Renaissance

Period in European cultural history that began in Italy around 1400 and lasted there until the end of the 1500s. Elsewhere in Europe it began later, and lasted until the 1600s. One characteristic of the Renaissance was the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman literature, led by the writers Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarch who translated and studied the works of the classical civilizations. A central theme of the Renaissance was humanism, a belief in actively searching for knowledge rather than accepting what already exists, and a faith in the republican ideal. The greatest expression of the Renaissance was in the arts and learning. The term ‘Renaissance’ (French for ‘rebirth’) to describe this period of cultural history was invented by historians in the 1800s.

Art and architecture
Leon Alberti, in his writings on painting, created both a method of painting – using perspective to create an illusion of a third dimension – and the idea of using classically inspired, non-religious subjects. In Renaissance architecture, by his writing and his buildings, Alberti created a system of simple proportion that was followed for hundreds of years. Masaccio and Filippo Brunelleschi, working in the same period as Alberti, perfected the application of these ideas in painting and architecture respectively.

In the arts, historians regard the years 1490–1520 (the ‘High Renaissance’) as a peak, with the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael Sanzio, and Michelangelo Buonarotti in painting, and Michelangelo and Donato Bramante in architecture being of great importance. The high point of Venetian painting came some years later, with the work of Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Tintoretto. Leonardo has been described as a ‘universal man’ for his enormously wide-ranging studies, including painting, architecture, science, and engineering.

The enormous achievements of creative artists during the Renaissance were made possible by the patronage (money, sponsorship, and support) of wealthy ruling families such as the Sforza in Milan and the Medici in Florence; by the ruling doge of Venice; and by popes, notably Julius II and Leo X.

Italian literature
Both Boccaccio and Petrarch wrote major works in Italian rather than Latin, a trend that was continued by the creation of epic poems in Italian by Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. Progress from the religious to the secular was seen in the creation of the first public libraries, and in the many translations from the classics published in Venice in the 16th century. In philosophy, the rediscovery of Greek thought took the form of neoplatonism in the work of such people as Marsilio Ficino. Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince (1513) founded the modern study of politics.

Spread of the Renaissance
Outside Italy, Renaissance art and ideas became widespread throughout Europe. The Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus embodied humanist scholarship for northern Europe; Dutch painters included Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein. In France, Renaissance writers included François Rabelais, Joaquim Du Bellay, and Michel Eyquem de Montaigne; in Spain, Miguel de Cervantes; in Portugal, Luís Vaz de Camoëns; and in England William Shakespeare.

In the visual arts, the end of the High Renaissance is marked by a movement in the late 1400s known as Mannerism, a tendency to deliberate elongation of the body, and a wilful distortion of perspective. The true end of the Renaissance ideal came with the enlightenment movement in the late 1600s.