The Italian Renaissance

TERMS:
Renaissance
despotism
Florence
Cosimo de' Medici
Lorenzo the Magnificent
humanism
Francesco Petrarch
Dante Alighieri
Christine de Pisan
linear perspective
Leonardo de Vinci
Raphael
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Donatello
El Greco
Pope Julius II
Niccolo Machiavelli
 
DATES:
1375-1527 Italian Renaissance
1453 Fall of Constantinople to Turks (Ottomans)

TOPICS:
1. Renaissance begins in the Italian city states (Milan, Naples, Florence, Papal States, and Venice).  One must first define what is a Renaissance:  "rebirth" of classical (Greco- Roman) education and learning, especially in the humanist philosophies.  How the Renaissance represents changes from the Middle Ages is most obvious in the realm of art:  visual and textual.  The great Renaissance artists used new techniques to produce more realistic representations of human forms (very classical) as well as a more Platonic view of man (the idealism of Plato is revived).  Poets start writing in the vernacular rather than Latin, a recognition that human languages are just as beautiful as the divine language. One thing which remains from the Medieval period is an interest in the spirituality, yet on the whole, the Italian Renaissance is a more secular period.

2.  One of the reasons the Renaissance begins in Italy is because of Italian politics:  no unified Italian state, just several independent and very wealthy city-states.  As the center of trade, especially trade from the Byzantine and far east, Italy was well-positioned to revive classical Greek learning and well able to financially afford patronizing artists and writers.  Plus humanism produces an interest in self and personal identity / reputation: thus wealthy and powerful men such as the Medicis, the Borgias, and Pope Julius II are eager to have artists immortalize them in art.

3. The late fifteenth century also represents the age of nation building in Western Europe:  the complete and final end of feudalism.  Spain (under Isabella and Ferdinand), England (under Henry VII) and France all develop concepts of "state" and seek to create a sense of cultural, economic, and legal unity.  Thus the Muslims and the Jews are expelled from Spain, taxes are organized in France, and the fractious noble houses of Lancaster and York are brought under control in England.  At the same time, men such as Machiavelli created new ideas about leadership.