AP European History: Chapter 12 Renaissance ID Terms

Renaissance

the "rebirth" of classical culture that occurred in Italy between 1350 and 1550; also, the earlier revivals of classical culture that occurred under Charlemagne and in the twelfth century

Medici

aristocratic Italian family of powerful merchants and bankers who ruled Florence in the 15th century and held power through philanthropy; patrons of the arts who helped make Florence the home of the Italian Renaissance

dowry

money or property brought by a woman to her husband at marriage

Papal States

located in central Italy, territory nominally claimed under the political control of the popes

Ambassador

official representative of a country sent to foreign courts to reside there and oversee political and economic affairs; Italy begins to use these after the Treaty of Lodi to avoid war; the beginnings of modern diplomacy

Niccolo Machiavelli

(1469-1527) a statesman of Florence who wrote The Prince which contained a secular method of ruling a country and advocated for a strong central government-- "End justifies the means."

exemplefied the Renaissance preoccupation with political power

The Prince

book written by Machiavelli in 1513 concerning the acquisition and expansion of political power as the means to restore and maintain order in his time (a secular and strong central govt)

humans are self-centered, thus political activity could not be restricted by moral considerations

Individualism

emphasis on and interest in the unique traits of each person; popular thought during the Renaissance

Secularism

concerned with material, wordly, temporal things and less with spiritual and religious things

Humanism

an intellectual movement in Renaissance Italy based on the study of the Greek and Roman classics

Petrarch

often called the father of Italian Renaissance humanism; the first intellectual to characterize the Middle Ages as a period of darkness, promoting the mistaken belief that medieval culture was ignorant of classical antiquity

civic humanism

an intellectual movement of the Italian Renaissance that saw Cicero, who was both an intellectual and a statesman, as the ideal and held that humanists should be involved in government and use their rhetorical training in the service of the state

Neoplatonism

a revival in the Italian Renaissance, associated with Marsilio Ficino, who attempted to synthesize Christianity and Platonism

Hermeticism

an intellectual movement beginning in the fifteenth century that taught that divinity is embodied in all aspects of nature; it included works on alchemy and magic as well as theology and philosophy; the tradition continued into the seventeenth century and influenced many of the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution

Liberal studies/liberal arts.

the seven areas of study that formed the basis of education in medieval and early modern Europe; following Boethius and other late Roman authors, they consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic or logic (the trivium) and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium)

Francesco Guicciardini

(1483-1540) achieved the high point of Renaissance historiography in his works History of Italy and History of Florence at the beginning of the sixteenth century; the beginning of "modern analytical historiography"; analyzed political situations precisely and critically

Johannes Gutenburg

played an important role in completing the devlopment of movable type printing, one of the most important technological innovations of Western civilization; his Bible, completed 1455 or 1456, was the first true book in the West produced from movable type

Masaccio

continued the work of medieval artist Giotto by imitating nature in his paintings; his cycle of frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel has long been regarded as the first masterpiece of Early Renaissance Art; introduced a new realistic style of painting through his use of monumental figures and landscape, and visual representation of the laws of perspective

Donato di Donatello

spent time in Rome studying and copying the statues of antiquity and mastered the essence of what he saw; famous statue of David, displaying revolutionary achievements in Renaissance sculpture and architecture

Donatello's David

the first known life-size freestanding bronze nude in European art since antiquity-- celebrated Florentine heroism in the triumph over Milan in 1428; statue reflected the simplicity and strength of human dignity

Filippo Brunelleschi

drew much inspiration from the architectural monuments of Roman antiquity and poured insights into the creation of new architecture; helped finish the Cathedral of Florence (the Duomo); style evident in the Church of San Lorenzo containing classical columns, rounded arches, and coffered ceiling (atmosphere did not overwhelm worshippers like Gothic cathedrals, but comforted as a space meant to fit human, not divine, measurements)

High Renaissance

shift to this period of the Renaissance is marked by the increasing importance of Rome as a new cultural center of the Italian Renaissance; artists had mastered the enw techniques for a scientific observation of the world around them and were now ready to move into individualistic forms of creative expression

Leonardo da Vinci

Italian painter, sculptor, engineer, scientist, and architect who dominated the High Renaissance; represents a transitional figure in the shift to High Renaissance principles; stressed the need to advance beyond realism and initiated the High Renaissance's preoccupation with idealization of nature (the ideal form)

Last Supper

da Vinci's painting, a brilliant summary of fifteenth-century trends in its organization of space and use of perspective to depict subjects three-dimensionally in a two-dimensional medium

each apostle reveals his personality and relationship to Jesus through gestures and movement

Raphael

blossomed as a painter at an early age and regarded as one of Italy's best painters; acclaimed for his numerous madonnas, in which he attempted to achieve an ideal of beauty far surpassing human standards.

School of Athens

Raphael's fresco revealing a world of balance, harmony, and order-- the underlying principles of the art of the classical world of Greece and Rome

Michelangelo

an accomplished painter, sculptor, and architect, a giant of the High Renaissance; influenced by Neoplatonism, especially evident in his figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, depicting the Fall of Man; the beauty of his figures is meant to be a reflection of divine beauty

Michelangelo's David

manifestation of Michelangelo's search for ideal beauty; a colossal marble statue commissioned by the Florentine govt in 1501; the largest sculpture in Italy since the time of Rome, it inspires awe and proudly proclaims the beauty of the human body and the glory of human beings

Northern Renaissance

more northern European artists, influenced by the prevalence of Gothic cathedrals with their stained-glass windows, focused more on illuminated manuscripts and wooden panel painting for altarpieces; limited available space in the works led northern painters to take great care to depict each object and become masters at rendering details

Jan van Eyck

among the first to use oil paint, enabling him to use a varied range of colors and make changes to create fine details; his work is truly indicative of norther Renaissance painters, who, in their effort to imitate nature, did so not by mastery of the laws of perspective and proportion but by empirical observation of visual reality and the accurate portrayal of details

Albrecht Durer

northern artist of the later period who was greatly affected by the Italians; mastered the laws of perspective and Renaissance theories of proportion; in his famous Adoration of the Magi, he incorporated both the northern style of minute details and the Italian style to achieve a standard of ideal beauty by a careful examination of the human form

The Spanish Inquisition

under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella, it worked with cruel efficiency to guarantee the orthodoxy of the Jewish converts to Chrisitianity; eventually expelled all professed Jews and Muslims from Spain; achieved the goal of absolute religious orthodoxy as a basic ingredient of the Spanish state

Council of Constance

succeeded in bringing the Great Schism to an end in 1417; however, it faced the much more difficult task of dealing with the problems of heresy and reform in the Catholic Church

Great Schism

the crisis in the late medieval church when there were first two and then three popes; ended by the Council of Constance (1414-1418)

Jan Hus

(1374-1415) the chancellor of the university at Prague leading a group of Czech reformers; in his call for reform, he urged the elimination of the worldliness and corruption of the clergy and attacked the excessive power of the papacy within the Catholic church; arrested by the Council of Constance and burned at the stake for heresy in 1415-- this began revolutionary upheaval in Bohemia and the Hussite wars until 1436

Nepotism

the appointment of family members to important political positions; derived from the regular appointment of nephews by Renaissance popes

Contrapposto

an Italian term that means "counterpoise". used in Renaissance sculpture to depict a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs in the axial plane

Virtu

refers to the meaning and the fame awarded by Machiavelli, Italian author and political thinker of the Renaissance; in his classical work The Prince, he says that there are two opposing strengths that lead both the individual life as well as the whole society: the Virtue and the Fate