Italian Renaissance History PDF

**Chapter 7: The Italian Renaissance** "If we are to call any era golden, it is because that era brings forth great talents from different places. This is true of our era which restored to the **liberal arts**, which were almost extinct" Marsilio Ficino, 1492. **1) Introduction** **2) Humanism**...

**Chapter 7: The Italian Renaissance** "If we are to call any era golden, it is because that era brings forth great talents from different places. This is true of our era which restored to the **liberal arts**, which were almost extinct" Marsilio Ficino, 1492. **1) Introduction** **2) Humanism** **3) Renaissance Art** **4) Renaissance Politics** **5) Machiavelli** **1)Introduction** -The Renaissance began in the Italian peninsula around 1350 and ended around 1550. -The word renaissance means rebirth. It was first used in 1550 by painter Giorgio Vasari. -The Italian Peninsula was the wealthiest and most urbanized region of Europe during most of that period. -Wealthy merchants, rulers and bankers saw the patronage of artists as an investment and a source of prestige. -They financed an unprecedented outpouring of masterpieces in many artistic fields. -The Italian renaissance was marked primarily by a renewed interest for the ancient classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. -The Renaissance was a period marked by many inventions. The invention of the printing press with movable type by Johannes Gutenberg, a German print master, in 1456 was arguably the most important invention of that era. -Gutenberg\`s invention accelerated the production of books exponentially. -Books became more affordable. People no longer needed be able to afford copyists to obtain books.\ -The printing press reached the Italian peninsula by 1465. By the end of the 15^th^ Century, there were hundreds of print shops all across Europe. More than 30,000 different works had been published and 10 million books had been printed since Gutenberg invention (Spodek, 2014). -\`\`L'invention de la presse à imprimer fut comparable à celle de l'Internet. Ce fut une grande avancée technologique qui favorisa qui favorisa la propagation des idées pendant la Renaissance. \`\` (Furtado, 2012, p. 240). -According to Jacob Burckhardt (1860), the Renaissance was not only the revival of the culture of classical antiquity. It presented a distinct break from the Middle Ages and the birth of the modern world. -Burckhardt basically modernized Vasari's book on the great artists of the Italian Renaissance. -But the Italian renaissance was not a mass movement. It was a limited to the elite of the main cities of the Italian peninsula such as Florence, the unofficial capital of the Renaissance. -Many members of the elite of these cities did have a feeling of living in an innovative and exciting era: "If we are to call any era golden, it is because that era brings forth great talents from different places. This is true of our era which restored to the liberal arts, which were almost extinct" Marsilio Ficino, 1492. **2)Humanism** -The main intellectual movement of the Renaissance was humanism. -It was based on the study and respect of the literary, artistic and architectural style of classical antiquity (i.e. the Greeks and the Romans). -The humanists of the Renaissance had great respect for Ancient authors from Ancient Greece and Rome. -This led the Italian **humanists** of the Renaissance to regain interest for the disciplines that had fascinated ancient authors such history, literature, poetry, astronomy, music, mathematics and philosophy (i.e. the humanities). -The interests of the humanists were more varied than medieval scholars who tended to focus exclusively on theology. -While God was the main concern for medieval scholars, the humanists of the Italian Renaissance preferred to focus on humans just like the Greek and Roman authors they admired. -Most humanists had a positive conception of human potential since we are endowed with the ability to reason. -This focus on humans instead of God led to a disentanglement between Christianity and the arts. Artists were now free to explore secular subjects. -The Italian Renaissance is mainly famous for its masterpieces in the visual arts. **3)Renaissance Art** -The Renaissance was the first era when European artists became celebrities. -The artists of the Renaissance were influenced by the humanism of their contemporaries. -The beauty of Renaissance art is so overwhelming that most people fail to see that the humanist ideas behind the masterpieces are as important as the masterpieces themselves. -Artists of the Italian Renaissance shared the humanists' unbound admiration for seemingly limitless abilities of the human body and mind. -They were obsessed by finding ways to portray the human body and nature realistically as opposed to figures who looked flat and passive on medieval paintings. -The subjects of Renaissance paintings also show more emotions and seemed more lifelike (just like the figures made by Greek and Roman sculptors). -The painters of the Renaissance such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael pushed the limits of their art by using **linear perspective**. They sought to enhance the illusion of depth. -Using oil paint enabled to create light and dark tones to intensify the perception of depth. -This was a major breakthrough because it allowed them to show a realistic relationship between figures and the landscape. -Masaccio's fresco *Trinity with the Virgin, St. John and Donors* (1427) \`\`is the first painting created in correct geometric perspective (the single vanishing point lies at the foot of the cross).\`\` (Spodek ,2014, p.429) -All these innovations allowed the creation of masterpieces such as *The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The School of Athens* and the *Sistine Chapel.* **4)Renaissance Politics** -The Italian peninsula was politically divided into fiercely competitive small kingdoms and republics who were often competing for territorial or commercial expansion. -The Renaissance was a cultural golden age that was marked by violence and instability just like Greece during the Hellenic period (i.e., the era of illustrious Greeks authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Herodotus, Thucydides, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, Euripides...) -The Italian kingdoms were ultimately doomed to decline just like the city-states of Ancient Greece due to their division endless skirmishes. -The Italian peninsula also became less important commercially during the early 16^th^ Century. -The Mediterranean Sea gradually ceded its place to the Atlantic Ocean as the center of maritime commerce. -Thus, Italian ports were no longer at the center of world trade due to the discovery of the Americas. -Artistic creativity declined in Italy and it seemed moved northwards to more prosperous kingdoms such as France, the Netherlands and England. **5)Machiavelli** -The political instability of the Italian peninsula during the Renaissance is palpable in the political treaty *The Prince,* Machiavelli's masterpiece. -*The Prince* is one of the most influential political treaties ever written. -It contains lessons that Machiavelli is transmitting to a prince on how to acquire, maintain and increase political power. -However, Machiavelli\`s true goal was to expose how political leaders governed behind the scenes by using methods such as intimidation and corruption to get what they want. -Machiavelli was a true man of the Renaissance. He excelled in many fields just like Leonardo. -Machiavelli was a playwright and an historian. He also served as a diplomat for the Republic of Florence between 1499 and 1512. -Machiavelli wrote his book in exile on a small farm after being forced to leave Florence by the powerful Medici family. *-The Prince* was published only in 1532 (5 years after Machiavelli death). -Before Machiavelli, the medieval philosophers agreed that rulers should follow Christian principles. -On the other hand, Machiavelli was influenced by humanism so his treaty focuses attentively on human emotions and their effects on politics. -Religion and morality are not mentioned in *The Prince.* This is the reason why he is considered the first modern political theorist. His successors were no longer preoccupied by the role of religion and morality in politics. -According to Machiavelli, rulers have to be realistic and pragmatic. -They have to keep their objectives in mind and use ruthless tactics such as theft, corruption, intimidation, deception and even murder in pursuing their vital interests (just like the Medicis). -Rulers have to understand human nature instead of trying to change the nature of their subjects. -They must realize that most humans are selfish, greedy, deceitful and ungrateful cowards and they forget quickly. -Hence, trying to improve their morals was a foolish waste of time. A ruler that would do this would pursue his own downfall because there are too many of his subjects who are naturally rotten. -This is why the rulers must be willing to take decisions that are morally wrong while maintaining the appearance that they are morally good persons. -His main advice to the prince is that rulers cannot rely exclusively on love because all rulers have to take unpopular decisions. -This will quickly lead his ungrateful subjects to stop loving him because love fades away. -The safest way to acquire, maintain and expand political power over selfish subjects is to use fear because it is permanent according to Machiavelli. -Subjects can rebel against a ruler that they loved but they will not challenge a ruler that they fear as long as fear does not turn into widespread hatred. -To avoid hatred the rulers cannot completely ignore the values and the interests of their subjects. -They must appear to embody the qualities that their subjects admire such as wisdom, decisiveness, generosity, honesty and compassion even if they do not possess these qualities. They must also avoid to look unfair and cruel. -Machiavelli argues that it\`s not difficult for a ruler to maintain this illusion since very few subjects will really have the chance to know him personally and most people are easily duped by appearances.