The Renaissance –

meaning "rebirth,"
was a period in European history marking a transition from the
Middle Ages to modernity,
characterized by a renewed interest in classical art, literature,
science, and philosophy.
Generally spanning from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
The Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence, then
spread to the rest of Italy and later throughout Europe.
The term rinascita ("rebirth") first appeared in Lives of the Artists (c.
1550) by Giorgio Vasari, while the corresponding French word
renaissance was adopted into English as the term for this period
during the 1830s.

The Renaissance's intellectual basis was founded in its version of:

humanism, derived from the concept of Roman humanitas and the
rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of
Protagoras, who said that "man is the measure of all things".
Although the invention of metal movable type sped the
dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of
the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe: the first traces
appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century, in particular with
the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto.

As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative

flowering of literary Latin and an explosion of vernacular literatures,
beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical
sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch; the development of
linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural
reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform.

It saw myriad artistic developments and contributions from such

polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term
"Renaissance man”. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the
development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in science
to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. The
period also saw revolutions in other intellectual and social scientific
pursuits, as well as the introduction of modern banking and the field of
accounting.

The Renaissance period started during the crisis of the Late Middle Ages
and conventionally ends with the waning of humanism, and the advents of
the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and in art, the Baroque period.
It had a different period and characteristics in different regions, such as:

Italian Renaissance
Northern Renaissance
Spanish Renaissance.

In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long

Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the
17th century.

The traditional view focuses more on the Renaissance's early modern

aspects and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians
today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an
extension of the Middle Ages.

Italian Renaissance

The beginnings of the period—the early Renaissance of the 15th

century and the Italian Proto-Renaissance from around 1250 or 1300
—overlap considerably with the Late Middle Ages, conventionally
dated to c. 1350–1500, and the Middle Ages themselves were a long
period filled with gradual changes, like the modern age; as a
transitional period between both, the Renaissance has close
similarities to both, especially the late and early sub-periods of
either.
The Renaissance began in Florence, one of the many states of Italy.
The Italian Renaissance concluded in 1527 when Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V launched an assault on Rome during the war of
the League of Cognac. Nevertheless, its impact endured in the art of
renowned Italian painters like Tintoretto, Sofonisba Anguissola, and
Paolo Veronese, who continued their work during the mid-to-late
16th century.

Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and
characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors, including Florence's social
and civic peculiarities at the time: its political structure, the patronage of
its dominant family, the Medici, and the migration of Greek scholars and
their texts to Italy following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman
Empire. Other major centers were Venice, Genoa, Milan, Rome during the
Renaissance Papacy, and Naples. From Italy, the Renaissance spread
throughout Europe and also to American, African and Asian territories
ruled by the European colonial powers of the time or where Christian
missionaries were active.

The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and in line

with general skepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been
much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century
glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual cultural heroes as
 "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a
term and as a historical delineation.

Some observers have questioned whether the Renaissance was a cultural

"advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of
pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity, while social and economic
historians, especially of the longue durée, have instead focused on the
continuity between the two eras, which are linked, as Panofsky observed,
"by a thousand ties".

The word has also been extended to other historical and cultural
movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance (8th and 9th centuries),
Ottonian Renaissance (10th and 11th century), and the Renaissance of
the 12th century.[

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected

European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in
Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its
influence was felt in art, architecture, philosophy, literature, music,
science, technology, politics, religion, and other aspects of
intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist
method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in
art.

Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's

monastic libraries the Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of
antiquity, while the fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of
émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek,
many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West. It was in their new
focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so
markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th
century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural
sciences, philosophy, and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts.

In the revival of neoplatonism, Renaissance humanists did not reject

Christianity; on the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works
were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance
art. But a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached
religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition,
many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were
brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western
scholars for the first time since late antiquity. This new engagement with
Greek Christian works, and particularly the return to the original Greek of
the New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus,
helped pave the way for the Reformation.

Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the
sculpture of Nicola Pisano, Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to
portray the human form realistically, developing techniques to render
perspective and light more naturally. Political philosophers, most famously
Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe political life as it really was, that is
to understand it rationally. A critical contribution to Italian Renaissance
humanism, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote De hominis dignitate
(Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486), a series of theses on philosophy,
natural thought, faith, and magic defended against any opponent on the
grounds of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek,
Renaissance authors also began increasingly to use vernacular languages;
combined with the introduction of the printing press, this allowed many
more people access to books, especially the Bible.

In all, the Renaissance can be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to

study and improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of
ideas from antiquity and through novel approaches to thought. Political
philosopher Hans Kohn describes it as an age where "Men looked for new
foundations"; some like Erasmus and Thomas More envisioned new
reformed spiritual foundations, others. in the words of Machiavelli, una
lunga sperienza delle cose moderne ed una continua lezione delle antiche
(a long experience with modern life and a continuous learning from
antiquity).

Sociologist Rodney Stark plays down the Renaissance in favor of the

earlier innovations of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages, which
married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism.
This analysis argues that, whereas the great European states (France and
Spain) were absolute monarchies, and others were under direct Church
control, the independent city-republics of Italy took over the principles of
capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast unprecedented
Commercial Revolution that preceded and financed the Renaissance.

Historian Leon Poliakov offers a critical view in his seminal study of

European racist thought: The Aryan Myth. According to Poliakov, the use
of ethnic origin myths are first used by Renaissance humanists "in the
service of a new born chauvinism".

Many argue that the ideas characterizing the Renaissance had their origin
in Florence at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, in particular with
the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–1374), as
well as the paintings of Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337). Some writers date
the Renaissance quite precisely; one proposed starting point is 1401,
when the rival geniuses Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi
competed for the contract to build the bronze doors for the Baptistery of
the Florence Cathedral (Ghiberti won). Others see more general
competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti,
Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity
of the Renaissance.

Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, and why
it began when it did. Accordingly, several theories have been put forward
to explain its origins. Peter Rietbergen posits that various influential Proto-
Renaissance movements started from roughly 1300 onwards across many
regions of Europe

Latin and Greek phases of Renaissance humanism

See also: Greek scholars in the Renaissance and Transmission of the

Greek Classics

Coluccio Salutati

In stark contrast to the High Middle Ages, when Latin scholars focused
almost entirely on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural science,
philosophy and mathematics,[e] Renaissance scholars were most
interested in recovering and studying Latin and Greek literary, historical,
and oratorical texts. Broadly speaking, this began in the 14th century with
a Latin phase, when Renaissance scholars such as Petrarch, Coluccio
Salutati (1331–1406), Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364–1437), and Poggio
Bracciolini (1380–1459) scoured the libraries of Europe in search of works
by such Latin authors as Cicero, Lucretius, Livy, and Seneca.[34] By the
early 15th century, the bulk of the surviving such Latin literature had been
recovered; the Greek phase of Renaissance humanism was under way, as
Western European scholars turned to recovering ancient Greek literary,
historical, oratorical and theological texts. [35]

Unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western
Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very
limited in medieval Western Europe. Ancient Greek works on science,
mathematics, and philosophy had been studied since the High Middle
Ages in Western Europe and in the Islamic Golden Age (normally in
translation), but Greek literary, oratorical and historical works (such as
Homer, the Greek dramatists, Demosthenes and Thucydides) were not
studied in either the Latin or medieval Islamic worlds; in the Middle Ages
these sorts of texts were only studied by Byzantine scholars. Some argue
that the Timurid Renaissance in Samarkand and Herat, whose
magnificence toned with Florence as the center of a cultural rebirth, [36][37]
were linked to the Ottoman Empire, whose conquests led to the migration
of Greek scholars to Italian cities.[16][38] One of the greatest achievements
of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural
works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity.

Muslim logicians, most notably Avicenna and Averroes, had inherited

Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant.
Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way
through the Arab West into Iberia and Sicily, which became important
centers for this transmission of ideas. Between the 11th and 13th
centuries, many schools dedicated to the translation of philosophical and
scientific works from Classical Arabic to Medieval Latin were established in
Iberia, most notably the Toledo School of Translators. This work of
translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and
disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in
history.[39]

The movement to reintegrate the regular study of Greek literary,

historical, oratorical, and theological texts back into the Western
European curriculum is usually dated to the 1396 invitation from Coluccio
Salutati to the Byzantine diplomat and scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (c.
1355–1415) to teach Greek in Florence.[40] This legacy was continued by a
number of expatriate Greek scholars, from Basilios Bessarion to Leo
Allatius.

Social and political structures in Italy

A political map of the Italian Peninsula c.

1494
The unique political structures of Italy during the Late Middle Ages have
led some to theorize that its unusual social climate allowed the
emergence of a rare cultural efflorescence. Italy did not exist as a political
entity in the early modern period. Instead, it was divided into smaller city-
states and territories: the Neapolitans controlled the south, the
Florentines and the Romans at the center, the Milanese and the Genoese
to the north and west respectively, and the Venetians to the north east.
15th-century Italy was one of the most urbanized areas in Europe.[41] Many
of its cities stood among the ruins of ancient Roman buildings; it seems
likely that the classical nature of the Renaissance was linked to its origin
in the Roman Empire's heartland.[42]

Historian and political philosopher Quentin Skinner points out that Otto of
Freising (c. 1114–1158), a German bishop visiting north Italy during the
12th century, noticed a widespread new form of political and social
organization, observing that Italy appeared to have exited from feudalism
so that its society was based on merchants and commerce. Linked to this
was anti-monarchical thinking, represented in the famous early
Renaissance fresco cycle The Allegory of Good and Bad Government by
Ambrogio Lorenzetti (painted 1338–1340), whose strong message is about
the virtues of fairness, justice, republicanism and good administration.
Holding both Church and Empire at bay, these city republics were devoted
to notions of liberty. Skinner reports that there were many defences of
liberty such as the Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475) celebration of Florentine
genius not only in art, sculpture and architecture, but "the remarkable
efflorescence of moral, social and political philosophy that occurred in
Florence at the same time".[43]

Even cities and states beyond central Italy, such as the Republic of
Florence at this time, were also notable for their merchant republics,
especially the Republic of Venice. Although in practice these were
oligarchical, and bore little resemblance to a modern democracy, they did
have democratic features and were responsive states, with forms of
participation in governance and belief in liberty. [43][44][45] The relative
political freedom they afforded was conducive to academic and artistic
advancement.[46] Likewise, the position of Italian cities such as Venice as
great trading centres made them intellectual crossroads. Merchants
brought with them ideas from far corners of the globe, particularly the
Levant. Venice was Europe's gateway to trade with the East, and a
producer of fine glass, while Florence was a capital of textiles. The wealth
such business brought to Italy meant large public and private artistic
projects could be commissioned and individuals had more leisure time for
study.[46]

Black Death

Main article: Black Death

 Pieter Bruegel's The Triumph of Death (c.
1562) reflects the social upheaval and terror that followed the plague that
devastated medieval Europe.

One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation in Florence
caused by the Black Death, which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350,
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 resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their
lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife.[47] It has also
been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety,
manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art.[48] 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.[19]

The plague was carried by fleas on sailing vessels returning from the ports
of Asia, spreading quickly due to lack of proper sanitation: the population
of England, then about 4.2 million, lost 1.4 million people to the bubonic
plague. Florence's population was nearly halved in the year 1348. As a
result of the decimation in the populace the value of the working class
increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To answer the
increased need for labor, workers traveled in search of the most favorable
position economically.[49]

The demographic decline due to the plague had economic consequences:

the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30–40% in most
parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400.[50] Landholders faced a great
loss, but for ordinary men and women it was a windfall. The survivors of
the plague found not only that the prices of food were cheaper but also
that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property
from their dead relatives.

The spread of disease was significantly more rampant in areas of poverty.

Epidemics ravaged cities, particularly children. Plagues were easily spread
by lice, unsanitary drinking water, armies, or by poor sanitation. Children
were hit the hardest because many diseases, such as typhus and
congenital syphilis, target the immune system, leaving young children
without a fighting chance. Children in city dwellings were more affected
by the spread of disease than the children of the wealthy. [51]

The Black Death caused greater upheaval to Florence's social and political
structure than later epidemics. Despite a significant number of deaths
among members of the ruling classes, the government of Florence
continued to function during this period. Formal meetings of elected
representatives were suspended during the height of the epidemic due to
the chaotic conditions in the city, but a small group of officials was
appointed to conduct the affairs of the city, which ensured continuity of
government.[52]

Cultural conditions in Florence

See also: Florentine Renaissance art

Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence and patron of

arts (portrait by Vasari)

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 that may have caused such a cultural
movement. Many have emphasized the role played by the Medici, a
banking family and later ducal ruling house, in patronizing and stimulating
the arts. Some historians have postulated that Florence was the birthplace
of the Renaissance as a result of luck, i.e., because "Great Men" were born
there by chance:[53] Leonardo, Botticelli and Michelangelo were all born in
Tuscany. Arguing that such chance seems improbable, other historians
have contended that these "Great Men" were only able to rise to
prominence because of the prevailing cultural conditions at the time. [54]

Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) was the catalyst for an enormous amount
of arts patronage, encouraging his countrymen to commission works from
the leading artists of Florence, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro
Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti.[15] Works by Neri di Bicci, Botticelli,
Leonardo, and Filippino Lippi had been commissioned additionally by the
Convent of San Donato in Scopeto in Florence. [55]
The Renaissance was certainly underway before Lorenzo de' Medici came
to power – indeed, before the Medici family itself achieved hegemony in
Florentine society.

Characteristics

Humanism

Main articles: Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanism in Northern

Europe, and List of Renaissance humanists

In some ways, Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy but a method

of learning. In contrast to the medieval scholastic mode, which focused on
resolving contradictions between authors, Renaissance humanists would
study ancient texts in their original languages and appraise them through
a combination of reasoning and empirical evidence. Humanist education
was based on the programme of Studia Humanitatis, the study of five
humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy, and rhetoric.
Although historians have sometimes struggled to define humanism
precisely, most have settled on "a middle of the road definition... the
movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate the language, literature,
learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome". [56] Above all, humanists
asserted "the genius of man ... the unique and extraordinary ability of the
human mind".[57]

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, writer of the famous

Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has been called the "Manifesto of the
Renaissance"[58]

Humanist scholars shaped the intellectual landscape throughout the early

modern period. Political philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and
Thomas More revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers and applied
them in critiques of contemporary government, following the Islamic steps
of Ibn Khaldun.[59][60] Pico della Mirandola wrote the "manifesto" of the
Renaissance, the Oration on the Dignity of Man, a vibrant defence of
thinking.[citation needed] Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475), another humanist, is
most known for his work Della vita civile ("On Civic Life"; printed 1528),
which advocated civic humanism, and for his influence in refining the
Tuscan vernacular to the same level as Latin. Palmieri drew on Roman
philosophers and theorists, especially Cicero, who, like Palmieri, lived an
active public life as a citizen and official, as well as a theorist and
philosopher and also Quintilian. Perhaps the most succinct expression of
his perspective on humanism is in a 1465 poetic work La città di vita, but
an earlier work, Della vita civile, is more wide-ranging. Composed as a
series of dialogues set in a country house in the Mugello countryside
outside Florence during the plague of 1430, Palmieri expounds on the
qualities of the ideal citizen. The dialogues include ideas about how
children develop mentally and physically, how citizens can conduct
themselves morally, how citizens and states can ensure probity in public
life, and an important debate on the difference between that which is
pragmatically useful and that which is honest. [citation needed]

The humanists believed that it is important to transcend to the afterlife

with a perfect mind and body, which could be attained with education.
The purpose of humanism was to create a universal man whose person
combined intellectual and physical excellence and who was capable of
functioning honorably in virtually any situation. [61] This ideology was
referred to as the uomo universale, an ancient Greco-Roman ideal.
Education during the Renaissance was mainly composed of ancient
literature and history as it was thought that the classics provided moral
instruction and an intensive understanding of human behavior.

Humanism and libraries

A unique characteristic of some Renaissance libraries is that they were

open to the public. These libraries were places where ideas were
exchanged and where scholarship and reading were considered both
pleasurable and beneficial to the mind and soul. As freethinking was a
hallmark of the age, many libraries contained a wide range of writers.
Classical texts could be found alongside humanist writings. These informal
associations of intellectuals profoundly influenced Renaissance culture. An
essential tool of Renaissance librarianship was the catalog that listed,
described, and classified a library's books. [62] Some of the richest
"bibliophiles" built libraries as temples to books and knowledge. A number
of libraries appeared as manifestations of immense wealth joined with a
love of books. In some cases, cultivated library builders were also
committed to offering others the opportunity to use their collections.
Prominent aristocrats and princes of the Church created great libraries for
the use of their courts, called "court libraries", and were housed in lavishly
designed monumental buildings decorated with ornate woodwork, and the
walls adorned with frescoes (Murray, Stuart A.P.).

Art

Main article: Renaissance art

Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages
and rise of the Modern world. 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 demonstrations of architect
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon
Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalized as an artistic
technique.[63]

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)

demonstrates the effect writers of Antiquity had on Renaissance thinkers.
Based on the specifications in Vitruvius' De architectura (1st century BC),
Leonardo tried to draw the perfectly proportioned man. (Gallerie
dell'Accademia, Venice)

The development of perspective was part of a wider trend toward realism

in the arts.[64] Painters 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 much imitated by other artists. [65] Other notable
artists include Sandro Botticelli, working for the Medici in Florence,
Donatello, another Florentine, and Titian in Venice, among others.

In the Low Countries, a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed. The

work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck was particularly influential
on the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the
introduction of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism
in representation. Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would
inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life. [66]
In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains
of ancient classical buildings. With rediscovered knowledge from the 1st-
century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics,
Brunelleschi formulated the Renaissance style that emulated and
improved on classical forms. His major feat of engineering was building
the dome of Florence Cathedral.[67] Another building demonstrating this
style is the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua, built by Alberti. The
outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance was the rebuilding
of St. Peter's Basilica, combining the skills of Bramante, Michelangelo,
Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno.

During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and

entablatures as an integrated system. The Roman orders types of columns
are used: Tuscan and Composite. These can either be structural,
supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against a
wall in the form of pilasters. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as
an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Brunelleschi.
[68]
Arches, semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style) segmental, are often
used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals. There may
be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the
arch. Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a monumental.
Renaissance vaults do not have ribs; they are semi-circular or segmental
and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault, which is frequently
rectangular.

Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired antiquity and
kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past. Nicola Pisano (c. 1220
– c. 1278) imitated classical forms by portraying scenes from the Bible.
His Annunciation, from the Pisa Baptistry, demonstrates that classical
models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary
movement.[69]

Science

Main articles: History of science in the Renaissance and Renaissance

technology
See also: Medical Renaissance
 Anonymous portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus

(c. 1580) Portrait of Luca Pacioli, father of

accounting, painted by Jacopo de' Barbari,[f] 1495 (Museo di Capodimonte)

Applied innovation extended to commerce. At the end of the 15th century,

Luca Pacioli published the first work on bookkeeping, making him the
founder of accounting.[7]

The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of the printing press in
about 1440 democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of
more widely distributed ideas. In the first period of the Italian
Renaissance, humanists favored the study of humanities over natural
philosophy or applied mathematics, and their reverence for classical
sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the
universe. Writing around 1450, Nicholas of Cusa anticipated the
heliocentric worldview of Copernicus, but in a philosophical fashion.

Science and art were intermingled in the early Renaissance, with

polymath artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational
drawings of anatomy and nature. Leonardo set up controlled experiments
in water flow, medical dissection, and systematic study of movement and
aerodynamics, and he devised principles of research method that led
Fritjof Capra to classify him as the "father of modern science". [g] Other
examples of Da Vinci's contribution during this period include machines
designed to saw marbles and lift monoliths, and new discoveries in
acoustics, botany, geology, anatomy, and mechanics. [72]
A suitable environment had developed to question classical scientific
doctrine. The discovery in 1492 of the New World by Christopher
Columbus challenged the classical worldview. The works of Ptolemy (in
geography) and Galen (in medicine) were found to not always match
everyday observations. As the Reformation and Counter-Reformation
clashed, the Northern Renaissance showed a decisive shift in focus from
Aristotelean natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological sciences
(botany, anatomy, and medicine).[73] The willingness to question
previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of
major scientific advancements.

Some view this as a "Scientific Revolution", heralding the beginning of the

modern age,[74] others as an acceleration of a continuous process
stretching from the ancient world to the present day. [75] Significant
scientific advances were made during this time by Galileo Galilei, Tycho
Brahe, and Johannes Kepler.[76] Copernicus, in De revolutionibus orbium
coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), posited that the
Earth moved around the Sun. De humani corporis fabrica (On the
Workings of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius, gave a new
confidence to the role of dissection, observation, and the mechanistic
view of anatomy.[77]

Another important development was in the process for discovery, the

scientific method,[77] focusing on empirical evidence and the importance of
mathematics, while discarding much of Aristotelian science. Early and
influential proponents of these ideas included Copernicus, Galileo, and
Francis Bacon.[78][79] The new scientific method led to great contributions in
the fields of astronomy, physics, biology, and anatomy. [h][80]

Navigation and geography

Further information: Age of Discovery

The Cantino planisphere (1502), the

earliest world map detailing Portuguese maritime exploration

During the Renaissance, extending from 1450 to 1650, [81] every continent
was visited and mostly mapped by Europeans, except the south polar
continent now known as Antarctica. This development is depicted in the
large world map Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula made by the Dutch
cartographer Joan Blaeu in 1648 to commemorate the Peace of
Westphalia.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from

Spain seeking a direct route to India of the Delhi Sultanate. He
accidentally stumbled upon the Americas, but believed he had reached
the East Indies.

In 1606, the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon sailed from the East Indies
in the Dutch East India Company ship Duyfken and landed in Australia. He
charted about 300 km of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in
Queensland. More than thirty Dutch expeditions followed, mapping
sections of the north, west, and south coasts. In 1642–1643, Abel Tasman
circumnavigated the continent, proving that it was not joined to the
imagined south polar continent.

By 1650, Dutch cartographers had mapped most of the coastline of the

continent, which they named New Holland, except the east coast which
was charted in 1770 by James Cook.

The long-imagined south polar continent was eventually sighted in 1820.

Throughout the Renaissance it had been known as Terra Australis, or
'Australia' for short. However, after that name was transferred to New
Holland in the nineteenth century, the new name of 'Antarctica' was
bestowed on the south polar continent.[82]

Music

Main article: Renaissance music

See also: Renaissance dance and List of Renaissance composers

From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical

language, in particular the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school.
The development of printing made distribution of music possible on a wide
scale. Demand for music as entertainment and as an activity for educated
amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class.
Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe
coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style
that culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of
composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlande de Lassus,
Tomás Luis de Victoria, and William Byrd.

Religion

Further information: Renaissance Papacy, Reformation, and Counter-

Reformation
 Alexander VI, a Borgia Pope infamous for his
corruption

The new ideals of humanism, although more secular in some aspects,

developed against a Christian backdrop, especially in the Northern
Renaissance. Much, if not most, of the new art was commissioned by or in
dedication to the Roman Catholic Church.[26] However, the Renaissance
had a profound effect on contemporary theology, particularly in the way
people perceived the relationship between man and God. [26] Many of the
period's foremost theologians were followers of the humanist method,
including Erasmus, Huldrych Zwingli, Thomas More, Martin Luther, and
John Calvin.

Adoration of the Magi and Solomon adored

by the Queen of Sheba from the Farnese Hours (1546) by Giulio Clovio
marks the end of the Italian Renaissance of illuminated manuscript
together with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

The Renaissance began in times of religious turmoil. The Late Middle Ages
was a period of political intrigue surrounding the Papacy, culminating in
the Western Schism, in which three men simultaneously claimed to be
true Bishop of Rome.[83] While the schism was resolved by the Council of
Constance (1414), a resulting reform movement known as Conciliarism
sought to limit the power of the pope. Although the papacy eventually
emerged supreme in ecclesiastical matters by the Fifth Council of the
Lateran (1511), it was dogged by continued accusations of corruption,
most famously in the person of Pope Alexander VI, who was accused
variously of simony, nepotism, and fathering children (most of whom were
married off, presumably for the consolidation of power) while a cardinal.[84]

Churchmen such as Erasmus and Luther proposed reform to the Church,

often based on humanist textual criticism of the New Testament.[26] In
October 1517, Luther published the Ninety-five Theses, challenging papal
authority and criticizing its perceived corruption, particularly with regard
to instances of sold indulgences.[i] The 95 Theses led to the Reformation, a
break with the Roman Catholic Church that previously claimed hegemony
in Western Europe. Humanism and the Renaissance therefore played a
direct role in sparking the Reformation, as well as in many other
contemporaneous religious debates and conflicts.

Pope Paul III came to the papal throne (1534–1549) after the sack of Rome
in 1527, with uncertainties prevalent in the Catholic Church following the
Reformation. Nicolaus Copernicus dedicated De revolutionibus orbium
coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) to Paul III, who
became the grandfather of Alessandro Farnese, who had paintings by
Titian, Michelangelo, and Raphael, as well as an important collection of
drawings, and who commissioned the masterpiece of Giulio Clovio,
arguably the last major illuminated manuscript, the Farnese Hours.

Self-awareness

Leonardo Bruni

By the 15th century, writers, artists, and architects in Italy were well
aware of the transformations that were taking place and were using
phrases such as modi antichi (in the antique manner) or alle romana et
alla antica (in the manner of the Romans and the ancients) to describe
their work. In the 1330s Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as
antiqua (ancient) and to the Christian period as nova (new).[85] From
Petrarch's Italian perspective, this new period (which included his own
time) was an age of national eclipse.[85] Leonardo Bruni was the first to use
tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People (1442).[86]
Bruni's first two periods were based on those of Petrarch, but he added a
third period because he believed that Italy was no longer in a state of
decline. Flavio Biondo used a similar framework in Decades of History
from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire (1439–1453).

Humanist historians argued that contemporary scholarship restored direct

links to the classical period, thus bypassing the Medieval period, which
they then named for the first time the "Middle Ages". The term first
appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas (middle times).[87] The term
rinascita (rebirth) first appeared, however, in its broad sense in Giorgio
Vasari's Lives of the Artists, 1550, revised 1568.[88][89] Vasari divides the
age into three phases: the first phase contains Cimabue, Giotto, and
Arnolfo di Cambio; the second phase contains Masaccio, Brunelleschi, and
Donatello; the third centers on Leonardo da Vinci and culminates with
Michelangelo. It was not just the growing awareness of classical antiquity
that drove this development, according to Vasari, but also the growing
desire to study and imitate nature.[90]

Spread

In the 15th century, the Renaissance spread rapidly from its birthplace in
Florence to the rest of Italy and soon to the rest of Europe. The invention
of the printing press by German printer Johannes Gutenberg allowed the
rapid transmission of these new ideas. As it spread, its ideas diversified
and changed, being adapted to local culture. In the 20th century, scholars
began to break the Renaissance into regional and national movements.

England

Main article: English Renaissance

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in

reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!" –
from William Shakespeare's Hamlet
The Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually
regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. Many scholars see its
beginnings in the early 16th century during the reign of Henry VIII.[91]

The English Renaissance is different from the Italian Renaissance in

several ways. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were
literature and music, which had a rich flowering.[92] Visual arts in the
English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian
Renaissance. The English Renaissance period in art began far later than
the Italian, which had moved into Mannerism by the 1530s.[93]

In literature the later part of the 16th century saw the flowering of
Elizabethan literature, with poetry heavily influenced by Italian
Renaissance literature but Elizabethan theatre a distinctive native style.
Writers include William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Christopher Marlowe
(1564–1593), Edmund Spenser (1552–1599), Sir Thomas More (1478–
1535), and Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586). English Renaissance music
competed with that in Europe with composers such as Thomas Tallis
(1505–1585), John Taverner (1490–1545), and William Byrd (1540–1623).
Elizabethan architecture produced the large prodigy houses of courtiers,
and in the next century Inigo Jones (1573–1652), who introduced Palladian
architecture to England.[94]

Elsewhere, Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was the pioneer of modern

scientific thought, and is commonly regarded as one of the founders of
the Scientific Revolution.[95][96]

France

Main articles: French Renaissance and French Renaissance architecture

Château de Chambord (1519–1547), one of

the most famous examples of Renaissance architecture

The word "Renaissance" is borrowed from the French language, where it

means "re-birth". It was first used in the eighteenth century and was later
popularized by French historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874) in his 1855
work, Histoire de France (History of France).[97][98]

In 1495 the Italian Renaissance arrived in France, imported by King

Charles VIII after his invasion of Italy. A factor that promoted the spread of
secularism was the inability of the Church to offer assistance against the
Black Death. Francis I imported Italian art and artists, including Leonardo
da Vinci, Primaticcio, Rosso Fiorentino, Niccolò dell'Abbate and Benvenuto
Cellini and built ornate palaces at great expense, like the Palace of
Fontainebleau and the castle of Chambord. Writers such as François
Rabelais, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, and Michel de Montaigne,
painters such as Jean Clouet and François Clouet, and musicians such as
Jean Mouton also borrowed from the spirit of the Renaissance. French
Renaissance sculptors include Michel Colombe, Jean Goujon, Pierre
Bontemps, Ligier Richier and Germain Pilon while important architects of
the time were Pierre Lescot, who built the Henri II aisle of the Louvre,
Philibert Delorme and Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau.

In 1533, a fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici (1519–1589), born in

Florence to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino and Madeleine de La Tour
d'Auvergne, married Henry II of France, second son of King Francis I and
Queen Claude. Though she became famous and infamous for her role in
the French Wars of Religion, she made a direct contribution in bringing
arts, sciences, and music (including the origins of ballet) to the French
court from her native Florence.

Germany

Main articles: German Renaissance and Weser Renaissance

Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I, by Albrecht

Dürer, 1519

In the second half of the 15th century, the Renaissance spirit spread to
Germany and the Low Countries, where the development of the printing
press (ca. 1450) and Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Dürer (1471–
1528) predated the influence from Italy. In the early Protestant areas of
the country humanism became closely linked to the turmoil of the
Reformation, and the art and writing of the German Renaissance
frequently reflected this dispute.[99] However, the Gothic style and
medieval scholastic philosophy remained exclusively until the turn of the
16th century. Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg (ruling 1493–1519) was
the first truly Renaissance monarch of the Holy Roman Empire.
Hungarian trecento and quattrocento

Further information: Renaissance architecture in Central and Eastern

Europe

After Italy, Hungary was the first European country where the Renaissance
appeared.[100] The Renaissance style came directly from Italy during the
Quattrocento (1400s) to Hungary first in the Central European region,
thanks to the development of early Hungarian-Italian relationships — not
only in dynastic connections, but also in cultural, humanistic and
commercial relations – growing in strength from the 14th century. The
relationship between Hungarian and Italian Gothic styles was a second
reason – exaggerated breakthrough of walls is avoided, preferring clean
and light structures. Large-scale building schemes provided ample and
long term work for the artists, for example, the building of the Friss (New)
Castle in Buda, the castles of Visegrád, Tata, and Várpalota. In
Sigismund's court there were patrons such as Pippo Spano, a descendant
of the Scolari family of Florence, who invited Manetto Ammanatini and
Masolino da Pannicale to Hungary.[101]

The new Italian trend combined with existing national traditions to create
a particular local Renaissance art. Acceptance of Renaissance art was
furthered by the continuous arrival of humanist thought in the country.
Many young Hungarians studying at Italian universities came closer to the
Florentine humanist center, so a direct connection with Florence evolved.
The growing number of Italian traders moving to Hungary, specially to
Buda, helped this process. New thoughts were carried by the humanist
prelates, among them Vitéz János, archbishop of Esztergom, one of the
founders of Hungarian humanism.[102] During the long reign of Emperor
Sigismund of Luxemburg the Royal Castle of Buda became probably the
largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages. King Matthias Corvinus (r.
1458–1490) rebuilt the palace in early Renaissance style and further
expanded it.[103][104]

After the marriage in 1476 of King Matthias to Beatrice of Naples, Buda

became one of the most important artistic centers of the Renaissance
north of the Alps.[105] The most important humanists living in Matthias'
court were Antonio Bonfini and the famous Hungarian poet Janus
Pannonius.[105] András Hess set up a printing press in Buda in 1472.
Matthias Corvinus's library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's
greatest collections of secular books: historical chronicles, philosophic and
scientific works in the 15th century. His library was second only in size to
the Vatican Library. (However, the Vatican Library mainly contained Bibles
and religious materials.)[106] In 1489, Bartolomeo della Fonte of Florence
wrote that Lorenzo de' Medici founded his own Greek-Latin library
encouraged by the example of the Hungarian king. Corvinus's library is
part of UNESCO World Heritage.[107]
Matthias started at least two major building projects. [108] The works in
Buda and Visegrád began in about 1479.[109] Two new wings and a hanging
garden were built at the royal castle of Buda, and the palace at Visegrád
was rebuilt in Renaissance style.[109][110] Matthias appointed the Italian
Chimenti Camicia and the Dalmatian Giovanni Dalmata to direct these
projects.[109] Matthias commissioned the leading Italian artists of his age to
embellish his palaces: for instance, the sculptor Benedetto da Majano and
the painters Filippino Lippi and Andrea Mantegna worked for him.[111] A
copy of Mantegna's portrait of Matthias survived. [112] Matthias also hired
the Italian military engineer Aristotele Fioravanti to direct the rebuilding of
the forts along the southern frontier.[113] He had new monasteries built in
Late Gothic style for the Franciscans in Kolozsvár, Szeged and Hunyad,
and for the Paulines in Fejéregyháza.[114][115] In the spring of 1485,
Leonardo da Vinci travelled to Hungary on behalf of Sforza to meet King
Matthias Corvinus, and was commissioned by him to paint a Madonna.[116]

Matthias enjoyed the company of Humanists and had lively discussions on

various topics with them.[117] The fame of his magnanimity encouraged
many scholars—mostly Italian—to settle in Buda. [118] Antonio Bonfini,
Pietro Ranzano, Bartolomeo Fonzio, and Francesco Bandini spent many
years in Matthias's court.[119][117] This circle of educated men introduced
the ideas of Neoplatonism to Hungary.[120][121] Like all intellectuals of his
age, Matthias was convinced that the movements and combinations of the
stars and planets exercised influence on individuals' life and on the history
of nations.[122] Martius Galeotti described him as "king and astrologer", and
Antonio Bonfini said Matthias "never did anything without consulting the
stars".[123] Upon his request, the famous astronomers of the age, Johannes
Regiomontanus and Marcin Bylica, set up an observatory in Buda and
installed it with astrolabes and celestial globes.[124] Regiomontanus
dedicated his book on navigation that was used by Christopher Columbus
to Matthias.[118]

Other important figures of Hungarian Renaissance include Bálint Balassi

(poet), Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos (poet), Bálint Bakfark (composer and
lutenist), and Master MS (fresco painter).

Renaissance in the Low Countries

Main articles: Renaissance in the Netherlands and Dutch and Flemish

Renaissance painting
 Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1523, as depicted by
Hans Holbein the Younger

Culture in the Netherlands at the end of the 15th century was influenced
by the Italian Renaissance through trade via Bruges, which made Flanders
wealthy. Its nobles commissioned artists who became known across
Europe.[125] In science, the anatomist Andreas Vesalius led the way; in
cartography, Gerardus Mercator's map assisted explorers and navigators.
In art, Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting ranged from the strange
work of Hieronymus Bosch[126] to the everyday life depictions of Pieter
Brueghel the Elder.[125]

Erasmus was arguably the Netherlands' best known humanist and Catholic
intellectual during the Renaissance.[33]

Northern Europe

Main article: Northern Renaissance

The Renaissance in Northern Europe has been termed the "Northern

Renaissance". While Renaissance ideas were moving north from Italy,
there was a simultaneous southward spread of some areas of innovation,
particularly in music.[127] The music of the 15th-century Burgundian School
defined the beginning of the Renaissance in music, and the polyphony of
the Netherlanders, as it moved with the musicians themselves into Italy,
formed the core of the first true international style in music since the
standardization of Gregorian Chant in the 9th century.[127] The culmination
of the Netherlandish school was in the music of the Italian composer
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. At the end of the 16th century Italy again
became a center of musical innovation, with the development of the
polychoral style of the Venetian School, which spread northward into
Germany around 1600. In Denmark, the Renaissance sparked the
translation of the works of Saxo Grammaticus into Danish as well as
Frederick II and Christian IV ordering the redecoration or construction of
several important works of architecture, i.e. Kronborg, Rosenborg and
Børsen.[128] Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe greatly contributed to turn
astronomy into the first modern science and also helped launch the
Scientific Revolution.[129][130]

The paintings of the Italian Renaissance differed from those of the

Northern Renaissance. Italian Renaissance artists were among the first to
paint secular scenes, breaking away from the purely religious art of
medieval painters. Northern Renaissance artists initially remained focused
on religious subjects, such as the contemporary religious upheaval
portrayed by Albrecht Dürer. Later, the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder
influenced artists to paint scenes of daily life rather than religious or
classical themes. It was also during the Northern Renaissance that
Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck perfected the oil painting
technique, which enabled artists to produce strong colors on a hard
surface that could survive for centuries.[131] A feature of the Northern
Renaissance was its use of the vernacular in place of Latin or Greek, which
allowed greater freedom of expression. This movement had started in
Italy with the decisive influence of Dante Alighieri on the development of
vernacular languages; in fact the focus on writing in Italian has neglected
a major source of Florentine ideas expressed in Latin. [132] The spread of
the printing press technology boosted the Renaissance in Northern Europe
as elsewhere, with Venice becoming a world center of printing.

Poland

Main article: Renaissance in Poland

A 16th-century Renaissance tombstone of Polish kings within the

Sigismund Chapel in Kraków, Poland. The golden-domed chapel was
designed by Bartolommeo Berrecci.
The Polish Renaissance lasted from the late 15th to the late 16th century
and was the Golden Age of Polish culture. Ruled by the Jagiellonian
dynasty, the Kingdom of Poland (from 1569 known as the Polish–
Lithuanian Commonwealth) actively participated in the broad European
Renaissance. An early Italian humanist who came to Poland in the mid-
15th century was Filippo Buonaccorsi, who was employed as royal advisor
and councillor. The tomb of John I Albert, completed in 1505 by Francesco
Fiorentino, is the first example of a Renaissance composition in the
country.[133][134] Many Italian artists subsequently came to Poland with Bona
Sforza of Milan, when she married King Sigismund I in 1518.[135] This was
supported by temporarily strengthened monarchies in both areas, as well
as by newly established universities.[136]

The Renaissance was a period when the multi-national Polish state

experienced a substantial period of cultural growth thanks in part to a
century without major wars, aside from conflicts in the sparsely populated
eastern and southern borderlands. Architecture became more refined and
decorative. Mannerism played an important part in shaping what is now
considered to be the truly Polish architectural style – high attics above the
cornice with pinnacles and pilasters.[137] It was also the time when the first
major works of Polish literature were published, particularly those of
Mikołaj Rey and Jan Kochanowski, and the Polish language became the
lingua franca of East-Central Europe.[138] The Jagiellonian University
transformed into a major institution of higher education for the region and
hosted many notable scholars, chiefly Nicolaus Copernicus and Conrad
Celtes. Three more academies were founded at Königsberg (1544), Vilnius
(1579), and Zamość (1594). The Reformation spread peacefully
throughout the country, giving rise to the Nontrinitarian Polish Brethren.
[139]
Living conditions improved, cities grew, and exports of agricultural
products enriched the population, especially the nobility (szlachta) and
magnates. The nobles gained dominance in the new political system of
Golden Liberty, a counterweight to monarchical absolutism.[140]

Portugal

Main article: Portuguese Renaissance

Luís de Camões, and his seminal work Os

Lusíadas, are considered the greatest poet of the Portuguese language
and the pinnacle of Portuguese literature, respectively.
Although Italian Renaissance had a modest impact in Portuguese arts,
Portugal was influential in broadening the European worldview, [141]
stimulating humanist inquiry. Renaissance arrived through the influence
of wealthy Italian and Flemish merchants who invested in the profitable
commerce overseas. As the pioneer headquarters of European
exploration, Lisbon flourished in the late 15th century, attracting experts
who made several breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy and naval
technology, including Pedro Nunes, João de Castro, Abraham Zacuto, and
Martin Behaim. Cartographers Pedro Reinel, Lopo Homem, Estêvão
Gomes, and Diogo Ribeiro made crucial advances in mapping the world.
Apothecary Tomé Pires and physicians Garcia de Orta and Cristóvão da
Costa collected and published works on plants and medicines, soon
translated by Flemish pioneer botanist Carolus Clusius.

In architecture, the huge profits of the spice trade financed a sumptuous

composite style in the first decades of the 16th century, the Manueline,
incorporating maritime elements.[142] The primary painters were Nuno
Gonçalves, Gregório Lopes, and Vasco Fernandes. In music, Pedro de
Escobar and Duarte Lobo produced four songbooks, including the
Cancioneiro de Elvas.

The renaissance cloister at the Convent of

Christ in Tomar

In literature, Luís de Camões inscribed the Portuguese feats overseas in

the epic poem Os Lusíadas. Sá de Miranda introduced Italian forms of
verse and Bernardim Ribeiro developed pastoral romance, while plays by
Gil Vicente fused it with popular culture, reporting the changing times.
Travel literature especially flourished: João de Barros, Fernão Lopes de
Castanheda, António Galvão, Gaspar Correia, Duarte Barbosa, and Fernão
Mendes Pinto, among others, described new lands and were translated
and spread with the new printing press.[141] After joining the Portuguese
exploration of Brazil in 1500, Amerigo Vespucci coined the term New
World,[143] in his letters to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici.

The intense international exchange produced several cosmopolitan

humanist scholars, including Francisco de Holanda, André de Resende,
and Damião de Góis, a friend of Erasmus who wrote with rare
independence on the reign of King Manuel I. Diogo de Gouveia and André
de Gouveia made relevant teaching reforms via France. Foreign news and
products in the Portuguese factory in Antwerp attracted the interest of
Thomas More[144] and Albrecht Dürer to the wider world.[145] There, profits
and know-how helped nurture the Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age,
especially after the arrival of the wealthy cultured Jewish community
expelled from Portugal.

Spain

Main article: Spanish Renaissance

See also: Spanish Renaissance architecture

The Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo del

Escorial, by Juan de Herrera and Juan Bautista de Toledo

The Renaissance arrived in the Iberian peninsula through the

Mediterranean possessions of the Crown of Aragon and the city of
Valencia. Many early Spanish Renaissance writers come from the Crown of
Aragon, including Ausiàs March and Joanot Martorell. In the Crown of
Castile, the early Renaissance was heavily influenced by the Italian
humanism, starting with writers and poets such as Íñigo López de
Mendoza, marqués de Santillana, who introduced the new Italian poetry to
Spain in the early 15th century. Other writers, such as Jorge Manrique,
Fernando de Rojas, Juan del Encina, Juan Boscán Almogáver, and
Garcilaso de la Vega, kept a close resemblance to the Italian canon.
Miguel de Cervantes's masterpiece Don Quixote is credited as the first
Western novel. Renaissance humanism flourished in the early 16th
century, with influential writers such as philosopher Juan Luis Vives,
grammarian Antonio de Nebrija and natural historian Pedro de Mexía. The
poet and philosopher Luisa de Medrano, celebrated among her
Renaissance contemporaries as one of the puellae doctae ("learned
girls"), was the first female professor in Europe at the University of
Salamanca.

Later Spanish Renaissance tended toward religious themes and

mysticism, with poets such as Luis de León, Teresa of Ávila, and John of
the Cross, and treated issues related to the exploration of the New World,
with chroniclers and writers such as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and
Bartolomé de las Casas, giving rise to a body of work, now known as
Spanish Renaissance literature. The late Renaissance in Spain produced
political and religious authors such as Tomás Fernández de Medrano and
artists such as El Greco and composers such as Tomás Luis de Victoria
and Antonio de Cabezón.
Further countries

 Renaissance in Croatia
 Renaissance in Scotland

Historiography

Conception

A cover of the Lives of the Artists by

Giorgio Vasari

The Italian artist and critic Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) first used the term
rinascita in his book The Lives of the Artists (published 1550). In the book
Vasari attempted to define what he described as a break with the
barbarities of Gothic art: the arts (he held) had fallen into decay with the
collapse of the Roman Empire and only the Tuscan artists, beginning with
Cimabue (1240–1301) and Giotto (1267–1337) began to reverse this
decline in the arts. Vasari saw ancient art as central to the rebirth of
Italian art.[146]

However, only in the 19th century did the French word renaissance
achieve popularity in describing the self-conscious cultural movement
based on revival of Roman models that began in the late 13th century.
French historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874) defined "The Renaissance" in
his 1855 work Histoire de France as an entire historical period, whereas
previously it had been used in a more limited sense. [24] For Michelet, the
Renaissance was more a development in science than in art and culture.
He asserted that it spanned the period from Columbus to Copernicus to
Galileo; that is, from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th
century.[97] Moreover, Michelet distinguished between what he called, "the
bizarre and monstrous" quality of the Middle Ages and the democratic
values that he, as a vocal Republican, chose to see in its character.[19] A
French nationalist, Michelet also sought to claim the Renaissance as a
French movement.[19]

The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) in his The Civilization of

the Renaissance in Italy (1860), by contrast, defined the Renaissance as
the period between Giotto and Michelangelo in Italy, that is, the 14th to
mid-16th centuries. He saw in the Renaissance the emergence of the
modern spirit of individuality, which the Middle Ages had stifled.[147] His
book was widely read and became influential in the development of the
modern interpretation of the Italian Renaissance.[148]

More recently, some historians have been much less keen to define the
Renaissance as a historical age, or even as a coherent cultural movement.
The historian Randolph Starn, of the University of California Berkeley,
stated in 1998:

Rather than a period with definitive beginnings and endings and

consistent content in between, the Renaissance can be (and occasionally
has been) seen as a movement of practices and ideas to which specific
groups and identifiable persons variously responded in different times and
places. It would be in this sense a network of diverse, sometimes
converging, sometimes conflicting cultures, not a single, time-bound
culture.[21]

Debates about progress

See also: Continuity thesis

There is debate about the extent to which the Renaissance improved on

the culture of the Middle Ages. Both Michelet and Burckhardt were keen to
describe the progress made in the Renaissance toward the modern age.
Burckhardt likened the change to a veil being removed from man's eyes,
allowing him to see clearly.[53]

In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness – that which was
turned within as that which was turned without – lay dreaming or half
awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and
childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen
clad in strange hues.[149]

— Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

 Painting of the St. Bartholomew's Day
Massacre, an event in the French Wars of Religion, by François Dubois

On the other hand, many historians now point out that most of the
negative social factors popularly associated with the medieval period –
poverty, warfare, religious and political persecution, for example – seem
to have worsened in this era, which saw the rise of Machiavellian politics,
the Wars of Religion, the corrupt Borgia Popes, and the intensified witch-
hunts of the 16th century. Many people who lived during the Renaissance
did not view it as the "golden age" imagined by certain 19th-century
authors, but were concerned by these social maladies. [150] Significantly,
though, the artists, writers, and patrons involved in the cultural
movements in question believed they were living in a new era that was a
clean break from the Middle Ages.[88] Some Marxist historians prefer to
describe the Renaissance in material terms, holding the view that the
changes in art, literature, and philosophy were part of a general economic
trend from feudalism toward capitalism, resulting in a bourgeois class with
leisure time to devote to the arts.[151]

Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) acknowledged the existence of the

Renaissance but questioned whether it was a positive change. In his book
The Autumn of the Middle Ages, he argued that the Renaissance was a
period of decline from the High Middle Ages, destroying much that was
important.[20] The Medieval Latin language, for instance, had evolved
greatly from the classical period and was still a living language used in the
church and elsewhere. The Renaissance obsession with classical purity
halted its further evolution and saw Latin revert to its classical form. This
view is however somewhat contested by recent studies. Robert S. Lopez
has contended that it was a period of deep economic recession.[152]
Meanwhile, George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have both argued that
scientific progress was perhaps less original than has traditionally been
supposed.[153] Finally, Joan Kelly argued that the Renaissance led to
greater gender dichotomy, lessening the agency women had had during
the Middle Ages.[154]

Some historians have begun to consider the word Renaissance to be

unnecessarily loaded, implying an unambiguously positive rebirth from
the supposedly more primitive "Dark Ages", the Middle Ages. Most
political and economic historians now prefer to use the term "early
modern" for this period (and a considerable period afterwards), a
designation intended to highlight the period as a transitional one between
the Middle Ages and the modern era.[155] Others such as Roger Osborne
have come to consider the Italian Renaissance as a repository of the
myths and ideals of western history in general, and instead of rebirth of
ancient ideas as a period of great innovation. [156]

The art historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the

concept of "Renaissance":

It is perhaps no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has

been most vigorously questioned by those who are not obliged to take a
professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of civilization – historians of
economic and social developments, political and religious situations, and,
most particularly, natural science – but only exceptionally by students of
literature and hardly ever by historians of Art. [157]

Other Renaissances

The term Renaissance has also been used to define periods outside of the
15th and 16th centuries in the earlier Medieval period. Charles H. Haskins
(1870–1937), for example, made a case for a Renaissance of the 12th
century.[158] Other historians have argued for a Carolingian Renaissance in
the 8th and 9th centuries, Ottonian Renaissance in the 10th century and
for the Timurid Renaissance of the 14th century. The Islamic Golden Age
has been also sometimes termed with the Islamic Renaissance. [159] The
Macedonian Renaissance is a term used for a period in the Roman Empire
in the 9th-11th centuries CE.

Other periods of cultural rebirth in Modern times have also been termed
"renaissances", such as the Bengal Renaissance, Tamil Renaissance,
Nepal Bhasa renaissance, al-Nahda or the Harlem Renaissance. The term
can also be used in cinema. In animation, the Disney Renaissance is a
period that spanned the years from 1989 to 1999 which saw the studio
return to the level of quality not witnessed since their Golden Age of
Animation. The San Francisco Renaissance was a vibrant period of
exploratory poetry and fiction writing in San Francisco in the mid-20th
century.