Tell me about the Renaissance Mary Noh

The Renaissance took place in Italy. There were many distinct events that occurred during the
Renaissance but one can interpret the era as many different things. Vasari, an Italian painter
used the term Renaissance to describe the events of glory of the classical past being reborn
in the work of rare man of genius after centuries. Although iconic, there were people before
him who thought the same. Petrarch was a fourteenth-century writer who was infatuated with
the ancient past and commented that a grand new era was dawning two centuries before
Vasari. One might wonder why the Renaissance was so iconic. One the main reasons why the
Renaissance was so influential and efficient was because of the Italian City States, Milan,
Venice, Florence, Rome and the Papal states. Although fragmented, each state had its own
speciality. The most powerful political force in Florence one of the city states was the Medici
family who were known for their banking. This great family held onto their power almost
continually for centuries. Another impressive Renaissance figure was Marcilio Fincino.
Influenced by Roman and Greek literature and philosophy, numerous beliefs and standard
recommenced.b Marsilio Ficino, a famous scholar eventually becoming an ordained priest,
lectured to an informal group of Florences cultural elite. His lectures became known as the
Platonic Academy. Ficino sought Plato as divinely inspired precursor to Christ and attempted
to synthesize Christian and Plantonic teachings. The most famous civic humanist and also
known as the political theorist of the era was Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli emphasized in
his book The Prince that a rulers moral duty was to preserve security and order, and to
sentence any action to obtain the result. Machiavellianism is still present in recent history such
as Hitler, Stalin and many more. Other dedicated groups were the North humanists. Also
known as Christian humanists, they interpreted Italian ideas to attitudes toward classical
antiquity. They thought that the best elements of classical and Christian cultures should be
combined. A book on education that had an even greater impact was Baldassare Castigliones
The Courtier. This treatise was meant to train and discipline the young man into the courtly
ideal, the gentleman. Many humanists thought that on another topic, women should be exposed
to classical models of moral behaviour and reasoning but also wondered if a program of study
that emphasized eloquence and action was proper for women, whose sphere was generally
understood to be private and domestic. Other influential individuals included Thomas More
who is most famous for his controversial dialogue Utopia. In this piece, he describes Utopia
as a community on an island somewhere beyond Europe where all children receive a good
education and adults divide their days between manual labour, business pursuits, and
intellectual activities. Contemporaries of More include Erasmus known for his two
fundamental themes throughout his work; Education is the means to reform, the key to moral
and intellectual improvement and that Christianity is an inner attitude of the heart of spirit.
Now Johann Gutenberg was an incredibly important person too because he was the main
person to cause the printing revolution. Gutenberg and his assistants made stamps later called
type for every letter of the alphabet and built racks that held the type in rows. This type could
be rearranged for every page and so used over and over. Within half a century of the
publication of Gutenbergs Bible in 1456, somewhere between 8 million and 20 million books
were printed in Europe. Art was a really big thing too in the Renaissance. The wealthy
merchant families of the Renaissance hired talented writers and artists in a system of
patronage. In the later fifteenth century, wealth individuals and rulers, rather than corporate
business groups and sponsored works of art as a means of glorifying themselves and their
families. The influence of humanism was so great that the perspective of art itself in Italy
changed dramatically. Renaissance portraits showed human ideals, often depicted in a more
realistic style. The content and style of art also shifted from the mostly religious and family
scenes of the Middle Ages to classical motifs and individual portraits. Renaissance artists
embodied exactly that. For example, the sculptor Donatello revived the classical figure, with
its balance and self-awareness and Jan van Eyck was one of the first artists to use oil-based
paints successfully. Michelangelo went to Rome and began a series of statues, paintings, and
architectural projects of considerable note, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo Da
Vinci painted The Last Supper and Mona Lisa, and also lived as an engineer, architect,
sculptor, and scientist. Raphael Sanzio became the most sought after artist in Europe, writing
treatises papers on his philosophy of art in which he emphasized the importance of developing
an orderly sequence of design and proportion. Titian developed an artistic style known as
mannerism in which artists sometimes distorted figures and heightened color to express
emotion and drama more intently. Humanism indubitably impact many aspects of Art in
Europe. The Renaissance was time of remarkable figures, events, and ideas and will be
remembered as an era of victory for humanity for years to come.