Renaissance
Recovery and Rebirth: The Age of Renaissance
Belong the 14th and the 15th century to the Middle Ages or are they a beginning of a new era?
Same patterns continued but there were also elements of recovery that made the 5th century a period of political, economic, artistic and intellectual changes. The humanists and intellectuals …
age of rebirth
believing that they had restored arts and letters after they had been dead for many years
Accomplished individuals
For example Michelangelo or warior Pope=Pope Julius
Rebirth of classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans Renaissance
Own unique characteristics (not all the same like Middle Ages)
Characteristics of the Italian Renaissance
Renaissance=Rebirth
Much continuity between Middle Ages and Renaissance
Between 1350 and 1550, rebirth of antiquity or Greek and Roman civilization
To them the years between the end of the Roman empire and their own era was a middle period = Middle ages, characterized by darkness because of its lack of classical culture.
Features:
Renaissance Italy was an urban(städtisch) society. The people got wealthier and a new secular spirit was built, this gave new possibilities.
It was also a recovery of the dark 14th century, were Black Death, political disorder and economic problems were normal.
Rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman culture
This affected the art and politics and the people also had to look at both faiths Christian(now) and pagan(Greco-Roman world). And it gave them a new way of viewing human beings.
This were not characteristic of all Italians put of the wealthy upper classes, who were a small percentage of the whole population. The Italian Renaissance was a product of an elite group, not a mass movement. But it had impact on ordinary people, especially in cities.
The Making of Renaissance Society
After the hard 14th century with many reversals the European economy gradually recovered and trade increased. By the 14th century they had expanded their lines of trade but when the plague came, they lost them all, why other countries further expanded them.
Hansa/Hanseatic League = commercial and military alliance of 13th century, German
Expansion of trade
By the 15th century they had more than eighty cities as member and for almost 200 years they were champions in northern European trade.
Industries new and old
But also the Italian trade got less important in the 16th century when the overseas discoveries began.
The 14th century attended patterns of manufacturing. The woollen industry for example was devastated and had to recover again in the 15th century. Also luxury industries expanded. (like glassware, silk and handmade items in metal or stone)And new industries like printing, mining and metal industry began to rival the textile industry. Expanding iron production and new skill in metal industry developed new firearms, that were more effective than the old weapons.
Banking ant the Medici
In the 15th century the house of Medici was the greatest banking in Europe. With branches all over Europe. They also had controlling interest in other industrial things.
Social changes in the Renaissance
The Renaissance had the same social structure like in the Middle Ages. And society was divided into three estates.
The clergy and they were the first estate, because they thought that people should be guided to spiritual ends
Nobility, because they provided security and justice for the society
Peasants and inhabitants of the towns and cities they had certain adaptions in the Renaissance
Nobility nobles
Landholding nobles declined during 14th and 15th century
Reconstruction of the aristocracy by 1500 dominate society(military officers, political posts and advising the king)
2-3%
Ideals; fundamental native things, participate in military and have a classical education (not like in Middle Ages), Do something with art in his life
Good impression and serve his prince
Peasants ant townspeople
Persons who belong to the lower society
85-90%
Serfdom (Knechtschaft) was declining in western Europe and peasants were becoming legally free
Widely separated in the estate(socially and economically)
Urban society
Patricians,
petty burghers/shopkeepersartisans,
propertyless workers (30-40%) unemployed, misareble lives, poor
slaves
The family in the Renaissance
marriages arranged by parents, marriage contracts
security
father-husband center of the Italian family(finances, decisions, authority children)
wife (household, remain at home, bear children)
high death rate at bearing for mom and child
dowry=money presented by the wife's family to the husband upon marriage, expected!!
Upper-classes wives were frequently pregnant and gave their children to wet nurses, Poor women not the same rate, because they nursed their own babies. They had so many children to make sure that a male one will survive, because than the family names will go away.
Italy was the cultural leader of Europe and a relatively wealthy urban lay society. Was characterized by individualism and secularism (Weltlichkeit) but the most important movement was humanism. Humanism was an intellectual movement based on the study of literal Greek/Roman works. It looks on every single person or individual.
The Renaissance Prince: Views of Machiavelli and Erasmus
At the beginning of the 16th century, two writers produced very different views of political power and the proper way for a ruler to conduct the affairs of the state.
Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513, The Prince:
Is it better to be love than feared, or vice versa? One ought to be both, loved and feared but because it'd difficult to be both at the sam time, it's much sager to be feared than loved. He puts mankind in a bad light, as ungrateful, stupid people. He says as long as you serve their interests they are devoted to you. They promise you their blood, possessions, children and lives.
Any ruler who relies simply on their promises and makes no other preperations, will be destroyed.
Fear restrains (zurückhalten) men because they are afraid of punishment(Bestrafung) and this fear will never leave them. But a ruler should himself make feared in a way, that if he isn's loved, he doesn't provoke hatred. Perfect: Feared but not hated
Whenever you have to kill someone, make sure you have a suitable excuse and an obvious reason. But one killing need not lead to another. You'll always find an excuse for plundering. Keep your hands of other people's property!
(A man will quicker forget the death of his father than the loss of his inheritance (Erbe))
Follow the right, do violence to no one, plunder no one.
Stand for something instead of avenging(rächen) because mostly you only loose a little of your empire and so you'll bring hurt to fewer than you would otherwise have done. gained Great deal
If you can't look for your area without violating justice, a loss of human live or religion, so give up!
A good prince is a living likeness of God, who's good and powerful and wants to help all. An evil prince, who's like a plague to his county belongs to the devil.
Petrarch= father of Italian Renaissance Humanism
In Florence, humanist movement took a new direction at the beginning of the 15th century, when it became closely tied to Florentine civic spirit. CIVIC HUMANISM
The civic humanists reflected the values of an urban society. And they had a growing interest in classical Greek civilization.
Platonic philosophy = Neoplatism
It was based on two primary ideas :
neoplatonic hierarchy of substances (platnsshumangod)
theory of spiritual love
human are the link between the material world(through body)
and spiritual world (through soul)
all people are bound together in their common humanity by love and all parts of the universe held together by love
Hermeticism: another product of Florentine intellectual environment 15th century
Human had been created as divine beings with power but had chosen to enter the material world. People could get back their divinity(Göttlichkeit) by cleaning their soul.
The humanists movement had an effect on education. Humanists thought that people could be changed dramatically by education and opened schools based on their ideas. They taught liberal studies to reach their full potential. Humanist education was thought to be a practical preparation for life. Its aim was the creation not of a great scholar but of a complete citizen.
They were the model for basic education in Europe until the 20th century. Largely absent were females. The few female students didn't taught mathematics but religion and morals for preparing them as mothers and wives.
Was there a Renaissance for women?
They had greater freedom to bring their emotional needs but others say they became even more subject to men Historians say conditions had stayed bleak (trostlos) for most women, but they found ways to develop a new sense of themselves as women. Some were even educated in humanist fashion.
In the Renaissance one of the most important technological innovations of Western civilization was invented, printing. It had an impact on European intellectual life. With wooden blocks people could print since the 12th century, but new in the 15th century was repeatable printing with movable metal type. The first printed book was Gutenberg's bible completed in 1455.
The new way of printing spread rapidly all over Europe. 50 percent of the printed books were religious. Next importance were Latin and Greek classics, grammars or philosophy works. Printing became one of the largest industries in Europe. And now more people wanted to go to school and to expand their knowledge.
The Artistic Renaissance
Leonardo Da Vinci = Great Italian Renaissance artsist
imitation of nature, reality
new artistic standatds new attitude of mind human beings bacatme the focus of attention, the center of all things.
More realistic figures and landscape
Visual representation of laws of perspective
Muscular figures, beautiful bodies
Art in Early Renaissance
Mathematical side of painting: laws of perspective organization outdoor space and light by geometry and perspective.
Other aspect : movement, anatomical structure
Human nude is typical for Italian Renaissance art. The 15th century was a time of experimentation. Many advances in sculpture and architecture. Some also spent time studying and copying the statues of the antiquity in Rome.
The Artistic High Renaissance
By the end of the 15th century Italian paintors, sculptors and architects had created a new artistic environment. They had mastered the new techniques for a scientific observation of the world around them and were now ready to move into individual forms of expression. This final stage of Renaissance art in 1480 until 1520 is called High Renaissance. It was marked by the increasing importance of Rome as a new cultural center.
It was dominated by this three artistic giants:
Leonardo da Vinci (Last supper)
Raphael (School of Athens)
Michelangelo (Neoplatism, ceiling of a chapel in Rome, creation of Adam)
The Artist and Social Status
The Northern Artistic Renaissance
Northern painters looked on emotional intensity of religious feeling. But by the end of the 15th century artists from the north began to study in Italy and were influenced by the Italian art. A northern bud influenced artist was for example Albrecht Dürer.
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