The Italian and Northern Renaissance 1450 1550 Key

The Italian and Northern Renaissance 1450 -1550

Key Terms/People • • • Renaissance Quattrocento City-states Pagan Medici Family da Vinci Michelangelo Petrarch Boccaccio Baldassare Castiglione • • • Niccolo Machiavelli Titian Desiderius Erasmus Thomas More Johann Gutenberg Albrecht Durer Elizabethan Age Secularism Humanism individualism

Italian Renaissance • By the 15 th century Northern Italian towns had expanded into independent city-states • Proximity to the sea • Middlemen for international trade – Ties to Asia

The Major City States • • • Republic of Florence Republic of Genoa Duchy of Milan Rome and the Papal States Naples and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Venice and the Venetian Republic

The Medici Family • Merchants and bankers in Florence – Ignored Church's prohibition on money-lending • Giovanni de’ Medici (d. 1429) • Cosimo de’ Medici (1389 -1464) • Lorenze the Magnificent (1449 -1492) • Two popes, many cardinals, two queens of France

Individualism • Man is the measure of all tings • Human power replaced religious awe – BUT NOT RELIGION ITSELF! • The Renaissance Man – An all-around man – Skilled with the pen, the brush, and the sword – A lover, poet, painter, scientist, engineer, conversationalist

The Arts as an Expression of Individualism • Before Renaissance, the Church was the great patron of the arts – Now merchants and rulers • Greco-Roman symmetry • Classical columns, arches, domes • Freestanding sculpture

The Arts as an Expression of Individualism • Painting was religiously-themed, but radically different from medieval works • Oil paints, fresco, three-dimensional perspective • Less symbolic and more representational • Light and shadow, classical nudes, depth and movement

Humanism • Literary movement • Different from Middle Ages – Subject = politics and personal matters – Practitioners = laypeople • Written in vernacular • Dante, Boccaccio, Castiglione, Machiavelli

The Northern Renaissance • Germany, England, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland • Emergence of market economies • More secular than Italian Renaissance • Christian Humanism – Foundation of Protestant Reformation

Science and Technology • Printing press – Interchangeable moveable type • Major factor in Reformation

Mysticism • The belief that the individual alone, unaided by the Church, could communicate with God • Thomas a Kempis – Imitation of Christ • Gerard Groote – Brothers of the Common Life • Personal virtue contrasted with smugness of the clergy

Desiderius Erasmus • 1456 -1536 • “The Christian Gentleman” • Disdained the Middle Ages and admired classical antiquity • Called for gradual reform, distrusted the common people, disdained violence • Critic of royal and Church abuses

Northern Renaissance Art • Portraits and woodcuts • No fresco • Albercht Durer • Peter Brueghel the Elder • Focused on the lives of ordinary people

England • End of the Tudor dynasty – Henry VIII/Thomas More • Elizabethan Age • Intense nationalism • Christopher Marlowe • Francis Bacon • William Shakespeare

France • Strengthened after Hundred Years War (13371453) • Centralized government – Reduced power of the nobility • taille – direct head tax on all land property

Spain • Extreme Catholic orthodoxy • Xenophobia • Expulsion of the Jews and Muslims • Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote • Painters – El Greco, Diego Velazquez

Low Countries • Banking and commerce • • • Jan van Eyck Rembrandt van Rijn Hieronymus Bosch Peter Brueghel the Elder Albrecht Durer

Renaissance Women and Minorities • Loss of status for upper/merchant class women • Penalty for rape changed from castration to a fine paid to the victim’s father or husband • Women banned from guilds • Status of peasant women remained stable • Origins of racial bias against African servant