The Renaissance

• Imagine that you have live in Florence, Italy

immediately following the Black Death. You
have survived, but many around you have
not. Describe your environment. How do
you feel?

• Re-form last week’s groups. Share with the

class.
a. Christos Pantokrator (“Christ b. The Deposition by Rogier
the Almighty”) van der Weyden
1. In what ways does (b) reflect broad changes in
popular piety and medieval devotional
practices? Why, for example, would the artist
display the dead and wounded body of Christ—
rather than depicting him as resurrected and
triumphant, or as an all-seeing creator and
judge?
2. In general, how would you use (b) images as
evidence of the worldview of the Renaissance?
What do they tell us about people’s attitudes,
emotions, and values?
3. How is (b) different from the (a) – a sacred
image created in the earlier Middle Ages?
• What were the differences
between the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance in the
attitude towards worldly
pleasures?
• Read the following then write a one
paragraph opinion piece about the
ideas expressed there.
“I am amazed by the opinion of some
men who claim that they do not
want their daughters, wives, or
kinswomen to be educated because
their mores would be ruined as a
result. Here you can clearly see that
not all opinions of men are based on
reason and that these men are
wrong.” –Christine de Pizan
 CXXX
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the
sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her
breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on
her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and
white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
• And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the
ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
 SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of

May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course
untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his
shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
 Sonnet 116
• Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

• O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height
be taken.
Cont…
• Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and
cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and
weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

• If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.