Dr. Vess's World Civilization Virtual Library

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

Objectives:

Be able to explain the significance of Italy in the Renaissance. Why did the Renaissance begin here?
Be able to identify the chief characteristics of Renaissance humanism.
Be able to discuss Jacob Burckhardt's characterization of the Renaissance and to defend or to argue against this view.
Be able to list several works of art and literature from the Renaissance and to discuss how these works display humanistic characteristics.
Be able to distinguish the features of Renaissance art and literature from the features of medieval art and literature.
Be able to describe the impact of the culture of Greece and Rome on Renaissance art.
Be able to discuss the new status of the artist in the Renaissance.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

What factors explain the dramatic increase in secular literature, poetry, drama and philosophy in the Renaissance?

Why was the printing press such a significant development?

What aspects of medievalism are present in Renaissance art and thought?

Why does the phrase "secular humanism" carry bad connotations in some religious and philosophical circles today?

Famous Quotations:

From Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks:

Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cool weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory.

From Michelangelo's Sonnets:

The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.

If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

About the Renaissance:

In the Middle Ages, both sides of human consciousness -- that which was turned within as well 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. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party,family or corporation -- only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of the State and of all things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such ... It will not be difficult to say that this result was due above all to the political circumstances of Italy.

Jacob Burckhardt The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

The Renaissance, or "rebirth," has been hailed by many scholars as the beginning of the modern era. It has long been argued that the Renaissance began in Italy, in part due to its unique economic position throughout the Middle Ages, and to its fascination with the culture of Greco-Roman antiquity. Many humanists were avid hunters of long forgotten manuscripts and art works, and this mania for antiquity infused Italian art and literature with a new character which nevertheless built on the achievements of the medieval world. Since the work of Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian humanists have been seen as the prototype of modern humanity. It was the humanists, who for the first time since antiquity, realized the possibilities of the individual and created a unique place in the cosmos for themselves. The glorified the individual, and in their art, depicted men and women as approaching the gods in grandeur. The humanist found God in the world, rather than in some far removed transcendental realm. Yet many aspects of their culture drew upon medieval prototypes. Since Charles Homer Haskins' monumental The Twelfth Century Renaissance was published early in the twentieth century, many of Burckhardt's theses have been challenged. Where scholars once painted a wide disparity between the medieval and the modern, contemporary scholars such as Paul Oscar Kristeller now point to the many threads of continuity betwen the two eras. Medieval theology lingered on, and is found lurking in the works of the greatest humanists, among them Petrarch, father of the Humanism. The flourishing of art, literature and philosophy during the renaissance is one of the miracles of the modern era, and serves as a lasting reminder of the possibilities of the human mind.

OUTLINE

I. Why Italy?
A. trade; the Mediterranean
B. Italian cities and the feudal system note: this link carries you to Windows on Italy, a database for the study of Italian History. From here, you must navigate to the section on Italian cities and the feudal system.
C. Florence
i. the class struggle between the new class of bankers and merchants vs. the poor:
ii. the revolt of the Ciompi 1378
iii. Cosimo de'Medici (Pater Patriae)
a. banking
b. wool
c. The importance of the Florentine florin
d. the role of money and the printing press in the Renaissance
e. Medici patronage of the art
i) The Neoplatonic Academy
f. Lorenzo and the patronage of Michelangelo, Ficino, many others.
g. Explore Florence in 1427: Florentine resources of the Renaissance
D. Symbols of the Florentine Renaissance
i. Bruneleschi's Dome of the Cathedral in Florence: symbol of an era
ii.
Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise
II. The meaning of "Renaissance"
A. rebirth of the culture of antiquity, literacy and secular literature
i. Petrarch and the Dark Ages
ii. the love of the ancient past -- the glories of ancient Greece and Rome
a) the search for antiquities
b) the Council of Ferrara -- 1439
c) Greek scholars from Constantinople: Chrysolorus
B. The Attraction of ancient culture
i. Greek statuary:
a) Poseidon
b) The Discobolus
c) The Doryphoros (spear bearer)
d) Aphrodite
ii. principles of Greek art
a) The Beauty of the human body.
b) Realism. Emotion. Motion.
c) Man as God.
d) harmony, order, balance
C. Greek art as distinguished from Medieval art
i. Illuminated manuscripts and the Madonna and Child icons
ii. flat, two dimensional, stylized.
iii. no individuality.
iv. The Medieval concept of art --
a) Artists did not sign their names.
b) Craftsmen vs. artists
c) focus on the afterlife vs. the world around
III. The historiography of Renaissance humanism
A. As described by Jacob Burckhardt in his 19th century work The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
i. The humanist as: obsessed by Greek and Roman Antiquity ii. individualistic
iii. focused on the world around them
iv. secular vs. sacred: fame, glory, power, wealth vs. eternity and God v. the Renaissance as the birth of the modern era
vi. the Renaissance as a distinct break with the medieval past
B. The "Revolt of the Medievalists"
C. Paul Oscar Kristeller
IV. Humanism in Art:
A. the artist
i. as unique individual
ii. the new status of the artist in the Renaissance:
a) The authobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, master goldsmith
iii. new techniques of the Renaissance
B. Giotto
i.

Madonna and Child
ii. Film: Giotto's frescoes of St. Francis
C. Leonardo da Vinci
i) Biography
ii) Go to the Leonardo da Vinci on-line museum for digitized images of The Mona Lisa, Virgin of the rocks, St. Jerome, The Last Supper
iii) Drawings
iv) Inventions
v) The Web Museum
High Renaissance Art: Leonardo and Michelangelo
D. Michelangelo
i) Biography
ii)philosophy of artistic creation: a representative sonnet
iii) Michelangelo and Neoplatonism some reference material by Dr. Vess
iv) Sculpture View the Tomb of Lorenzo d'Medici, The Bacchus, and David, among other works
v) the Sistine chapel ceiling
You can explore all of the sectiosn we studies in class through the Vatican Museum's on-line slide show. When the first screen comes up, be sure tocontinue to scroll down past the first several hypertext links, where you will find the actual links to the images themselves. Look especially at the following images:

God in the act of creating
the creation of Adam
the expulsion from the garden
The Last Judgement
vi) The Web Museum
High Renaissance Art: Leonardo and Michelangelo
E. Raphael
F. Botticelli
i. biography
G. Titian and the Venetian Renaissance H. Donatello
i) Mary Magdalen

ii) Sculpture
View The david and other representative pieces
V. Humanism in literature
A. Petrarch
i. biography: Letter to Posterity
ii. Sonnets and other works
B. Boccaccio's Decameron and vernacular literature
C. Pico della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man V. Education in the Renaissance A. Historical criticism:
Lorenzo Valla and the science of philology
B. Peter Paul Vergerio and humanist educational reform
C. Castiglione's Book of the Courtier and the ideal of the Renaissance Man
VI. Society in the Renaissance
A. Women
B. Diversity in the Renaissance