Transcript Chapter 12 Renaissance and the Reformation 1350

Chapter 12
Renaissance and the
Reformation
1350 - 1600
Why did the Renaissance
occur?
What forces drove the new
way of thinking in Italy, and
eventually the rest of Europe?
Middle Ages - Before the Renaissance
 Before the Renaissance Europe lived in an era known as the Middle Ages
 Concerned with Church and Religion
 Activities centered around getting to heaven, rather than life here on earth
 Black Death killed 1/3rd of the European population.
 In order to escape the danger, in their minds, people turned to God and the church
Italian Renaissance
Renaissance literally means “rebirth”
Describes a period of Western European history between
1350 and 1600 (14th – 17th centuries)
Start of the Italian Renaissance
 Europe emerges from the Middle Ages and
experiences financial, artistic, social, scientific
and political growth
 Changes associated with the Renaissance first
occurred in the northern Italian Cities of
Florence, Venice and Genoa
 People become more interested in thinking
about themselves, their surroundings and their
everyday lives.
 Some of this change was due to the study of
Greek and Roman writings on scientific matters,
government philosophy and art
Start of Italian Renaissance Cont.
 They turned away from traditional study
of religion, medicine and law
 People became more interested in other
areas of science, the natural world,
biology and astronomy.
 They now studied mathematics,
engineering and architecture
 Artists, writers, musicians and composers
started creating work outside of the
church
 Artists signed their work
 Writers wrote autobiographies and
memoirs
Characteristics of the Italian Renaissance
1. Renaissance Italy was a largely urban society.
 Powerful city-states became the centers of Italian political, economic and social life.
 Within this growing urban society, their values and ideals can be described as secular humanism.
 Secular = not religious
 Humanism = placing the study and progress of human nature at the center of interests
 Example – Paintings
 Halo’s and Hieratic Scales
 Increasing wealth created new possibilities for the enjoyment of material things
Characteristics of the Italian Renaissance
2. The Italian Renaissance was an age of recovery from the disasters of the 14th century
(plague, political instability, and a decline of Church power)
 Italian thinkers became aware of their own Roman past
 Became intensely interested in the culture that had dominated the ancient Mediterranean world.
 Affected both politics and art
Characteristics of the Italian Renaissance
3. A new view of human beings emerged
 People started to emphasize individual ability
 A high regard for human worth and a realization of what individuals could achieve created a
new social ideal
 These individuals were well-rounded, universal people, capable of achievements in many areas
of life
 Leonardo da Vinci, for example, was a painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, and mathematician
Characteristics of the Italian Renaissance
4. Increased trade with Asia and other regions
5. Rise of rich and powerful merchants, who became patrons of the arts
6. Desire to beautify the city
Machiavelli and the New Statecraft
 Niccolo Machiavelli – wrote “The Prince”
 Most influential works on political power in the Western world
 Central idea – how to acquire – and keep – political power
 Point of view – Prince’s attitude toward power must be based on the understanding of human
nature, which is all humans are self-centered
 He wrote “One can make this generalization about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and
deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit.”
 First to abandon morality as the basis for analyzing political activity
Renaissance Society
 3 classes were established during the Middle Ages
 Clergy
 Nobility
 Peasants and Townspeople
Nobility
 Dominated Society
 Made up 2-3% of the population
 Baldassare Castiglione
 Italian Aristocrat
 Wrote “The Book of the Courtier” in 1528
 The book describes the characteristics of a perfect Renaissance noble
Characteristics of a Perfect Renaissance noble
1. Born, not made
 Expected to have character, grace and talent
2. Had to develop 2 basic skills
1. Perform military and physical exercises
2. Gain a classical education and enrich his life with
the arts
3. Needed to follow a certain standard of
conduct
1. Do not hide your achievements, but show them
with grace
Peasants and Townspeople
 Made up 85 – 90% of the total European population
 Serfdom decreased with the decline of the manorial system
 By 1500, especially in Western Europe, more and more peasants became legally free
 Townspeople made up the rest of the 3rd estate
 Middle Ages - Merchants and Artisans
 Renaissance – more diverse
Renaissance Townspeople
 Top of the urban society – Patricians
 Wealth from trade, industry and banking helped them to dominate their
communities economically, socially and politically
 Burghers (shopkeepers, artisans, guild masters, and guild members)
 Provided the goods and services for their fellow townspeople
 Workers
 Earned pitiful wages
 Lived miserable lives
 Unemployed
30-40% of Urban Population
Family and Marriage
 Family bond was a source of great security in the dangerous urban world of Renaissance
Italy
 To maintain the family, parents carefully arranged marriages
 Strengthen business or family ties
 Details were worked out well in advance, sometimes when the children were only 2 or 3 years old
 Most important aspect of the contract was the dowry
 Dowry = sum of money given by the wife’s family to the husband upon marriage
Family Roles
 Children
 Father/Husband
 Center of the Italian family
 Gave his name, managed all
finances
 Wife had no share in his wealth
 Made all the decisions that
determined the children’s lives
 Mother/Wife
 Supervise the household
 A father’s authority over his children was
absolute until he died or formally freed his
children
 Did not become adults upon reaching a certain
age
 Adulthood came to children when their father’s
went before a judge and formally freed them
 Age of adulthood varied from the early teens to
the late twenties
Group Work
Create a modern day family structure
1. What are their roles within the family?
2. What are their roles within today’s society?
3. How are single parents able to perform all responsibilities
necessary?
4. How does this differ Renaissance Italy?
Renaissance Arts and Paintings
The Intellectual and Artistic Renaissance
The Birth of Venus
The Vitruvian Man
Italian Renaissance Humanism
 Key intellectual movement of the Renaissance was Humanism
 Humanism was based on the study of the classics, the literary works of ancient Greece and Rome
 Studied grammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy, and history
 All of these were based on the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors
 Today these subjects are called humanities
Vernacular Literature
Humanist emphasis on classical Latin led to its widespread
use in the writings of scholars, lawyers, and theologians
Some writers wrote in the vernacular (the language
spoken in their own regions)
14th century, literary works of the Italian author Dante and
the English author Geoffrey Chaucer helped make
vernacular literature more popular
Dante’s Masterpiece
 Divine Comedy – Italian Vernacular
 Story of the soul’s journey to salvation
 Poem is divided into three major sections
 Hell
 Purgatory
 Heaven or Paradise
Geoffrey Chaucer
 The Canterbury Tales – English vernacular
 Beauty of expression and clear, forceful language were important in making
his dialect the chief ancestor of the modern English language
 Consists of a collection of stories told by a group of 29 pilgrims journeying to the
tomb of Saint Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, England
 The format gave him the chance to portray an entire range of English society,
from the high to the low born
Education in the Renaissance
 Renaissance humanists believed that education could dramatically change human beings
 At the core of humanists schools were the liberal studies.
 Believed that the liberal studies enabled individuals to reach their full potential
 Liberal studies are:
 History
 Moral Philosophy
 Eloquence (or rhetoric)
 Letters (grammar and logic)
 Poetry
 Astronomy
 Mathematics
 Music
The purpose of a liberal education was to produce
individuals who follow a path of virtue and wisdom.
These individuals should also possess rhetorical skills so
they can persuade others to take the same path
The Artistic Renaissance in Italy
 Sought to imitate nature in their works
 Artists wanted to see the reality of the objects they were portraying
 Artists were developing a new world perspective
 In this new view, human beings became the focus of attention
“Center and Measure of all things”
New Techniques in Paintings
 Frescoes painted by Masaccio (muh ZAH chee oh) in Florence at the beginning of
the 15th century are regarded as the 1st masterpieces of early renaissance art
 A Fresco is a painting done on fresh, wet plaster with water-based paints.
 The realism of perspective became a signature of Renaissance painting
 Using geometry to understand the laws of perspective and the organization of space
and light, and studying human movement and anatomy perfected this realistic style
of painting
 The realistic portrayal of individual persons, especially the human nude, became one
of the chief aims of Italian Renaissance art.
Masters of the High Renaissance
 Final stage of Italian Renaissance – flourished between 1490 and 1520
 High Renaissance is associated with three artistic giants
 Leonardo da Vinci
 Raphael
 Michelangelo
Leonardo da Vinci
 Mastered the art of realistic painting
 Dissected human bodies to better see how nature worked
 Stressed the need to advance beyond such realism
 It was his goal to create idealized forms that would capture the perfection of nature and
the individual – perfection that could not be expressed fully by a realistic style
Raphael
 At age 25, Raphael was already regarded as one of Italy’s greatest painters
 Especially admired for his numerous Madonna’s (paintings of the Virgin Mary)
 In these, he tried to achieve an ideal of beauty far surpassing, human standards
 Also well known for his frescoes in the Vatican Palace
 His School of Athens reveals a world of balance, harmony and order
 These were the underlying principles of the art of the classical world of Greece and
Rome
Michelangelo
 Painter, sculptor, and architect
 Fiercely driven by his desire to create, he worked with great passion and energy on a
remarkable number of projects
 Sistine Chapel in Rome, reveal an ideal type of human being with perfect proportions
 The beauty of these idealized human beings is meant to be a reflection of divine beauty
 The more beautiful the body, the more godlike the figure
The Northern Artistic Renaissance
 Artists in northern Europe became interested in portraying their world realistically
 Their approach was slightly different from the Italians.
 Particularly true for artists of the low counties (present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands
 Circumstances played a role in the differences
 Italian churches had large wall spaces that allowed for paintings in realistic settings
 In the North, Gothic Cathedrals did not allow for frescoes
 Thus, northern artists painted illustrations for books and wooden panels for altarpieces
The Northern Artistic Renaissance Cont.
 The most important artistic center in the north was Flanders.
 The Flemish painter Jan van Eyck was among the first to use oil paint, which allowed the
artist to use a wide variety of colors and create fine details.
 Each detail was painted as it was seen
 At first, northern Renaissance painters did not study the laws of perspective, but achieved
realism through observing reality.
Albrecht Durer
 German Artist, Albrecht Durer incorporated the laws of perspective
 His famous Adoration of the Magi keeps the northern emphasis on details but fits them
together harmoniously according to the laws of perspective
 Like the Italian artists of the High Renaissance, Durer tried to achieve a standard of ideal
beauty based on a careful examination of the human form.