THE RENAISSANCE, 1400-150017 March 2010

Outline

End of the Medieval Era Plague Learning Social Order and

Cultural Change Household Women Trade Vernacular Literature

Humanism Petrarch Print Civic Humanism

The Origins of the Renaissance Origins Intellectual values Northern

renaissance Social Order

THE END OF THE MEDIEVAL ERA Plague, 1348

Loss of up to one-half the population

Alters dynamics of feudal system More land meant less reliance on

the upper class to provide for the peasants

Decreased overall production BUT:

Increased individual wealth Increased demand for luxury goods Falling grain prices led to

diversified crops and better diet for Europeans

SOCIAL ORDER AND CULTURAL CHANGE The Household

Small, nuclear families Shopkeepers and craftsmen live above shops Rural families shared quarters with livestock Generally overcrowded Quick remarriage the norm—why?

Women Excluded from trade- and craft-controlling guilds Worked in agriculture and commerce Engaged in unorganized (no guilds) retail trade: dairy products,

textile production, brewing Geographical differences: Mediterranean culture marginalized

women more than northern Europe underclass women were slaves and prostitutes

SOCIAL ORDER AND CULTURAL CHANGE Trade

downturn after religious and civil unrest Italian bankers hit after borrowers default

on war loans Trade decreases

merchants seek to avoid dangerous travel Emerging underclass rife with violence and

crime disrupts trade routes Looking for alternate investments,

merchants turn to art and luxury

SOCIAL ORDER AND CULTURAL CHANGE Rise of Vernacular Literature

Fourteenth century Urban, middle-class movement Write for a literate laity Figures include: Francesco Petrarch,

Giovanni Boccaccio in Florence, Geoffrey Chaucer in London

Royal or noble patronage vital to careers of writers

Increased focus on classical Latin as the language of learning

HUMANISM Studied by scholars, civil servants,

notaries, and rich patricians Attempts to emulate the virtues

and learning of the ancients gives rise to humanism

Humanism emphasizes the study of man: history and literature used to help scholars identify with the ancient past

Reject “logic” and abstract language of medieval era for eloquence and style in discourse Imitate Cicero and other Roman

authors

HUMANISM

Humanism celebrated the glory of human achievements and was not viewed by humanists as conflicting with their Christian faith Cosimo de Medici even

sponsors the Platonic Academy in Florence

Scholars there argue the concept of immortal soul is Platonic

Ancient wisdom prefigured Christian teaching

PETRARCH Petrarch viewed the 14th Century as a positive and clear break with

the “Dark Ages,” celebrating a return/rediscovery of the culture of antiquity (humanism) You have heard what I think of your life and your genius. Are

you hoping to hear of your books also; what fate has befallen them, how they are esteemed by the masses and among scholars? They still are in existence, glorious volumes, but we of today are too feeble a folk to read them, or even to be acquainted with their mere titles. Your fame extends far and wide; your name is mighty, and fills the ears of men; and yet those who really know you are very few, be it because the times are unfavourable, or because men's minds are slow and dull, or, as I am the more inclined to believe, because the love of money forces our thoughts in other directions. Consequently right in our own day, unless I am much mistaken, some of your books have disappeared, I fear beyond recovery. It is a great grief to me, a great disgrace to this generation, a great wrong done to posterity. The shame of failing to cultivate our own talents, thereby depriving the future of the fruits that they might have yielded, is not enough for us; we must waste and spoil, through our cruel and insufferable neglect, the fruits of your labours too, and of those of your fellows as well, for the fate that I lament in the case of your own books has befallen the works of many another illustrious man. (“To Cicero”)

HUMANISM Humanistic ideas are

helped by the development of moveable type Johannes Gutenberg,

1440s Single press could produce

volumes at the rate of one thousand scribes

Aided the spread of classical, religious, and political texts

CIVIC HUMANISM

Florence, 1400-1430 Imitation of ancient

Roman rhetoric leads to adoption of ancient ideas

Study of humanities leads to republican ideology

Study of ancient civilization call to public service and political action

THE RENAISSANCE

The Renaissance was the self-declared break/period (rebirth) of commercial, financial, political and cultural awakening that coincided with the “decline” of the medieval European world

A political and economic movement as much it was as an intellectual and artistic/cultural one

ORIGINS Northern Italian cities (Genoa, Venice, Milan,

Florence) went through a period of commercial renewal in the wake of the Black Death

The merging of Italian feudal nobility with the commercial aristocracy of the cities led to a new and powerful social class: the urban nobility

By 1300, members of the urban nobility dominated Italian city-state politics and the “Renaissance” reflects their power, wealth, and values

RENAISSANCE INTELLECTUAL VALUES Individualism – Belief in the intellectual

power and capacity of human beings to think, rather than feel, their way through the world

Revival of Ancient values – By reading and copying ancient texts, Renaissance scholars took on antiquity values like …?

Secularism – Such values led Renaissance scholars to focus in on the material world

NORTHERN RENAISSANCE

Italian influence reached northern Europe and inspired similar values and ideas Europeans stressed more in the way of social reform

Northern Renaissance Humanists sought to create a “perfect” world

Erasmus: education makes reform possible; Christianity comes from within

“from the effort to align the heart and spirit with worldly values”

focused on developing peaceful kingdoms, based on piety and learning and charity/good works - curbing the power of “Christian” princes, clerical corruption

Thomas More’s Utopian vision communal world where an equal distribution of

goods/services - public schools, communal kitchens, hospitals, nurseries - and no private property or money allowed people to pursue knowledge and natural religions

LIFE DURING THE RENAISSANCE

Florence was a major urban region in north Italy with 260,000 people. “little people” 60% versus

the “fat people” 30% and the elite (Medici and friends)

Large wealthy families—why?

Women outnumber men, but suffer from a lack of privileges

Marriageable commodity Widows gain and lose power

PRODUCTS OF THE RENAISSANCE

THE SHAPING OF MODERN EUROPEAN CULTURE

The Renaissance Looking Back: Academics

▪ Pursuit of the Humanities Arts

▪ Private consumption▪ Secular subjects▪ Artist as celebrity

The Renaissance Looking Forward: Politics Development of States Exploration and Empire

RENAISSANCE INTELLECTUAL VALUES Individualism – Belief in the intellectual

power and capacity of human beings to think, rather than feel, their way through the world

Revival of Ancient values – By reading and copying ancient texts, Renaissance scholars took on antiquity values like …

Secularism – Such values led Renaissance scholars to focus in on the material world

THE RENAISSANCE ARTIST

Artists gain social status and individual authority in Renaissance culture Unique effort to prove “creative genius” Conflict between creativity and patronage

—who dictates artistic vision? The creative environment: long-term

service at court, piecework, the workshop

GIOTTO’S SCROVEGNI CHAPEL, 1305

THE CAREER OF ONE EXTRAORDINARY ARTISTMichelangelo, March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564

creator of key sculptural worksbest known for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512)

RENAISSANCE ART Focus on human body, “realistic,” symbolism

of secular values set in religious themes, glorification of antiquity, use of new concepts like linear perspective

LEONARDO, VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS, 1483-86

RAPHAEL, MADONNA AND CHILD, CA. 1505

SANDRO BOTTICELLI. ALLEGORY OF THE SPRING (PRIMAVERA). C. 1482

SANDRO BOTTICELLI. VENUS AND MARS. C. 1485

THE ARNOLFINI PORTRAIT, JAN VAN EYCK, 1434

PORTRAITS: DUKE AND DUCHESS OF URBINO, 1472

DONATELLO, DAVID, CA. 1440

ANDREA DEL VERROCCHIO. David. c. 1465-1470

MICHELANGELO, DAVID, 1501-1504

LINEAR PERSPECTIVE

RAPHAEL’S THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS

13: Heraclitus (Michelangelo). 14: Plato holding the Timaeus (Leonardo da Vinci). 15: Aristotle R: Apelles (Raphael)

PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA, THE FLAGELLATION OF CHRIST, 1460

GIORGIO VASARI, LIVES OF THE ARTISTS

On the Mona Lisa: “seeing that the eyes had that lustre and watery sheen which are always seen

in life, and around them were all those rosy and pearly tints, as well as the lashes, which cannot be represented without the greatest subtlety. The eyebrows, through his having shown the manner in which the hairs spring from the flesh, here more close and here more scanty, and curve according to the pores of the skin, could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful nostrils, rosy and tender, appeared to be alive. The mouth, with its opening, and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face, seemed, in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse. And, indeed, it may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every valiant craftsman, be he who he may, tremble and lose heart. He made use, also, of this device: Mona Lisa being very beautiful, he always employed, while he was painting her portrait, persons to play or sing, and jesters, who might make her remain merry, in order to take away that melancholy which painters are often wont to give to the portraits that they paint. And in this work of Leonardo's there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold; and it was held to be something marvellous, since the reality was not more alive”

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1506

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

Born in Florence, 1469 becomes secretary and

chancellor (diplomatic job) in 1498 negotiates with several Italian

and foreign courts, including the Medicis and several popes

1513, writes On Principalities (The Prince)

Dies in 1527 The Prince never gaining wide

popularity in his time

CONTEXT

Late Renaissance in Italy The work is circulated mainly in

Florence written for a specific ruler chastised for being un-diplomatic,

shockingly vulgar, and anti-Christian Period of rising papal power and fear of

foreign (Spanish and French) takeover – fear that Italian power/greatness is on its way out

IS IT A HUMANIST (RENAISSANCE) TEXT? Written in Italian, not elegant Latin Relies on contemporary examples as it does

ancient literature Machiavelli openly critiques humanism

suggests that Petrarch and others relied too much on the “style” of antiquity not on its substance

Humanists never put their writings to practical use

Anti-Christian reform Machiavelli thought the Church was the cause of

problems in the world and that internal reform of the Church would not make things better