The Renaissance

The Renaissance
• from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth";
Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and
nascere "be born"
• A cultural movement that spanned roughly the
14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the
late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest
of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to
refer to the historic era, but since the changes of
the Renaissance were not uniform, this is a very
general use of the term.
 The Renaissance
• Traditionally, this intellectual transformation has
resulted in the Renaissance being viewed as a
bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern
era. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions
in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social
and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known
for its artistic developments and the
contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da
Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term
"Renaissance men".
 Black Death
• One theory that has been advanced is that the
devastation caused by the Black Death in Florence (and
elsewhere in Europe) resulted in a shift in the world view
of people in 14th-century Italy. Italy was particularly
badly hit by the plague, and it has been speculated that
the familiarity with death that this brought thinkers to
dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on
spirituality and the afterlife. It has also been argued that
the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety,
manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art.
However, this does not fully explain why the
Renaissance occurred specifically in Italy in the 14th
century. The Black Death was a pandemic that affected
all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy. The
Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the
result of the complex interaction of the above factors.
 Black Death
• The Black Death, or the Black Plague, was one of the
deadliest pandemics in human history, widely thought to
have been caused by a bacterium named Yersinia pestis
(Bubonic plague), but recently attributed by some to
other diseases.
• The pandemic is thought to have begun in Central Asia
or India, and spread to Europe during the 1340s. The
total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at
75 million people, approximately 25–50 million of which
occurred in Europe. The Black Death is estimated to
have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population. It may
have reduced the world's population from an estimated
450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400.
• The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis
because no one knew its cause or how it spread. In 1348, the
plague spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government
authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the
European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was
not uncommon for as much as fifty percent of the population to die.
Monasteries and priests were especially hard hit since they cared for
the Black Death's victims. Because fourteenth century healers were
at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological
forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible
reasons for the plague's emergence. No one in the fourteenth
century considered rat control a way to ward off the plague, and
people began to believe only God's anger could produce such
horrific displays. There were many attacks against Jewish
communities. In August of 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz
and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year,
Christians murdered two thousand Jews in Strasbourg. Where
government authorities were concerned, most monarchs instituted
measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned black
market speculators, set price controls on grain, and outlawed large-
scale fishing.
• At worst they contributed to a continent-wide downward
spiral. The hardest hit lands, like England, were unable
to buy grain abroad: from France because of the
prohibition, and from most of the rest of the grain
producers because of crop failures from shortage of
labour. Any grain that could be shipped was eventually
taken by pirates or looters to be sold on the black
market. Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most
notably England and Scotland, had been at war, using
up much of their treasury and exacerbating inflation. In
1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death,
England and France went to war in what would become
known as the Hundred Years' War. Malnutrition, poverty,
disease and hunger, coupled with war, growing inflation
and other economic concerns made Europe in the mid-
fourteenth century ripe for tragedy.
Illustration of the Black Death
from the Toggenburg Bible (1411)
 Monks, disfigured by the plague,
being blessed by a priest.
England, 1360–75

Jews are burnt alive.

Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence and patron of arts
• It has long been a matter of debate why the
Renaissance began in Florence, and not
elsewhere in Italy. Scholars have noted several
features unique to Florentine cultural life which
may have caused such a cultural movement.
Many have emphasized the role played by the
Medici family in patronizing and stimulating the
arts. Lorenzo de' Medici devoted huge sums to
commissioning works from Florence's leading
artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro
Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti
One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its
development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di
Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting
as a window into space, but it was not until the writings of
architects Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and Leon Battista
Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalized as an
artistic technique. The development of perspective was part of
a wider trend towards realism in the arts. To that end, painters
also developed other techniques, studying light, shadow, and,
famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, human anatomy.
Underlying these changes in artistic method was a renewed
desire to depict the beauty of nature, and to unravel the
axioms of aesthetics, with the works of Leonardo,
Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that
were to be much imitated by other artists. Other notable
artists include Sandro Botticelli, working for the Medici in
Florence, Donatello another Florentine and Titian in Venice,
among others.
• In England, the Elizabethan era marked
the beginning of the English Renaissance
with the work of writers William
Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John
Milton, and Edmund Spenser, as well as
great artists, architects (such as Inigo
Jones), and composers such as Thomas
Tallis, John Taverner, and William Byrd.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Self-portrait in red chalk,

circa 1512 to 151

(April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was a Florentine polymath,

who worked as a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor,
anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.
• Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a
painter. His works, the Mona Lisa and The Last
Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and
most parodied portrait and religious painting of all
time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's
Creation of Adam. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man
is also iconic. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings
survive, the small number due to his constant, and
frequently disastrous, experimentation with new
techniques, and his chronic procrastination.
Nevertheless, these few works, together with his
notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific
diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of
painting, comprise a contribution to later generations
of artists, rivalled only by that of his younger
contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo's earliest known drawing, the Arno Valley, (1473) - Uffizi
Annunciation (1475–1480)—Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo's earliest complete work
Mona Lisa
(Italian: La Gioconda, French:La Joconde)
Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503–1506
The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci, 1495–1498
Vitruvian Man (ca. 1487). Pen and ink with wash over metalpoint on paper,
Michelangelo di Lodovico
Buonarroti Simoni

March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), commonly known

as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter,
sculptor, architect, poet and engineer.
• Michelangelo's output in every field during his
long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume
of correspondence, sketches and reminiscences
that survive is also taken into account, he is the
best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two
of his best-known works, the Pietà and the
David, were sculpted before he turned thirty.
Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo
also created two of the most influential works in
fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes
from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last
Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel
in Rome. Later in life he designed the dome of
St. Peter's Basilica in the same city and
revolutionised classical architecture with his use
of the giant order of pilasters.
Pietà Michelangelo, 1499 Marble
David Michelangelo, 1504 Carrara Marble
The Last Judgment Michelangelo, 1534-1541 Fresco Sistine Chapel, Vatican City
St Bartholomew displaying his flayed skin (a self-portrait by Michelangelo)
in The Last Judgment.
God creates Adam by Michelangelo.
 St. Peter's Basilica
Basilica Sancti Petri (Latin)
Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano (Italian)
 Raphael Sanzio,

Self-portrait by Raphael,
missing since World War II

usually known by his first name alone (in Italian

Raffaello) (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520),
was an Italian painter and architect of the High
Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of
his paintings and drawings.
Raphael was enormously productive, running an
unusually large workshop, and, despite his early
death at thirty-seven, a large body of his work
remains, especially in the Vatican, whose frescoed
Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest,
work of his career, although unfinished at his death.
After his early years in Rome, much of his work was
designed by him and executed largely by the
workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss
of quality. He was extremely influential in his
lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly
known from his collaborative printmaking. After his
death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo
was more widespread until the 18th and 19th
centuries, when Raphael's more serene and
harmonious qualities were again regarded as the
highest models.
The School of Athens, Stanza della Segnatura
Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father; Christ supported by two angels, c.1490
The Wedding of the Virgin, Raphael's most sophisticated altarpiece of this period.
Transfiguration, 1520,
unfinished at his death.
Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di
Betto Bardi)

(1386 – December 13, 1466) was a

famous early Renaissance Italian
artist and sculptor from Florence.
• He is, in part, known for his work in basso
rilievo, a form of shallow relief sculpture
that, in Donatello's case, incorporated
significant 15th-century developments in
perspectival illusionism.
Statue of
Habacuc
(popularly known
as Zuccone)
for the Giotto's
Bell Tower.
It is now in the
Museo dell'Opera
del Duomo of
Florence.
Statue of St. George
in Orsanmichele, Florence.
Donatello's
equestrian monument
of Gattamelata at Padua.
Palazzo Vecchio.
 Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni
Filipepi, better known as Sandro
Botticelli or Il Botticello

Alleged self-portrait of Botticelli, in his Adoration of the Magi. Uffizi, Florence.

 The Birth of Venus, 1486. Uffizi, Florence.

some experts believe it to be a celebration of the love of Giuliano di Piero de' Medici
(who died in the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478) for Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci,
who lived in Portovenere, a town by the sea with a local tradition of being the
birthplace of Venus.
Venus and Mars, 1483.
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio
(c.1485 – August 27, 1576), better known
as Titian,
 Salome, or Judith;
this religious work also functions as an idealized portrait of a beauty,
a genre developed by Titian, supposedly often using Venetian courtesans as models.
It took Titian two years
(1516–1518) to
complete the oil
painting Assunta,
whose dynamic three-
tier composition and
gorgeous color
scheme established
him as the pre-
eminent painter north
of Rome.
The End