European Renaissance

Renaissance, ( French: Rebirth) period in European civilization immediately following the

Middle Ages and conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest
in Classical scholarship and values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and
exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system
of astronomy, the decline of the feudal systemand the growth of commerce, and the invention
or application of such potentially powerful innovationsas paper, printing, the mariners
compass, and gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a
time of the revival of Classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and
stagnation.

Origins And Rise Of Humanism

The term Middle Ages was coined by scholars in the 15th century to designate the interval
between the downfall of the Classical world of Greece and Rome and its rediscovery at the
beginning of their own century, a revival in which they felt they were participating. Indeed, the
notion of a long period of cultural darkness had been expressed by Petrarch even earlier.
Events at the end of the Middle Ages, particularly beginning in the 12th century, set in motion a
series of social, political, and intellectualtransformations that culminated in the Renaissance.
These included the increasing failure of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman
Empire to provide a stable and unifying framework for the organization of spiritual and material
life, the rise in importance of city-states and national monarchies, the development of national
languages, and the breakup of the old feudal structures.

While the spirit of the Renaissance ultimately took many forms, it was expressed earliest by
the intellectual movement called humanism. Humanism was initiated by secular men of letters
rather than by the scholar-clerics who had dominated medieval intellectual life and had
developed the Scholastic philosophy. Humanism began and achieved fruition first in Italy. Its
predecessors were men like Danteand Petrarch, and its chief protagonists included Gianozzo
Manetti, Leonardo Bruni, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla,
and Coluccio Salutati. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 provided humanism with a major
boost, for many eastern scholars fled to Italy, bringing with them important books and
manuscripts and a tradition of Greek scholarship.

Humanism had several significant features. First, it took human nature in all of its
various manifestationsand achievements as its subject. Second, it stressed the unity and
compatibility of the truth found in all philosophical and theological schools and systems, a
doctrine known as syncretism. Third, it emphasized the dignity of man. In place of the
medieval ideal of a life of penance as the highest and noblest form of human activity, the
humanists looked to the struggle of creation and the attempt to exert mastery over nature.
Finally, humanism looked forward to a rebirth of a lost human spirit and wisdom. In the course
of striving to recover it, however, the humanists assisted in the consolidation of a new spiritual
and intellectual outlook and in the development of a new body of knowledge. The effect of
humanism was to help men break free from the mental strictures imposed by religious
orthodoxy, to inspire free inquiry and criticism, and to inspire a new confidence in the
possibilities of human thought and creations.

From Italy the new humanist spirit and the Renaissance it engendered spread north to all parts
of Europe, aided by the invention of printing, which allowed literacy and the availability of
Classical texts to grow explosively. Foremost among northern humanists was Desiderius
Erasmus, whose Praise of Folly(1509) epitomized the moral essence of humanism in its
insistence on heartfelt goodness as opposed to formalistic piety. The intellectual stimulation
provided by humanists helped spark the Reformation, from which, however, many humanists,
including Erasmus, recoiled. By the end of the 16th century the battle of Reformation
and Counter-Reformation had commanded much of Europes energy and attention, while the
intellectual life was poised on the brink of the Enlightenment.

n Italy the Renaissance proper was preceded by an important proto-renaissance in the late
13th and early 14th centuries, which drew inspiration from Franciscan radicalism. St. Francis
of Assisi had rejected the formal Scholasticism of the prevailing Christian theology and gone
out among the poor praising the beauties and spiritual value of nature. His example inspired
Italian artists and poets to take pleasure in the world around them. The work of the most
famous artist of the proto-renaissance period, Giotto(1266/67 or 12761337), reveals a new
pictorial style that depends on clear, simple structure and great psychological penetration
rather than on the flat, linear decorativeness and hierarchical compositions of his
predecessors and contemporaries, such as the Florentine painter Cimabue and the Siennese
painters Duccio and Simone Martini. The great poet Dante lived at about the same time
as Giotto, and his poetry shows a similar concern with inward experience and the subtle
shades and variations of human nature. Although his Divine Comedy belongs to the Middle
Ages in its plan and ideas, its subjective spirit and power of expression look forward to the
Renaissance. Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio also belong to this proto-renaissance period,
both through their extensive studies of Latin literature and through their writings in
the vernacular. Unfortunately, the terrible plague of 1348 and subsequent civil wars
submerged both the revival of humanistic studies and the growing interest in individualism and
naturalism revealed in the works of Giotto and Dante. The spirit of the Renaissance did not
surface again until the 15th century

In 1401 a competition was held at Florence to award the commission for bronze doors to be
placed on the baptistery of San Giovanni. Defeated by the goldsmith and painter Lorenzo
Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello left for Rome, where they immersed themselves in
the study of ancient architecture and sculpture. When they returned to Florence and began to
put their knowledge into practice, the rationalized art of the ancient world was reborn. The
founder of Renaissance painting was Masaccio (140128). The intellectuality of
his conceptions, the monumentality of his compositions, and the high degree of naturalism in
his works mark Masaccio as a pivotal figure in Renaissance painting. The succeeding
generation of artistsPiero della Francesca, the Pollaiuolo brothers, and Verrochiopressed
forward with researches into linear and aerial perspective and anatomy, developing a style of
scientific naturalism.

The situation in Florence was uniquely favourable to the arts. The civic pride of Florentines
found expression in statues of the patron saints commissioned from Ghiberti and Donatello
for niches in the grain-market guildhall known as Or San Michele, and in the largest dome built
since antiquity, placed by Brunelleschi on the Florence cathedral. The cost of construction and
decoration of palaces, churches, and monasteries was underwritten by wealthy merchant
families, chief among whom were the Medici family.

The Medici traded in all of the major cities in Europe, and one of the most famous
masterpieces of Northern Renaissance art, The Portinari Altarpiece,by Hugo van der
Goes (c. 1476; Uffizi, Florence), was commissioned by their agent, Tommaso Portinari.
Instead of being painted with the customary tempera of the period, the work is painted with
translucent oil glazes that produce brilliant jewel-like colour and a glossy surface.
Early Northern Renaissance painters were more concerned with the detailed reproduction of
objects and their symbolic meaning than with the study of scientific perspective and anatomy
even after these achievements became widely known. On the other hand, central Italian
painters began to adopt the oil medium soon after The Portinari Altarpiece was brought to
Florence in 1476.

Competition From Mannerism

The Renaissance as a unified historical period ended with the fall of Rome in 1527. The strains
between Christian faith and Classical humanism led to Mannerism in the latter part of the 16th
century. Great works of art animated by the Renaissance spirit, however, continued to be
made in northern Italy and in northern Europe.

Seemingly unaffected by the Mannerist crisis, northern Italian painters such as Correggio
(14941534) and Titian (1488/901576) continued to celebrate both Venus and the Virgin
Mary without apparent conflict. The oil medium, introduced to northern Italy by Antonello da
Messina and quickly adopted by Venetian painters who could not use fresco because of the
damp climate, seemed particularly adapted to the sanguine, pleasure-loving culture of Venice.
A succession of brilliant paintersGiovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo
Veronesedeveloped the lyrical Venetian painting style that combined pagan subject matter,
sensuous handling of colour and paint surface, and a love of extravagant settings. Closer in
spirit to the more intellectual Florentines of the Quattrocento was the German painter Albrecht
Drer (14711528), who experimented with optics, studied nature assiduously,
and disseminated his powerful synthesis of Renaissance and Northern Gothic styles through
the Western world by means of his engravings and woodcuts.