History Assessment

Renaissance, Exploration and

the World

Question 1
(6 marks)

Choose two of the following people. Explain how they impacted the world
during the Renaissance.

Cosimo Medici Filippo Brunelleschi Niccolo Machiavelli

1.Cosimo Medici

He was one of the first rulers of Florence that didn’t have huge unfair control over the
country, one of the first fair rulers who made fair money from his own bank business
and stuff.

1.Filippo Brunelleschi

He is called the father of architecture sometimes, he made really cool 3d looking art
that was copied by some other artists in the 16th chapel and he loves making illusions
in his work and everyone thought that was cool so copied some aspects of that style.
Question 2
What do the following sources suggest to us about the cause of the Renaissance?
Use examples from the sources.

Source A: “Italy was flooded with “lost” classics from the ancient
world, and artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli,
Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello took their tales, heroes
and gods as a starting point to creating extraordinary art.” The
London Telegraph, 2016

(3 marks) Source B: “Italy in the 14th century was fertile ground for a cultural revolution.
The Black Death had wiped out millions of people in Europe – by some estimates killing as
many as one in three between 1346 and 1353. By the simplest laws of economics, it meant
that those who survived were left with greater wealth … with fewer workers available,
wages naturally rose.” The London Telegraph, 2016

It means that the poor people who weren’t very smart were wiped out and the world was
left with rich and smart people, so if there were only rich and smart people smarter things
were the only thing that could happen and it did.

(3 marks) Source C: “In 1453 Islamic Ottoman Turks captured the Byzantine city of
Constantinople. The Christian scholars there had always studied some of the old
classical Greek works. Now they left Constantinople to get away from the Turks. They
went to Italy and took with them the ancient papers and many Arab books.” The Oxford
History Project, 2010

All knowledge was not lost, Constantinople fled with all the knowledge and culture
from Greece in the books!

Question 3
What does this source tell you about how the Renaissance impacted people’s
thinking? You may refer to the sources and your own knowledge. Since there
were no more dumb people because of the plague and no more war, people
started to settle down and think of the greater things in life like why believe in
god and stuff.

(4 marks)

Source D: “[how can anyone] be silly enough to think himself better

than other people, because his clothes are made of finer woolen thread
than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and
they never turned it into anything better than a sheep.” Thomas More,
Utopia, 1516

Why think of useless stuff like wool when you can think of useful things maths or
politics.