The European Renaissance sprang from the chaos of the Late Middle Ages, as the final Crusades, the Great Famine, the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and the Ottoman capture of Constantinople disrupted the relative stability of medieval society. However, the resulting flow of Eastern trade and refugees also brought scientific advances from the Islamic world and the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts, which had been lost in the West but preserved by Byzantine scholars.
In Florence, scholars inspired by the return of Greek and Roman writings, instigated a humanist revival of art and literature during the 14th century. Humanists, like their classical predecessors, espoused the power of the individual, the value of empirical observation, and the divine virtue of beauty. Artists and intellectuals began to look back past the Christian era to ancient ideals in literature, philosophy, and art. Some writers and artists tried to imitate Greek and Roman examples, while others borrowed merely the underlying principles of order, harmony, and grace. The wealthy and powerful Medici family fueled this creative resurgence by building libraries and giving financial and personal support to artists, architects, and scholars. This Renaissance (literally “rebirth”) soon spread from Florence to Siena, Venice, and Rome.
By the early 1500s, the Renaissance had moved into northern Europe, aided by the 1455 invention of the printing press, new universities, and increased trade throughout the Continent. However the Italian Renaissance quest for perfection was modified by northern scholars and religious reformers, who applied its humanist ideals to more pragmatic ends.
Although some Renaissance principles conflicted with Catholic doctrine, the movement was not antireligious, and many of its major works were on Christian themes or even commissioned by the church. However, the Renaissance emphasis on individual potential, direct knowledge, and earthly experiences broke with the church-dominated medieval era to form the basis of modern cultural values. Advanced learning—especially in multiple fields—was encouraged, and talented architects, painters, and sculptors established themselves as individual
creators with specific aesthetic goals rather than simply as craftsmen for hire. The contemporary understanding of the visionary “artist” is itself a Renaissance idea, formed under a belief in the limitless ability of the human mind. By the 17th century, the original impulses of Renaissance innovation had faded, but the spirit of creative possibility and the aesthetic achievements of the era remained central to Western culture.
♦Renaissance Ideas
Humanism In Florence, the Catholic cleric and poet Francesco Petrarch collected ancient Greek and Roman texts and admired the classical commitment to logic and direct understanding. Petrarch argued that earthly knowledge and experience could actually be a pathway to God, rather than a barrier to faith. His humanist philosophy of human potential encouraged centuries of artistic and scientific innovation, as it revived the idea that people could understand and improve the world around them rather than simply accept it as a creation of God. As defined by Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in his influential Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), humanism recognized a hierarchical natural world in which humans could claim pride of place only by exercising their superior faculties of reason.
While most humanists tried to encourage human achievement within the dominant framework of Christianity, later Catholic humanists took a skeptical view of church organization and materialism and applied classical textual criticism to religious works. The Dutch priest Desiderius Erasmus urged believers to read the Bible for themselves and to develop a personal relationship with God. Although Erasmus disapproved of the radical Protestant Reformation, he urged institutional reform of the church in his satirical book The Praise of Folly (1509).
Renaissance Political Theorists As secular state powers displaced the Catholic Church in Europe and feudal chieftains tried to consolidate power, many scholars turned from theology to social morality and political statecraft. The classical scholar and Florentine civil servant Niccolò Machiavelli is regarded as a founder of modern political science for his incisive examinations of power and government. In The Prince (published posthumously in 1530), Machiavelli suggested that the authority and maintenance of the state were more important than individual morality or liberty, and that civic life could be improved only through the effective application of power. Machiavelli’s cynical realism
was in direct opposition to Erasmus, whose Education of a Christian Prince (1516) urged benevolent and just leadership. The idealistic Sir Thomas More of England portrayed a perfectly ordered and harmonious society in Utopia (1516), which implicitly criticized the inequality and disorder of European political structures.
The medieval image of a God-driven universe was further challenged by scientific and philosophical descriptions of a world that obeyed only mechanical and mathematical rules. Nicolaus Copernicus helped launch the Scientific Revolution when he used decades of careful observation to produce his startling theory that the Sun was the center of the universe, not the Earth as was commonly believed. In philosophy, the influence of scientific empiricism had a profound effect on late 16th-century thinkers such as Francis Bacon. (See Weekend 40, “Philosophy: The Life of the Mind.”)
Late Renaissance Theology While skeptical of blind faith, the devout French mathematician Blaise Pascal found both empiricism and rationalism insufficient for comprehending the universe. Pascal’s eloquent Penseés (published posthumously in 1670) explores several philosophical and theological paradoxes—including the notion of infinity—but concludes that one should “wager” as if God does exist even though such existence cannot be proven.
Baruch Spinoza, however, resolved the question of God’s existence by declaring that everything that exists is, in fact, God. Spinoza claimed that different forms of matter are simply local and finite “attributes” of an infinite God—just as the body and the mind are the same thing, with the mind simply the “idea” form of the physical body.
♦Renaissance Literature
Classics Rediscovered in Italy The rediscovery of classical literary works in the 13th and 14th centuries shifted the scope of Italian literature from religious allegories and courtly novels to profound explorations of the breadth of human experience. In Florence, Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio translated ancient texts and revived the methods and forms of the originals—including the classical tradition of textual analysis and criticism.
While Petrarch wrote primarily in Latin, he used the local Tuscan dialect for composing his Canzoniere, a collection of 300 sonnets dedicated to his lost love, Laura. Boccaccio used the same dialect for The Decameron
(1350–53)—100 allegorical novellas about love. Their works—with Dante’s Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy, 1308–21)—established Tuscan as the Italian standard and helped to popularize the use of vernacular language for serious literature. The invention of the printing press soon spread new and classical works across Italy and beyond.
While lyric poetry—especially the sonnet form—dominated Italian Renaissance literature, many Italian writers also composed narrative poems inspired by Homer and Virgil. The most successful was Ludovico Ariosto’s lengthy humanist epic poem, Orlando Furioso (1516), a clever and extravagant imagining of the adventures of a lovesick knight. The poet Torquato Tasso was best known for La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1580), a fanciful version of the First Crusade. Michelangelo Buonarroti, the great painter and sculptor, was also a prolific poet who composed hundreds of sonnets.
In prose writing, Baldassare Castiglione adopted the dialogue form for The Courtier (1528), a primer on courtly behavior that described the humanist concept of the “uomo universal”—a well-educated and diversely knowledgeable individual who would later be called the “Renaissance man.” The Greek theatrical traditions inspired others, like Machiavelli, author of The Prince, who further illustrated his ruthlessly pragmatic view of society in the satirical comedy La Mandragola (The Mandrake, 1518).
Renaissance Literature in France Italian Renaissance poetry became so popular in early 16th-century France that a group of poets known as the Pléiade, led by Pierre de Ronsard, dedicated themselves to establishing French as a suitable language for original verse. Adapting the sonnet and the classical ode, they produced love poems and works on mythological themes and the virtues of nature.
The French prose writer François Rabelais composed four extended comic, socially incisive tales about father-and-son giants in Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534), and Boccaccio’s Decameron inspired many French writers to create short stories or novellas. Michel de Montaigne, the first great modern essayist, applied classical commentary techniques and a skeptical, humanist perspective to a range of contemporary subjects.
The Golden Age in Spain Under the artistic patronage of the Hapsburgs, the Italian lyric tradition reached Spanish poets such as Garcilaso de la Vega, who modified the sonnet to better suit the Spanish language.
The witty Francisco de Quevedo and his rival, the erudite Luis de Góngora, also expanded the poetic potential of Spanish.
Religious writing flourished in Spain during the Counter-Reformation; St. Teresa of Avila and San Juan de la Cruz produced deeply mystical works on the nature of prayer and the growth of the soul.
The prolific playwright Lope de Vega organized Spain’s loose dramatic traditions into a distinctive three-act commedia with established character types and poetic forms. But the masterpiece of Spanish literature is still Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–15), Miguel de Cervantes’s parody of the chivalric genre novel. The all-encompassing Don Quixote—considered the first modern novel—alternates between illusion and reality to recount the adventures of an idealistic old gentleman so addled by romances that he fancies himself a knight and undertakes a richly and hilariously imagined journey across Spain with his peasant “squire,” Sancho Panza.
Sculptors and painters in Florence in the early 15th century made a series of achievements that fully established Renaissance ideas and techniques in art. The sculptor Donatello created statues employing the contrapposto pose, similar to those from the Classic Greek period, that depicts the figure in a relaxed stance; his St. Mark (1411–13), for example, leans at ease on one leg, assuming a naturalistic stance. Donatello’s unclothed bronze statue of a youthful David (ca. 1425–30) revived the tradition of the classical nude, which had no place in the Christian art of the Middle Ages.
Donatello and his teacher Lorenzo Ghiberti also made important developments in relief sculpture. They created the illusion of three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional surface by employing the scientific method of linear perspective devised by the Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi.
Combining linear perspective with painting techniques like modeling, the Tuscan painter Masaccio produced solid-looking figures that seemed to exist in real spaces, such as the fresco Holy Trinity (1425–28, Santa Maria Novella, Florence) a drastic change from the flat medieval
aesthetic. Fra Angelico, a Dominican monk, merged scientific precision with spiritual reverence in his religious panel paintings and frescoes at San Marco monastery, which combine a serene mood with realistically rendered figures and background elements. The multitalented Piero della Francesca published three treatises on mathematics and geometry, and his paintings demonstrate an exacting attention to composition and perspective. Piero’s masterwork, The History of the True Cross (ca. 1447–1460), is also the first nocturnal scene in Western art.
Archaeological discoveries of ancient art and architecture inspired Renaissance painters to incorporate pagan elements into their work, and secular subjects and portraits became increasingly popular in the 15th century. Domenico Ghirlandaio placed New Testament characters in settings as detailed as Roman trompe l’oeil paintings and combined contemporary domestic trappings with ancient architecture, as in the Tornabuoni Chapel (1485–90). Sandro Botticelli risked the ire of the church with such pagan works as The Birth of Venus (ca. 1480), which depicts a voluptuous nude woman rising from the sea on a seashell.
♦High Renaissance Art During the period between 1495 and 1520, a rapid progression of artistic accomplishments occurred in Italy. While religious themes were still important, harmonious forms, unified composition and skillful execution—including smooth, nearly invisible brushstrokes—became more important than thematic or moral content. Painters aspired to be faithful to nature through careful observation and life-studies, and a more tolerant attitude from religious leaders allowed a revival of the nude figure.
Leonardo da Vinci, the first great master of the High Renaissance, exemplified the “Renaissance man” interested in everything from mathematics to botany to music. His gesture studies along with his extensive study of human bodies gave his figures great liveliness, and his knowledge of mathematics allowed him to develop a convincing atmospheric perspective exemplified by his Last Supper (1492/4–98). He developed new techniques, including a method of shaping figures by imitating the effects of light and shadow rather than with outlines. He also perfected sfumato, in which tiny dots in delicately varied shades create a hazy, indistinct atmosphere. These techniques created the poetic qualities of Leonardo’s most famous work, the thoughtful Mona Lisa (1503–05), whose enigmatic smile is softened by the shadows around her eyes and mouth.
Michelangelo Buonarotti, as diversely talented as Leonardo, was an engineer, poet, architect, and artist. While primarily a sculptor—his Pietà (1499) and David (1501–04) are considered among the finest sculptures of all time. Michelangelo apprenticed with Ghirlandaio and used his knowledge of anatomy to create a muscular and awe-inspiring painting style. His frescoes for the Sistine Chapel in Rome (1508–12) cover the ceiling with monumental figures in such dramatic Old Testament scenes as “The Creation,” in which a gray-bearded God reaches out his finger to impart the spark of life to Adam.
Raphael completed the trinity of High Renaissance masters. Unsurpassed in his technical perfection and in the visual harmony of his works, Raphael’s frescoes, especially for the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace in Rome (1509–11), are more serene and delicate than those of Michelangelo, seamlessly blending classical composition with devoutly Christian themes. Although Leonardo and Michelangelo were admired for their originality, Raphael’s formal symmetry and graceful, expressive figures—as in his Sistine Madonna (1512–1514), with its pair of winged cherubs at the bottom—epitomize Renaissance style.
While southern Italian painters focused on composition and form, Venetian artists experimented with the sensuous colors and new effects made possible by oil paints. Giorgione employed sfumato to create moody, poetic paintings with glowing light and realistic landscape backgrounds. Titian mastered tonal color and developed a rich, painterly approach that made him the most famous Venetian painter of the Renaissance. For decades, Titian operated a large studio where assistants would fill in the less important parts of his paintings and was an exceptionally versatile and prolific artist. Over his long career, Titian painted altarpieces—including the bold and dynamic Assumption of the Virgin (1516–18)—as well as portraits, religious subjects, and classical scenes such as the Bacchanal (ca. 1518). The luminous colors, controlled lighting, and subtle brushwork of Titian’s paintings influenced generations of Western painters.
♦Northern Renaissance Painting Italian Renaissance advancements spread to northern Europe during the 16th century, although for most northern painters, content still took precedence over form. Albrecht Dürer, the foremost northern artist of his time, traveled to Venice to learn Italian techniques and brought elegance and careful observation
to his many religious paintings and self-portraits. Dürer’s detailed woodcut prints, such as St. Jerome in His Study (1514), were much admired in Italy, and his watercolor paintings were probably the first landscape studies in Western art. Further from Renaissance delicacy, the eccentric Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch promoted Christian morality with grotesque imagery, disturbing perspectives, and apocalyptic violence. Bosch’s complicated religious triptychs, including The Garden of Earthly Delights (ca. 1503–04), presented dark allegories about human folly that would later inspire 20th-century Surrealists.
The Northern Renaissance was a product of intellectual and artistic influences from the Italian Renaissance, strongly modified by the work of northern intellectuals such as the humanist Desiderius Erasmus and religious reformers, including Martin Luther and John Calvin. After 1517, the Protestant Reformation curtailed the German tradition of religious paintings, although it still flourished in southern Europe and the Catholic realms of Germany. Luther was indifferent to religious art, but Calvin was actively hostile toward it, so in the Calvinist Netherlands portraiture and secular scenes flourished instead. Hans Holbein the Younger, a German artist working in Switzerland and England, became famous for his monumental, intensely detailed portraits of King Henry VIII and Erasmus. Lucas Cranach painted several portraits of Erasmus as well as pagan-themed works. Pieter Bruegel the Elder made finely delineated documentaries of peasant life that also suggest symbolic meanings, as in Hunters in the Snow (1565), which shows empty-handed men returning with their dogs to a wintry town.
♦Mannerism After 1520, as artists strove for increasingly virtuosic effects, a new style emerged in Rome and Florence. Reacting against the idealized naturalism of the High Renaissance, several artists began to intentionally distort the perspectives, figures, colors, and objects in their paintings. The term Mannerism was initially used to criticize such works as being artificially “mannered” after certain aspects of Raphael and Michelangelo; however, recently some art historians have considered some of Michelangelo’s later work to be of the Mannerist style.
One of the earliest Mannerist paintings, Rosso Fiorentino’s Descent from the Cross (1521), abandoned Renaissance balance and harmony for a dizzying composition of discordant colors and sharp angles. Parmigianino presented otherworldly figures with elongated bodies, improbably
smooth skin, and contrived poses in paintings such as Madonna with the Long Neck (ca. 1535). Agnolo Bronzino became famous for rigidly elegant portraits with precisely rendered clothing. Tintoretto emulated Titian’s color and light but traded naturalism for dynamic and emotional compositions such as his Last Supper (ca. 1594), going to great lengths to give the event an everyday setting to contrast with the supernatural aspects of Christ and the angels.
Domenico Theotocopolous, known as El Greco, was a controversial artist who worked in both Venice and Spain. His paintings—which include perceptive portraits, turbulent landscapes, and eccentrically iconographic religious scenes—feature elongated figures, vivid and sometimes grotesque colors, and jumbled compositions. However, El Greco’s human figures—especially in devotional paintings such as The Adoration of the Shepherds (1612–14) and The Burial of the Count Orgaz (1586)—seem to glow from an inner light, and his interweaving of form and space greatly influenced Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso three centuries later.
♦Renaissance Architecture During the Renaissance, architects emerged from the near anonymity of the Middle Ages. As they rose from the level of builder to designer, architects sought distinctive forms of aesthetic expression and looked for an alternative to the Gothic style. Italian architects found inspiration in the archaeological discoveries of ancient Roman buildings and soon borrowed the classical models of building design—including rounded arches, symmetrical floor plans, and ordered columns.
The remaining challenge for 15th-century architects was to adapt classical elements to buildings that did not exist in ancient times. One of the most successful was Filippo Brunelleschi, who won a 1418 competition to complete the long-delayed cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. Brunelleschi’s masterly design, elegantly blended a Renaissance dome, the first of its size constructed without the aid of a supporting formwork, with the original Gothic-style cathedral begun in 1296.
One of the best examples of Renaissance architecture is the small classically inspired chapel by Donato Bramante Tempietto (early 1500s). This small chapel, which marks the site of St. Peter’s crucifixion, is the perfect union of illusionist painting with architecture, for while the exterior carries a monumental weight, the inside of the building is only 15 feet in diameter, too small to hold any congregation.
But the Renaissance designer who most influenced the subsequent history of architecture was Andrea Palladio. Palladio applied the elements of classical design to a series of elegant country villas outside of Venice, including the Villa Capra (1560s)—also known as the Rotonda—in Vincenza. The Villa Capra exemplified the Palladian design idiom with symmetrical rooms under a low dome and a refined exterior with tall columns. Palladio also wrote the authoritative Four Books on Architecture (1570), an encyclopedic illustrated work of idealized buildings. In it, he summarized Renaissance attitudes toward the Romans who, he said, “…in building well, vastly excelled all those who have [lived] since their time.”
Renaissance Architecture Outside Italy The principles of Renaissance architecture spread from Italy to France and inspired a number of châteaux in the Loire region, including Chambord, with its complicated roofline of elaborate towers and chimneys designed by several architects. Renaissance palaces like the Palais de Fountainebleau (1528) also featured interior decorations and frescos by Italian artists.
Spain’s wealth and power grew rapidly during the Renaissance, and its architects had ample opportunities to design major works. King Philip II built the imposing palace of San Lorenzo de El Escorial near Madrid between 1559 and 1584. The imposing royal complex enclosed the palace, a church, a monastery, and a college organized around two courtyards and flanked by arcades and porticoes.
The English architect Inigo Jones studied architecture in Italy, where he focused on Palladio’s buildings and theories, and his subsequent work spread Palladian design throughout England and eventually to the United States. Jones’s Banqueting House in London (1619–21) exemplified his work, with Ionic and Corinthian columns inside and out, and decorative stone swags on the grand façade.
In the late 17th century, Christopher Wren turned to architecture after training in mathematics and sciences. The Great London Fire of 1666 gave Wren the opportunity to replace more than 50 parish churches with new buildings of ingeniously differing designs. His greatest work, Saint Paul’s Cathedral (1675–1710), employs all of the grand features of classical Renaissance building with its monumental western façade, splendid dome, and barrel-vaulted interior.