RENAISSANCE 

Renaissance Background

The Renaissance began in Florence on the Italian Peninsula in the mid-14th century, and it was later spreading throughout Europe.

Renaissance art was marked by the exaltation of the world and human beings.  From a technical point of view, Renaissance artists were concerned with developing proportion and balance and using perspective techniques. Therefore, they began to adopt experimental methods and observation of nature. They also idealized the beauty of the human body.

In this period, art gained growing social importance. Cities began to value artistic production since this was a way to demonstrate economic strength. 

The awakening of European cities, which occurred thanks to the commercial flourishing from the 12th century on, and the economic prosperity of the newly formed National Monarchies, created an ideal environment for cultural development from the late Middle Ages.

During this period the idea of schools for the people, in which children could study Latin grammar and humanities, was disseminated.  The increasing spread of school education in the Middle Ages contributed to the evolution of humanism from the 15th century onward.

Precursors: The Humanists

The main characteristic of the Renaissance was the development of humanistic thought. This intellectual movement valued the human spirit, linking the culture of the time with the recovery of the tradition of classical antiquity. Therefore, humanism is the philosophical and artistic aspect of the Renaissance.

The humanist was one who, in addition to theology, also devoted himself to the study of various fields of knowledge, such as classical languages, anatomy, engineering, mathematics, the arts, etc. Thus, many works written in antiquity were recovered and studied from new points of view.

Humanist thought was mainly concerned with using reason to understand the reality in which one lived, unlike most medieval thinkers, who attributed divine explanations to the phenomena of nature, for example. Humanists were not necessarily against faith or religion. They just proposed a different way of understanding existence, valuing reason, and questioning the excessive authority of the religious over all aspects of life.

One event that made the spread of humanist ideas possible was the invention of the printing press in 1448, which made it possible to print books, pamphlets, and many other documents. The German silversmith Johannes Gutenberg is considered the inventor of this technique. 

Italian Humanism

The birthplace of humanism was the Italian Peninsula, where the classical tradition was strong, and the Gothic of the medieval period had little intensity. A contributing factor to the rise of humanism was that, from the late 14th century, some regions of Italy received Byzantine thinkers escaping from the Ottoman Turks. Some of the precursors of the Italian Renaissance and humanism are Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Boccaccio (1313-1375), and Petrarch (1304-1374).

Among the classical works that influenced humanist thought are the writings of the Greek philosopher Plato. Many of his works were rediscovered in the 14th century, enabling criticism of Aristotle's philosophical theses, which structured medieval scholasticism. In 1440, the Italian humanists founded the Platonic to organize the intellectual life of Florence. Important figures of humanism participated in this academy, such as Pico Della Mirandola (1463-1494) and Nicolau Machiavelli (1469-1527).

Machiavelli is an example of the reach of humanist ideas that did not deal only with artistic production. In The Prince, he presented new political viewpoints. Another outstanding thinker was Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457), who, in his work, represents a principle of critical spirit against the scholastic thought defended by the Church.

Humanism Beyond Italy

Gradually humanism spread to other countries in Europe, and one of the most important figures from outside the Italian peninsula was Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536).

Erasmus devoted himself to philological studies and made a new and erudite edition of the New Testament. He was also concerned with spreading the ideal of Christian humanist thought. One of his principal works was the essay In Praise of Folly, a critique of the society of his time. 

Other examples of influentials thinkers are the Spaniards Antonio de Nebrija, Juan Luis Vives, and the Frenchman Guilhermo Budé. 

Renaissance Ideals

Historians consider the Renaissance/Renaissance to have occurred between the 14th and 16th centuries. However, this doesn't mean that humanist ideas spread throughout the whole of Europe, the influence of humanism was uneven across the continent. 

It is important to remark that medieval thought remained influential in Europe for many centuries.

The commercial prosperity of the Italian cities enriched the bourgeoisie. This group began to sponsor artists, which created works that promoted bourgeois ideals. The Church also financed artists in this period- that's why many of them represented biblical themes or religious traditions.

These art sponsors were called Maecenas. Since the work was financed, artists did not always paint or sculpt what they wanted. Yet, they always put their world worldview in the work they made.

Religious patronage caused many works, considered Renaissance, to work with themes related to religion. But this vision was mixed with new perspectives; such as a reflection on the individual who does not accept the existing social standards and satires criticizing the clergy, merchants, and rulers of the period.

In addition, some artists and thinkers of the period, such as Boccaccio, valued hedonism.

Renaissance painting stood out for introducing the technique of perspective, which allows the creation of an illusion of depth in artistic representations, intensifying the perception of realism. 

Sculpture and painting became independent manifestations, detaching from architectural works. Thus, the freedom and personal style of the artist gained importance, which demonstrates the strengthening of individualism in the period.

The Renaissance in other regions of Europe

The spread of Renaissance ideas throughout Europe had already begun in the 15th century. But it was in the following century that the movement increased in other regions of the continent.

In France, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne and François Rabelais (author of the satirical novels Gargantua and Pantagruel) stood out.

In Portugal, the Renaissance theme involves the Great Navigations. Its most brilliant artist was Luís Vaz de Camões, who tells the saga of the sea travelers in his work Os Lusíadas.  Another Portuguese highlight is Gil Vicente.

Spain relied on the brilliant work of Miguel de Cervantes, who satirized medieval chivalry in his work Don Quixote of La Mancha.

In England, Thomas Morus (1478-1535) wrote a book called Utopia, in which he tells the story of a perfect community. That's how the word "utopia" came to mean something impossible to happen. The plays and lyric poetry written by Englishman William Shakespeare (1564-1616) brought new concepts to the Western world.

Scientific Renaissance

The anthropocentrism and the intellectual renovations of the Renaissance enabled the formation of new science. Whose main characteristic was to be experimental. The Renaissance scientist was a great researcher. And found in the observation of nature the basis for his knowledge.

Geocentrism × heliocentrism

Astronomy was an important area of knowledge renewed by Renaissance science. By the end of the 15th century, many of the Church's secular claims were proven wrong. The most controversial of these was the geocentric theory.

Great scientists challenged this claim. The astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus presented, in 1543, the heliocentric theory, in which he claimed that the center of the universe was the Sun and that the Earth revolved around it.

The Church, however, tried to combat the new ideas by persecuting scientists through the Inquisition. Galileo Galilei, for example, was forced to disprove his theories and to confirm the geocentric theory. 

The great scientific revolution also allowed a profound reformulation of human knowledge and paved the way for new intellectual transformations in the following centuries. 

Despite all the scientific progress made, we cannot think that these new ideas were all imposed in Europe; on the contrary, medieval ideas persisted for a long time. 

Nevertheless, during the Renaissance, the foundations of modern scientific thought began to take shape and became the basis for the explanation and transformation of nature.