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Chapter 14.1 The Renaissance and Science Revolution
(1300-1600)
Objective
Explain why the Renaissance began in Italy:
Why was the Renaissance:
 The Renaissance a time of creativity and change in
many areas political, social, economic and cultural.
 The changes that took place in the way people views
themselves and world.
 Spurred b a reawakened interest in classical learning,
especially the culture of ancient Rome, creative
Renaissance minds set out to transform their own
age.
 Their era, they felt, was a time to rebirth after the
disorder and disunity of the medieval world.
 But Renaissance Europe did not really break
completely with its medieval past.
 Latin, mathematics of Euclid, the astronomy of
Ptolemy and the works of Aristotle were well known
to late medieval scholars.
 Yet the Renaissance did produce new attitude
towards culture and learning.
 Unlike medieval scholars, who debated the nature of
life after death, Renaissance thinkers were eager to
explore the richness and variety of human
experience in the here and now.
 At the same time, there was a new emphasis on
individual achievements.
 The Renaissance ideal was the person with talent in
many fields.
 The Renaissance supports a spirit adventure and a
wide-ranging curiosity the led people to explore new
worlds.
 Columbus, who sailed to the Americas in 1492,
represented that spirit.
 Nicolaus Copernicus, the scientist who revolutions
the way people viewed the universe.
 Renaissance writers and artist, eager to experiments
with new forms, were also products of that
adventurous spirit.
Objective
Explain why did the Renaissance in Italy:
Italian Beginnings:
 The Renaissance began in Italy in the mid 1300s, and
then spread north to the rest of Europe.
 It reached its height in the 1500s.
 Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance for
several reasons.
Why Italy:
 The Renaissance was marked by a reawakened
interest in the culture of ancient Rome.
 Italy was the centre of ancient Roman history; it was
natural for the reawakening to start there.
 Architectural remains, antique statues, coin, and
inscriptions, all were visible reminders to Italians of
the “glory that was Rome.”
 Italy differed from the rest of Europe in another way.
 Italy’s cities had survived the Middle Ages.
 In the north, city-states like Florence, Milan, Venice
and Genoa grew into prosperous centres of trade
and manufacturing.
 Rome, in the central Italy, and Naples in the south,
along with a number of smaller city-states, also
contributing to the Renaissance cultural revival.
 A wealthy and powerful merchant’s class in these
city-states further promoted the cultural rebirth.
 These merchants exerted both political and
economic leadership and their attitudes and interest
helped to shape the Italian Renaissance.
 They stressed education and individual achievement.
 They also spent lavishly to support the arts.
Florence and the Medicis:
 Florence, perhaps more than any other cities, came
to symbolise the Italian Renaissance.
 Like ancient Athens, it produced a dazzling number
of gifted poets, artist, architects, scholars and
scientist in a short of time.
 In the 1400s, the Medici, family of Florence
organised a banking business.
 The business prospered and the family expanded
into wool manufacturing, mining and other ventures.
 Soon, the Medicis ranked among the richest
merchants and banking in Europe.
 Money translated into culture and political power.
 Cosimo de’ Medici gained control of the Florentine
government in 1434, and the family continued as a
crowned rulers of the city for many years.
 Best known of all the Medicis was Cosimo’s
grandson Lorenzo, who died in 1492, represented
the real Renaissance ideal.
 A clever politician, he held Florence together during
difficult times.
 He was also a generous patron of financial
supporters of the arts.
 Unser Lorenzo, poets and philosophers visited the
Medici palace.
 Arts like Michelangelo earned their craft by
sketching ancients Romans statutes collected in the
Medici garden.
 Lorenzo was himself a poet and some of his works
are still features in collections of Italian verse.
Humanism:
 At the heart of the Italian Renaissance was an
intellectual movement known as humanism.
 The study of classical culture, humanism focus on
worldly subjects rather than on the religions issues
that occupied medieval thinkers.
 Humanism scholars hoped to use the wisdom of the
ancients to increase their understanding of their
own times.
 Humanism believed that education should stimulate
the individual’s creative power.
 The main areas of study were grammar, rhetoric,
poetry and history based on Greek and Romans text.
 Humanism did not accept the classical text without
 question.
 Rather, they studied the ancient authorities in light
of their own experiences.
Petrarch:
 Francesco Petrarch a Florentine who lived from
1304-1374 was an early Renaissance humanism.
 Inn monasteries and churches, he hunted down and
assembled a library of Greek and Roman
manuscripts.
 Thought his efforts, as well as his efforts of others
encouraged by his example, the speeches of Cicero,
the poems of Homer and Virgil and Livy’s History of
Rome again became known to Western Europeans.
 Petrarch also wrote literature of his own.
 His Sonnet to Laura, love poems written in the
vernacular and inspired by a women he knew only
from a distance, greatly influence other writer of his
time.
Objective
Describe the ideas that influence d Renaissance
scholars, Arts and Writers:
A Golden Age in the Arts:
 The renaissance reached its most glorious
expressions I its painting, sculpture and architecture.
 Wealthy patrons played a major role in these artistic
flowers.
 Popes, princes and powerful women such as Isabella
d’Este of Mantua were important patrons of the
arts.
 Like artist of the Middle Ages, renaissance artist
portrayed religious figures such as Mary, Jesus and
the saints.
 The sculptor Donatello created life-size statutes of a
soldier on horseback.
 It was the first such figure done since ancient time.
 Roman art had been very realistic and renaissance
painters developed new techniques for representing
both humans and landscapes in a realistic way.
 Renaissance artist learned the real of perspective.
 By making distant objects smaller than those close to
the viewer, artist could paint scenes that appeared
three dimensional.
 They also used shading to make object look round
and real.
 Renaissance artist studied human anatomy and drew
form life models.
 This made possible for them to portray the human
body more accurately than medieval artist had done.
The genius of Leonardo:
 Leonardo was born in 1452 in Florence.
 His exploring mind and endless curiosity fed a genius
for invention.
 Most popular painting is the Mona Lisa.
 Leonardo made sketches of nature and of model in
has studio.
 He even dissected corpse to learn how muscles
work.
 His interest extended to botany, anatomy, and
optics, music, architectural and engineering.
 He made sketch of flying machines and under boats
centuries before the first aeroplanes or submarine
was actually built.
Michelangelo:
 Michelangelo was a genius-sculptor, engineering,
painting, architect and poet.
 His masterpieces like Pieta, which captures the
sorrow of Mary as she cradles the dead Christ on her
knees.
 David, Michelangelo’s statute of the biblical
shepherd who killed Goliath, recalls the harmony
and grace of ancient Greek traditions.
Raphael:
 Raphael studied the works of those great masters.
 His painting blended Christians and classical styles.
 One of his well known works, School of Athens,
pictures an imaginary gathers of great thinkers and
scientist, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and even the
Arabic philosopher Averroes.
 In typical Renaissance fashion, Raphael including the
faces of Michelangelo, Leonardo and himself in the
assembled group.
 Raphael’s best known portrayal of the Madonna, the
mother of Christ.
Women artist:
 Some of these women kept their work secret,
allowing their husbands to pass if off as their own.
 In 1500s, Sofonisba Auguissola, Italian noblewomen,
won fame as a portrait painter.
 One of her works, The Artist’s Sisters Playing Chess,
earned her an invitation to become court painter to
King Philip II of Spain.
 In 1600s, Artemissa Gentileschi created bold
paintings of dramatic realism.
 In Judith and the Maidservant, she depicts the
nobility of the biblical heroine Judith, who served
Israel from an invading army by killing the enemy
leader.
Architecture:
 Renaissance architects rejected the Gothic style of
the late Middle Ages as cluttered and disorderly.
 They adapted the columns, archers and the domes
favoured by the Greek and Romans.
 The cathedral in Florence, Filippo Brinellaschi
created a magnificent dome, which he modelled on
the dome of the Parthenon n Rome.
 Equally famous is Michelangelo’s design for the
dome of St. Peter’s Church in Rome.
Writing for New Age:
Castiglione’s ideal courtier:
 The most widely read of these books was The Book
of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione.
 Castiglione’s ideal courtier was a well educated,
aristocrat who has mastered many fields, poetry,
music and sport.
 He good at games, musical instruments, literature
and history.
Machiavelli’s advice:
 Niccolo Machiavelli had served Florence as a
diplomat and had observed the kings and princes in
foreign court.
 He also studied ancient Roman history.
 He combined his knowledge experiment of politics
with his knowledge of the past to offer a guide to
rulers on how to gain and maintain power.
 The Prince did not discuss leadership in terms of high
ideas.
 Machiavelli took a look at real rulers in an age of
ruthless power politics.
 He stressed that the end justifies the means.
 He urged rulers to use whatever methods were
necessary to achieve their goals.
 Machiavelli saw himself as an enemy of oppression
and corruption.
