Italian Renaissance

Renaissance

European movement that grew out of rediscovery of the classical reads of ancient Greece and Rome

Petrach

Father of Renaissance; laid out intellectual framework

Humanism

Focuses on the unlimited potential of human being as an end in themselves

Cicero

Found a model for eleloquence in Latin that would define the intellectual output of other Renaissance thinkers

Philology

The study of the history and development of language

Lorenzo Valla

Identified several different stages in the development of the Latin language

Secularism

Decoupling of religious beliefs from society

Individualism

Emphasizes the triumph of the individual as opposed to the community

Education

Became more important seeing that to get to full potential you had to get educated

Civic humanism

Applying humanism to the public sphere; applied to the political and economic realities of the state they live in

Baldassare Castiglione

Wrote The Courtier; served as a guide for how an educated young man should act in courtly society and that they should be skilled in all humanistic disciples, wrote and speak with eloquence, be physically strong and mentally awake

Leonardo Bruni

Wrote the new Cicero; argued that the intellectual man was duty bound to deploy his education in service of the state

Niccolo Machiavelli

Wrote The Prince; A ruler should know how to preserve power at all costs, ensure order and stability, know when to be brutal and kind and that human beings are intesely selfish

Renaissance Art

Emphasized naturalism; portrayed the world as it was not in the mysteries of symbolic figures and flatness that usually characterized art in the middle ages

Geometric perspective

Proteay realistic depth in a scene

Michelangelo

Sculpture of the biblical David; example of a religious theme with a bit of humanist influence of Greek God figure/image of perfected humanity

Raphael

School of Athens

Filippo Brunelleschi

Rebuilding of a church in Florence; tossed out gothic conventions of medieval cathedrals and designed it with Romans columns and arches