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

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”