Download THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

THE ITALIAN
RENAISSANCE
•Renaissance: a rebirth of ancient Greek and
Roman culture
•starts in Italy
•Italy was largely an urban society with powerful
city-states
•Intellectuals and artists wanted to separate
themselves from “backwardness” of the Middle
Ages, or Dark Ages
•The Italian city-states were involved in trade due
to their geography and served as the economic
center of Europe
Renaissance: a rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman culture
The Italian City-States
• Italy was divided into several large city-states in the north
and various kingdoms in the south
• Florence - Renaissance start here
• Wealthy due to trade, the wool industry, and banking
• The powerful de‘Medici family controlled this city-state
• The Papal States
• Controlled by the Pope, and in the pope’s absence, noble
families
• Rome became the center of the Renaissance after it declined
in Florence and it was called the High Renaissance
• The upper classes were more affected by the Renaissance
than the lower classes and more likely to embrace its ideas
– why? They had money
The Three Estates (Social Classes)
1Clergy
2Nobles -The old landed nobility began to intermarry with the
new wealthy merchant families
3Peasants and townspeople
Three classes of the towns:
1 Patricians = wealthy merchants and bankers
2 Burghers = shopkeepers, artisans, and guild
members who provided goods and services for the
town
3 Workers = lives not good, urban poverty begins to
increase – popolo – urban underclass
Politics and War
• Maintaining the balance of power
• Try to create an alliance against foreign powers, but the
breakdown of the alliance will lead to the domination of
Italy by foreign powers
• Invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France
• Attracted by the riches of Italy, Charles leads an army of
30,000 men into Italy in 1494
• Charles occupies Naples in the south
• Northern Italian states ask Spain for help
• For the next 30 years, France and Spain make Italy their
battle ground
• The sacking of Rome ends the wars and leaves Spain a
dominant force in Italy
• It will also bring an end to the High Renaissance
Characteristics of the Renaissance
• Secular society
• People were becoming more concerned with the material world,
had more of a worldly focus
• Still deeply religious, however they concentrated on the here and
now, not on life after death
• Individualism
• People sought to receive personal credit for their achievements want money and success
• This went against the medieval ideal of all glory going to God
• Humanism
• “new learning” – interest in and study of the Latin classics to learn
what they reveal about human nature
• Petrarch is considered to be the father of humanism
Renaissance Intellectuals
• The Renaissance Man – a person who could do many things well
• Machiavelli - Wrote The Prince - about how a ruler should
gain, maintain, and increase political power
• He is upset about by what he sees as the foreign domination
of Italy and he feels that one ruler needs to unite Italy
• Studied human nature - Concludes that humans are
“ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers”
• Decides that it is better for a ruler to be feared than loved
• Rulers must do whatever is necessary to maintain power
and protect the state - The end justifies the means
• Castiglione - Wrote The Courtier, a book on the expected
behaviors and education of nobles
• Used as a guide for nobles for the next several centuries
Renaissance Art
• The Renaissance made its greatest impact in the area of
art
• New artistic styles: use of oil painting, free-standing
sculptures, portraits, nudity, and single-point perspective
• Many people sponsored the arts to glorify themselves
and their families
• Two major periods:
• Early Renaissance – takes place in Florence
• High Renaissance – takes place in Rome
• Four major artists of the Renaissance:
1 Michelangelo – painted the
Sistene Chapel, sculptural
masterpiece = David
2. Leonardo da Vinci –
Mona Lisa and
the Last Supper
1 Raphael – famous for his madonnas
(images of Jesus and Mary)
2 Donatello – sculptor, lived during the Early Renaissance
The Northern Renaissance
• Late 15th century, the Italian Renaissance begins to
affect the rest of Europe
• Moves into northern Europe, is more religious
• Christian Humanism
• Christian humanists believed they could achieve this
higher understanding by studying early Christian works
along with the Latin classics
• Often criticized the Church
Christian Humanists
• Erasmus
• The best of the northern humanists, was Dutch
• Criticized the Church and wanted to reform it, but not
leave it
• Saw education as the means to reform
• Sir Thomas More
• Englishman, lawyer, and chancellor to King Henry VIII
• Wrote Utopia (“nowhere”) – about an ideal society
• Gave his life for his beliefs
• Northern Renaissance art
• Jan van Eyck – one of the first to use oil paint
• Albrecht Durer – famous for his woodcuts and altar panels
The Elizabethan Renaissance
• The greatest achievement in the arts in northern
Europe took place in England
• Most of what is referred to as the Elizabethan
Renaissance actually occurred during the reign of
James I
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Canterbury Tales consists of a collection of stories
told by a group of 29 pilgrims journeying to the tomb of
Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury
• William Shakespeare
• Wrote many plays that reveal an unsurpassed
understanding of the human psyche