The Italian Renaissance.

Renaissance: “rebirth”, or to be born again

• 1500s to 1600s
• Birthplace of the Renaissance is Italy
• It focused on lots of arts, literature, and science.
• Had brought back many greek and roman cultures that they had known of

Why Italy?

Italy is the birthplace of the Renaissance for several reasons: Geography, Invention of the printing press, economy, and freedom of speech

• Geography:

  • Italy is in the ruins of parts of the fallen Roman Empire, so they were able to just explore their area and learn about how the people before had lived
  • Using this to their advantage, they learned many things about the way Romans lived, and they had added it to their own ideas

• Invention of the Printing Press

  • with the church still in charge at this time, it was hard for information to pass through and spread to other places
  • the printing press would print out information and spread them way faster than verbal communication
  • besides faster speed, it’s also more accurate than verbal communication as it’s says the same thing but all written down on papers

• Freedom of Expression

  • People were allowed to say what they wanted to, with the exception of the church trying to stop them

• Rich Economy

  • Italy had a pretty big population at that time. 
  • This was a good thing
  • More people could mean that there’s more geniuses amongst the crowd
  • It could also mean more people could come together and talk about ideas
  • Italy also has 2 popular trade cities: Venice and Florence
  • Since Italy is full of merchants that trade with people coming from everywhere, they have enough money to patronize the arts. 
  • This meaning that they were able to buy from artists, financially supporting them

  \n 4 main thinkings that came out of the Renaissance:

1. Secularism
   • Secular: meaning real, or “of the earth”
   • The people had shifted their focus on religion onto the real world
   • It doesn’t mean that they stopped being religious, just that religion wasn’t the only thing people were living for anymore 
   • examples of this would be the increase of study in literature or science
2. Humanism:
   • Humanism: of the humans 
   • This was the thinking that humans weren’t meant to be God’s pawn
   • They have their own life to live for, and that was glorified
   • Mankind, anatomy, etc. was basically, was honored through arts 
     • Example: pictures of nudity shows how important the human body was to them
3. Individualism:
   • Almost like a subcategory for Humanism, Individualism focuses on each and every person and how important they might be for society
   • It basically says that every human being is unique, and society shouldn’t drag them down just because they are different
4. Skepticism:
   • Skepticism sounds like skeptical, and that’s basically what it was
   • At the time being, the church had all the knowledge of the world. People were to just accept them without proof (no questions)
   • Now, they were questioning the information given to them, and this led to them finding answers to their questions themselves, leading to a scientific discovery period as well

Big People from the Renaissance:

• Leonardo da Vinci:

  • Pretty popular artist
  • Mona Lisa
  • The Last Supper

• Michelangelo

  • Another artist, but also a sculptor
  • “David” statue
  • Painted Sistine Church ceiling

• Shakespeare 

  • Literature writer 
  • popular works of literature and plays
  • Romeo and Juliet 

• Dante

  • Philosopher 
  • Poet
  • Wrote “The Devine Comedy”

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