Italian Renaissance Introduction
editThe Italian Renaissance has several characteristics: re-connection with classical antiquity, the rise of Renaissance humanism, the emergence of Italian courtly power, the development of perspective, the radical change in the style and substance of the arts and architecture, and the rise of the power of the papacy, among others. Because of the nature of these changes, the Italian Renaissance has sometimes been seen as the beginning of the Modern Age, and has thus also been sometimes labeled the Early Modern.
The Italian Renaissance has no set starting point or place; the ideas that it came to embody developed over time and in different places. One of the first centers was Florence, but by the middle of the fifteenth century, Rome, Urbino, Milan, and Mantua had also become centers. In literature, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) are often considered to be the first writers to embody the humanist spirit of the Renaissance. In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 - 1446) is considered to be the first Renaissance architect, whereas in painting, it is the treatise (1436) by Leon Battista Alberti (1404 –1472) that describes the theory of perspective that is usually given as the mark of the new age. In economic terms, it is the rise of the Medici through the efforts of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici (1360-1429). He made the Medici bank into the leading financial institution of Europe. The fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 was a turning point in warfare as cannon and gunpowder became central. In addition, Byzantine-Greek (i.e. Eastern Roman) scholars fled west to Rome, bringing with them classical Roman and Greek texts as well as their knowledge of the classical civilizations, much of which had been lost in Western Europe for centuries. Notable among them was Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355 –1415), who arrived in Italy in 1397 and is often credited with re-introducing Greek literature to Western Europe. Besides spurring this migration, the fall of the last remnants of the Roman Empire represented the end of the old religious order in Europe.
Throughout the 15th century, artists studied the natural world in order to perfect their understanding of such subjects as anatomy and perspective. Among the many great artists of this period were Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca. There was a related advancement of Gothic Art centered in Germany and the Netherlands, known as the Northern Renaissance. The Early Renaissance was succeeded by the mature High Renaissance around the year 1500.