• 1323 Venice makes Great Council hereditary• 1343 Guild based government in Florence• 1450 Gutenberg printing press• 1452-1519 Leonardo da Vinci• 1494 France invades Italy• 1512 Machiavelli writes The Prince• 1546 Michelangelo appointed to complete St. Peter’s

Renaissance Timeline

THE RENAISSANCE

Adoration of the Magi Botticelli

I. What was the Renaissance?II. Why Italy?

Education

III. City States Venice & Florence

IV. Painting, Sculpture and ArchitectureV. Waning of the Italian Renaissance

Renaissance Outline

I. What was the Renaissance?

• A rebirth of interest in classical knowledge, art, architecture and thought– Rediscovery of classical texts (e.g., Virgil, Ovid,

and Cicero)– Rise of Humanism

• Transition from medieval scholastic logic and meta-physics to language, literature, rhetoric, history, and ethics

Renaissance Italy

• Urbanization– 12.4% of population in cities over 10,000– In year 1300 only Paris is larger than Milan (150,000)– Aristocrats lived in urban centers– Aristocrats and merchants less sharply defined

II. Why Italy?

• Political structure– Local self governing cities– predominantly republican – rely on educated citizens– Urban pride – Patronage of the aristocracy and papacy

II. Why Italy?

• International Affairs– Collapsing Byzantine Empire– Revitalized post-black death Europe

II. Why Italy?

• Education– public life demands education– Best-educated upper class in Europe

II. Why Italy?

• “Renaissance Man” - the universal man• breadth, not depth of study

– “We cannot rightly understand one subject unless we can perceive its relation to the rest…”

Education

• wisdom, virtue, thirst for glorious achievement, modest, devout (not saintly), dancer, poet, orator– these show “true” nobility– “nobility must be due to virtue alone”– The Courtier

• Women gain access to education.

Education

• Best known inventor of the printing press

• starts with publication of the Bible

• Changes Europe: – spreads of ideas of the

Renaissance the Reformation.

Gutenberg (1400?-1468)

II. Why Italy?

• Italian wealth– Generated primarily from spice trade– Italy wealthier than the rest of Europe– Italian writers and artists stayed at home rather

than seeking employment abroad– Growth of banking

Trade Routes in Europe

Trade Routes from Asia

• Marriage– different marriage age

vs. Western Europe– women have higher

divorce/widow ratein Italy

• age 15 90% divorced or widowed• age 25 97% divorced or widowed

– large numbers of prostitutes– dowries increase in value.

II. Why Italy?

• Family– necessary for dowry – holds key to prospects– more significant for higher status families

II. Why Italy?

Renaissance Italy

• Republic• Grows and establishes wide trading empire by 1400• population is 10% of France but income is 150%• wealth concentration

– top 100 families have 25% of wealth (top 1%)– 31% paid no taxes.

III. City States: Venice

Departure of the merchants, Venice

III. City States: Venice

• Major Venetian Artists– Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516)– Giorgione (1478–1510)– Titian (c. 1490–1576)– Characteristics

• Their art reflected the luxurious life of Venice• Their aim was to appeal to the senses, not the mind

Renaissance Italy

• Emerges from relative obscurity by 1300– become bankers for Pope, grain merchants to Naples

• becomes center of industry and banking• Oligarchic government (favors rich)

III. City States: Florence

• Emergence of civic nationalism– “our city is more important than our children”– merchants offer all of wealth to the city for its needs– emergence of secular rather than providential rise and fall of

nations• “humans, not God, determine human affairs.”

• Rise of condottieri– mercenaries replace citizen militia– taxation and centralization.

III. City States: Florence

• Lived and dominated the city of Florence after 1430

• use of wealth to build political machine– marriage, loans, “gifts” and jobs

• failure to join “party” of Medici meant political exclusion

• example of the triumph of despotism over republicanism throughout Italy.

De Medici family

IV. Artists and Writers

• General tendencies– Laws of linear perspective were discovered in the

fifteenth century– Experimented with the effects of light and shade

(chiaroscuro)– Careful studies of human anatomy– Growth of lay patronage opened the door to

nonreligious themes and subjects

Vanishing PointHorizon LineDisappearing lines

• Considered the founder of modern sculpture• goes through phases in his work - gothic,

classical, and finally action• creation of David in 1440

Donatello(1386? - 1466)

Donatello's David

IV. Artists and Writers

• Renaissance painting in Florence– Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510)

• Classical and Christian subjects• Allegory of Spring and Birth of Venus

– Allegories compatible with Christian teachings

Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

IV. Artists and Writers

– Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)• Personified the “Renaissance Man”• Painter, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer,

inventor, and artist• The worship of nature and the essential divinity in all

things• The Virgin of the Rocks • The Last Supper• Mona Lisa and Ginevra de Benci

• Renaissance man• kept drawing notebooks• rigorously accurate drawings• studies anatomy• sought to “portray the intention of man’s soul”• skillful use of perspective and vanishing

points.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1527)

Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper

Virgin of the Rocks

Sketches of the Shoulder

HumanProportions

Mona Lisa

Architecture

Helical Airscrew

Water lifting devices

Study of the human head

IV. Artists and Writers

– Painting in Rome• Raphael (1483–1520)

– Portrayals of man as temperate, wise, and dignified

– Disputà and the School of Athens

Raphael Niccolini

Madonna

Raphael’s School of Athens

St. George and the Dragon

Raphael’s Alba

Madonna

IV. Artists and Writers

• Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564)– An idealist– Painter, sculptor, architect, and poet– The centrality of the male figure—powerful

and magnificent– David to celebrate freedom for Florence– The Sistine Chapel paintings (1508–1512)– Commitment to classical aesthetic principles

of art (harmony, solidity, dignified restraint)– The Last Judgment (1536)

Michaelangelo's David

Sistene Chapel

Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam

Last Judgement

Pieta

IV. Artists and Writers

• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)• Reflected the instability of Renaissance Florence and Italy

• The Discourses on Livy• The Prince

– written to get into the good graces of the restored Medici rulers

• real world advice to rulers– rulers should always be seen as virtuous– can use any methods to support their position.

V. The Waning of the Italian Renaissance

• Causes of decline, c. 1550– War

• French invasion of 1494 and incessant warfare• Rome sacked by the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V

(1527)

V. The Waning of the Italian Renaissance

– The waning of Italian prosperity• Gradual shift of trade from the Mediterranean to the

Atlantic– The Counter-Reformation

• The Inquisition (1542) and Index of Forbidden Books (1564)

• Censorship