ITALY’S RENAISSANCE & THE MODERN WORLD

After the fall of ancient Rome, Europe wallowed for 1,000 years in a cultural coma. There was
little learning, commerce, or travel. Then, in about 1400, in Florence, there was a Renaissance.
This city pulled Europe out of the Middle Ages and into the modern world.

Florence’s contributions to Western culture are immense: the revival of the arts, humanism, and
science after centuries of medieval superstition and oppression; the seeds of democracy; the
modern Italian language; the art of Leonardo and Michelangelo; the writings of Boccaccio and
Dante; and the explorations of Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to a newly discovered
continent.

Florence was the center of it all for good reason. It was the most urban part of Europe at that
time, one of Europe’s biggest cities with a population 90,000, the most advanced, most literate.
This was where capitalism was replacing feudalism. Being the middleman of trade between west
and east, the city was an economic powerhouse, dominating Italy economically and culturally.
Meanwhile, Rome was a dirty, decaying, crime-infested place.

By the 13th century, Florence was beginning to surpass its neighbors through shrewd diplomacy,
military conquest, and sheer economic might. The Florentine currency, the gold florin, became
Europe’s strongest. There was a budding democracy: the city’s nobles were ousted, establishing
the rule by the people. There was a large middle class and strong trade associations. Bursting
with civic pride, Florence’s guilds financed major construction projects.

Florence’s Golden Age coincided with the rise of the Medici family, whose wealth gave them
political leverage around Europe. The Medici had grown wealthy from the wool trade and silk
factories, then became bankers. The Medici bank had branches in 10 European cities, including
London, Geneva, Bruges, and Lyon. The pope kept his checking account in the Rome branch.
With money came power.

It was under Lorenzo de Medici that Florence reached its peak in the second half of the 15th
century. He was young, athletic, and intelligent, in addition to being a poet, horseman, musician,
and leader. He wrote love songs and humorous ditties to be performed loudly and badly at
carnival time. His marathon drinking bouts and illicit love affairs were legendary. He learned
Greek and Latin and read the classics, yet his great passion was hunting. He was the original
Renaissance Man—a man of knowledge and action, a patron of the arts, a scholar and a man of
the world. He was Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Lorenzo epitomized the Florentine spirit of optimism. Born on New Year’s Day and raised in the
lap of luxury by loving parents, he grew up feeling that there was nothing he couldn’t do.
Florentines invented the term “Dark Ages” for the epoch that preceded theirs and saw themselves
as part of a new era, a great undertaking of discovery and progress in man’s history. They
boasted that within the city walls, there were more nobly gifted souls than the world has seen in
the entire thousand years before.
And Florence — recognizing and paying creative genius like no one else — unleashed an
explosion of innovation. Lorenzo surrounded himself with Florence’s best and brightest. They
created an informal Academy, based on that of ancient Greece, to meet over a glass of wine
under the stars at the Medici villa and discuss literature, art, music, and politics—witty
conversation was considered an art in itself.

Their philosophy stressed the goodness of man and the world; they believed in a common truth
behind all religion. The Academy was more than just an excuse to drink with the guys. Belief in
the importance of the individual skyrocketed, and life became much more than a preparation for
the hereafter. The members were convinced that their discussions were changing the world and
improving their souls. This new humanism wasn't a repudiation of religion; it was an
understanding that the best way to live religiously was not to bow down in church all day long
but to recognize our given talents and use them.

And that's what Florence was doing. Never before had artists been asked to do so much or given
so much money and freedom. In the Middle Ages, unheralded craftsmen cranked out by-the-
numbers religious art. During the Renaissance, artists no longer worked anonymously. The most
successful ones — like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael — achieved celebrity status,
dictating their terms and creating as the spirit moved them.

Artists of the Renaissance deserved the respect they got. To create realistic paintings and statues,
they merged art and science. They studied anatomy like doctors, nature like biologists, and the
laws of perspective like mathematicians. Enhanced by experiments with perspective, paintings
became more true to life — and packed a bigger psychological punch.

Leonardo — a sculptor, engineer, inventor, and scientist — typified the well-rounded

Renaissance Man. And he wasn't a bad painter either. Indifferent to what his patrons thought,
Leonardo often left projects undone. Of the few surviving paintings by his hand, two are
unfinished — abandoned when something more interesting came along.

Michelangelo was no less inventive than Leonardo, and he was equally famous. Over his long
life, he ended up working for nine popes. That painting is the story of creation — and the essence
of Renaissance humanism. When Michelangelo shows God giving Adam the spark of life, man is
truly made as glorious as his creator.

Raphael combined the quiet elegance of Leonardo with the raw power of Michelangelo. The
pope hired him to paint the walls of his library. In his huge fresco, the School of Athens, Raphael
celebrated the great Greek thinkers — a shocking break from Church tradition. And to make the
embrace of these taboo figures even stronger, Raphael depicted these thinkers as the leading
Renaissance geniuses of his generation.

Although the Italian Renaissance sputtered out by 1600, by then people from around the world
were already coming to see its masterpieces.