era - with most of the pejorative connotations of the Dark Ages still implied. They echo the writers and historians of the early Renaissance, of Dante and Petrarch and Alberti, who argued that the Renaissance generation broke with the superstitions of the past, recovered the best of the Classical world, and ushered in a new dawn of modernity. At the time Burkhardt wrote The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy there was little in the way of accepted knowledge about what we today regard as "the Renaissance." His work was accepted as demonstrating that the shift from corporate medieval society to the modern spirit occurred in "Renaissance" Italy in the 14th and 15th century and, to a great extent, moulded the modern concept of the European Renaissance as a necessary and positive break with the outlook and society that preceded it. Burckhardt's work remains one of the most important on the subject of the Renaissance. The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga called it, "that transcendent masterpiece." The first three parts of the book are held to be especially good - readable and interesting, profound and philosophical. A much quoted passage from The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy depicts a dramatic alteration in the outlook of many persons: "…both sides of human consciousness - the side turned to the world and that turned inward - lay, as it were, beneath a common veil, dreaming or half awake. The veil was woven of faith, childlike prejudices, and illusion; seen through it, world and history appeared in strange hues; man recognized himself only as a member of a race, a nation, a party, a corporation, a family, or in some other general category. It was in Italy that this veil first melted into thin air, and awakened an objective perception and treatment of the state and all things of this world in general; but by its side, and with full power, there also arose the subjective; man becomes a self-aware individual and recognizes himself as such." Peter Burke: The Myth of the Renaissance Many historians attacked Burckhardt's interpretation and the legacy built up around it. These historians argued that Burckhardt overemphasized how modern the Renaissance was. They stressed how much the Renaissance, even in Italy, was still part of the medieval world. Other historians have responded that criticism of Burckhardt go too far In the following selection Peter Burke criticizes Burckhardt's idea of the Renaissance as a myth and describes the main objections to it. Jacob Burckhardt defined the period in terms of two concepts, “individualism” and “modernity”. According to Burckhardt, in the Middle Ages ''human consciousness ... lay dreaming or half-awake beneath a common veil.... Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation-only through some general category.” The Renaissance Italian was, Burckhardt wrote, “the first-born among the sons of modern Europe.'” He referred to fourteenth-century poet Petrarch as “one of the first truly modern men.” He pointed out that the great renewal of art and ideas began in Italy, and at a later stage the new attitudes and the new artistic forms spread to the rest of Europe. This idea of the Renaissance is a myth. Burckhardt's mistake was to accept the scholars and artists of the period at their own valuation, to take this story of rebirth at its face value and to elaborate it into a book. In the first place, there are arguments to the effect that so-called “Renaissance men” were actually rather medieval, steeped in traditional behavior, assumptions and ideals than we tend to think. Hindsight suggests that even Petrarch, “one of the first truly modern men” had many attitudes in common with the centuries he described as '\”dark.” In the second place, the medievalists have accumulated arguments to the effect that the Renaissance was not such a singular event as Burckhardt and his contemporaries once thought and that the term should really be used in the plural. There were various “renaissances” which took place during the long Middle Ages, notably in the twelfth century and in the age of Charlemagne, during the era of the Crusades, and in the Ninth Century, during the era of Charlemagne . In both cases there was a combination of literary and artistic achievements, with a revival of interest in classical learning, and in both cases contemporaries described their age as one of restoration, rebirth or “renovation.”