Download THE RENAISSANCE

THE RENAISSANCE
Overview:
 Roughly a period from 1350 – 1700 in Western Europe
 Renaissance means rebirth
 Time when ideas of Ancient Greece and Rome (Classical Civilisation) were rediscovered and great advances and
new ideas developed in all walks of life – art, architecture, science, medicine, music, literature etc
 Time when people began to think for themselves instead of what church told them to think – questioning of old
ideas, experimentation, discovery, invention etc
 Began in Italy but spread all over Europe, especially Northern Europe
 Middle Ages (only religious orders can read & write, illiterate people believed & accepted what church told them,
less concerned with life on earth & life in heaven seen as far more important) vs Renaissance (lay people can read &
write, question what church tells them & want to find out for themselves, heaven still important but so is earthly life)
Why Renaissance starts in Italy:
 Italy centre of old Roman Empire = remains of Roman buildings inspires Italians, Italian language based on
Latin
 Fall of Constantinople in 1453 = Greek scholars from Byzantine Empire (eastern half of old Roman Empire) flee
to Italy bringing priceless ancient Greek & Roman books full of Classical ideas which Italians had never seen
 Wealthy Italian merchants = Italy sits in middle of Mediterranean, grows rich on trade coming from East (silks,
spices) & can spend this wealth on works of art to show off
 New ideas brought back to Italy by merchants = merchants travelling to China, India & Arabia return with ideas
from these advanced civilisations
 Italian City States = Italy not a single country ruled by one king, lots of independent city states, compete with
each other like football teams, want to show off who is richest & most powerful by building great buildings & filling
them with valuable works of art
 Italy not Feudal = Rome ruled by Pope, Florence a Republic, Milan ruled by military family, Venice ruled by
council of 500 families  individual way of doing things creates openness to try new things and experiment
 The X Factor = Italy produced huge number of geniuses in small time (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello,
Raphael, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Machiavelli etc)  did these spark the Renaissance or did the Renaissance
inspire them?
Why Renaissance starts in Florence:
 Florence very wealthy due to the wool trade and banking = spends its wealth on works of art to show off
 Florence ruled by clever family = de Medici, they make alliances with other Italian cities to keep peace, peace
means business, business means money, money means patronage, patronage means works of art
 Florence had outstanding patrons = Cosimo de Medici & Lorenzo de Medici (“the Magnificent”)
 Cosimo = very wealthy, banker to the pope, paid bribes to have friends elected to government, set up the Platonic
Academy to discuss philosophy, sent servants all over Europe to collect old manuscripts, built large public library,
paid painters & sculptors to make beautiful pieces of art for his palace
 Lorenzo = athlete, poet, warrior, musician, politician  true Renaissance Man (all-rounder), set up school for
sculptors, took Michelangelo into his house while he trained, paid Leonardo to produce works of art, his son was
Pope Leo X (another great patron)
Developments in Painting:
Medieval Painting
Mainly religious themes
Painted on wooden panels (cracks easily)
Quite flat and with no real depth
Mainly gold leaf background
People don’t look “real”
Paints mixed with egg white (dries too quickly)
Renaissance Painting
Religious themes, private portraits, mythological scenes,
landscapes, nature themes etc
Painted on canvas or onto wet plaster on walls (fresco –
means “fresh”)
Use of perspective gives depth (things in the distance look
smaller)
Backgrounds more realistic
People look “real” – wrinkles, muscles, tendons, folds in
clothes etc (due to study of anatomy)
N.B. development of Sfumato – means “smokiness”,
deliberate blurring or smudging of colours to add shade to
paintings and soften lines
Paints mixed with oils
Case Study of Great Renaissance Painter – LEONARDO DA VINCI:
 Born in Vinci near Florence in 1452
 Apprenticed to local artist Verocchio at age 15 – soon showed he was better than his master
 Set up his own studio but left many paintings unfinished – mind too busy fizzing with new ideas & got distracted
very easily
 Kept notebooks written in reverse writing for secrecy – 5,000 pages survive
 Dissected dead bodies (study of anatomy) to make paintings more realistic
 Master of sfumato
 Paintings include Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the Rocks and the Last Supper
 Mona Lisa – portrait of wealthy merchant’s wife, mysterious smile, no eyebrows, lots of sfumato, odd
background
 Last Supper – painted on dining room wall of monastery (fresco), new style tried which did not work (painting
is peeling away to this day), shows Jesus telling disciples that one will betray him, excellent use of perspective
 Moved to Milan to work for military Sforza family
 Said to have invented aeroplane, tank, submarine etc while in Milan – military machines for his employer
 Died in France in 1519
Developments in Sculpture:
Medieval Sculpture
Mainly religious themes
Carved into walls or above doors in churches
Stone or wood
Figures don’t look realistic
Figures clothed
Renaissance Sculpture
Religious themes, mythological scenes
Free-standing
Stone, wood, bronze, copper
Figures very realistic – veins, muscles, tendons, wrinkles
Figures often naked
Case Study of Great Renaissance Sculptor – MICHELANGELO BUONAROTTI:
 Born near Florence in 1475
 Apprenticed to local sculptor Ghirlandaio – excellent copy of old Roman statue caught eye of Lorenzo de Medici
 Lorenzo took him into his house, educated him & treated him like a son
 Left Florence when Lorenzo died & moved to Rome (age 21)
 Sculptures include David & Piéta (means “sorrow”)
 Piéta – marble statue, shows Mary holding dead body of Jesus, optical illusion has Jesus as small enough to be
carried in Mary’s arms, symbolic of Mary holding her son in death as at birth, only sculpture he signed, in St. Peter’s
in Rome
 David – statue of David the shepherd boy who slew Goliath with his slingshot, built to celebrate little Florence
beating powerful France in war, five metres high, carved from single block of marble, 40 men needed to bring it to
main square, David stands naked with slingshot resting over shoulder, very detailed (veins, ligaments etc), optical
illusion has head slightly too big to look in proportion from five metres below, in Uffizi gallery in Florence
 Pope Julius II invites him to Rome to design his tomb – money runs out early
 Argues a lot with Pope Julius II but still a great patron – asked him to paint roof of Sistine Chapel
 This was a fresco – took four years, lying on his back, high up on scaffolding, ceiling 118ft long & 48ft wide
 Scenes from Old Testament – creation of Adam to Noah’s flood, also painted Last Judgement on wall behind
altar
 Michelangelo also a great poet and architect – designed the dome of St. Peter’s
 Died aged 89
Developments in Architecture:
Medieval Architecture
Pointed arches
Steeples and towers
Flying buttresses
Renaissance Architecture
Rounded arches
Domes
Columns
Case Study of Great Renaissance Architect – FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI:
 Born in Florence in 1377 (early Renaissance)
 Trained to be a goldsmith
 Florence’s cathedral is unfinished – nobody knows how to build the desired dome & it sits waiting with hole in
roof
 Brunelleschi went to Rome & studied domes of Ancient Roman buildings – especially the Pantheon




He figured out how to build dome from this study & returned to Florence to build first dome in 1,000 years
Dome took 16 years to finish but was greeted with delight on completion
Brunelleschi designed many more churches after this success
Died in 1446
Gutenberg and the Printing Press:
 Printing had already been invented by the Chinese and some crude attempts had already been made with wood
carvings of entire words – but this was slow and cumbersome
 Gutenberg, a goldsmith born in Mainz in 1397, used his skill in metalworking to carve individual letters onto
metal blocks – each one standing in reverse (so it would come out the right way around when printed) and in relief
(standing up off the block so ink smeared on the block would catch the shape of the letter)
 Hundreds of these letter blocks, called type, were carved and kept in separate boxes – one for As, one for Bs etc
including blank blocks for spaces between words
 These letters were then fitted onto a wooden frame, always in reverse (like mirror writing), until a full page (i.e.
the entire frame) was complete, then ink was smeared across them, a page laid over the frame and then the two
pressed together by a metal panel attached to pressing device similar to those used for crushing grapes
 Now hundreds of pages could be printed very quickly and cheaply, especially with the development of cheaper
paper made from boiled down rags, way more so than the old way of copying out manuscripts by hand
 Gutenberg’s first book was the 42-Line Bible, published in 1456, so called because of the number of lines on
each page
 Gutenberg was a poor businessman and died in poverty but his invention changed the world – other printers like
the Englishman William Caxton followed his lead
 Printing meant that ideas could be spread rapidly and cheaply, books became less expensive, literacy increased
and the ideas of the Renaissance and the Reformation could be read, developed and spread all over Europe by steadily
growing numbers of people
Case Study of Great Renaissance Medical Thinker – Andreas Vesalius:
 Born in 1514, studied in Paris and Padua and now known as the ‘father of modern anatomy’
 Knowledge of the human body (anatomy) was very limited up to this time as dissection was still seen as sinful –
this had a negative effect on medical practice
 Most anatomical knowledge was guesswork based on bodies of apes and monkeys – often badly wrong
 Vesalius became Professor of Padua and dissected many human bodies – greatly improved medical knowledge
 Wrote ‘On the Structure of the Human Body’ – full of accurate information and beautiful sketches of the
human body
Case Study of Great Renaissance Scientist – Galileo Galilei:
 Born in Pisa in 1564 and studies maths at Pisa University
 Developed the ‘Pendulum Theory’ after seeing a swinging lamp in Pisa Cathedral
 Developed the ‘Law of Gravity’ – objects fall to ground at the same speed regardless of weight – supposedly
after dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa
 As Professor of Maths at Padua University, Galileo heard of a Dutch invention called the telescope and adapted
and improved it to magnify objects many hundreds of times
 He used this new invention to study the planets and stars (astronomy) - discovered the surface of the moon was
uneven, the rings of Saturn and the four moons of Jupiter, published these findings in ‘The Starry Messenger’ in
1610
 Most people believed the planets and sun orbited the Earth, as taught in the Bible, though a Polish priest,
Copernicus, had proved otherwise in his book ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’, he had refused to
publish it during his lifetime for fear of the Catholic Church’s reaction
 Galileo was convinced Copernicus was right and published his theory in ‘Dialogues on the Two Chief World
Systems’ in 1632
 Catholic Church was furious – ordered him before a Papal Court and forced him to take back all he said on pain
of death – legend says he muttered “nonetheless, the Earth moves” under his breath at the end of the trial
 Galileo spent rest of his life under house arrest
Case Study of Non-Italian Artist – Albrecht Durer:
 Born in Nuremberg in 1471, son of a goldsmith and learned his father’s trade in working with metals but much
preferred painting
 As an artist’s apprentice he learned to paint, carve wood and engrave metals – woodcuts could be inked and
printed onto paper to serve as illustrations for books
 Durer visited Italy in 1494 and was inspired by the great art he saw there
 Most famous in Germany – patronised by Emperor Maximilian and made freeman of Nuremberg in 1513
 Works include ‘A Hare’ (woodcut), ‘A Clod of Turf’ (painting) and ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’
(engraving) – he is also supposed to be the first Renaissance artist to paint a self-portrait