Humanists reveled in applying their knowledge of old languages to the past, refusing to be enslaved by subsequent custom.

Such an approach not only made them innovative instructors, but also kept them always on the lookout for fresh knowledge sources. During their hunt, they amassed great manuscript collections, viewing them as strong cures for the problems of modern society, capable of improving the brains of those who immersed themselves in them.

Humanist studies aimed for beautifully stated wisdom, both understanding of the good and the capacity to motivate others to seek it. Learning was not intended to be abstract and unpracticed. "It is better to wish good than to know the truth," Petrarch said, and it became a popular saying.

The author of the most prominent Renaissance treatise on education (On the Morals That Befit a Free Man), Pietro Paolo Vergerio (1349–1420), provided a classic exposition of the humanist notion of a liberal education:

We call those liberal studies that are worthy of a free man; those studies by which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education that calls forth, trains, and develops those highest gifts of body and mind that ennoble men and which are rightly judged to rank second in dignity only to virtue, for to a vulgar temper, gain and pleasure are the only goals of existence, whereas to a lofty nature, moral worth and fame are.

Of all the significant historical recoveries achieved during the Italian Renaissance, none stands out more than the resuscitation of Greek studies—particularly Plato's works—in fifteenth-century Florence. This renaissance was brought about by a number of causes. As previously stated, a foundation was created in 1397 when the city welcomed Manuel Chrysoloras to come from Constantinople to encourage Greek study.

A half-century later (1439), the ecumenical Council of Ferrara-Florence, called to discuss the merger of the Eastern and Western churches, cleared the way for a flood of Greek academics and manuscripts to enter the West. Following the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, many Greek academics sought safety in Florence. This was the context in which the Florentine Platonic Academy grew.

A fundamental humanist critique of Scholastic education was that much of its content was ineffective. Humanists felt that education should foster individual virtue and public duty, thus the term civic humanism. The most remarkable instances may be found in Florence, where three humanists served as city chancellors: Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Leonardo Bruni (ca. 1370–1444), and Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459). Each utilized his rhetorical abilities to rouse Florentines against Naples and Milan's assault. Bruni and Poggio penned adoring histories of the city.

Leon Battista Alberti (1402–1472), another excellent humanist philosopher, was a well-known Florentine architect and constructor. Many current historians, however, disagree that humanistic research truly accounted for such civic action, and instead see Florence's three great humanist chancellors as role models.

Many humanists grew cliquish and snobby at the end of the Renaissance, an intellectual elite more concerned with limited scientific pursuits and writing pristine, classical Latin than with renewing civic and social life. In response to this aristocratic movement, humanist historians Niccol Machiavelli (1469–1527) and Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) wrote in Italian, using contemporary history as their major source and subject matter. We can see the two sides of humanism here, arguably: serious research and practical politics.

The ideals and interests of the laity were no longer subservient to those of the clergy in Renaissance Italy, as they were in Reformation Europe.

In education, culture, and religion, the laity took the lead and set examples for the clergy to follow.

This trend was caused in part by the church's loss of worldwide influence during the late Middle Ages' major crises.

The increase of national emotion and the establishment of national bureaucracies staffed by laymen rather than clerics, as well as the fast growth of lay education in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, all aided it. Medieval Christian principles were modified to reflect a more earthly mentality.

This new outlook on life is seen in the painting and sculpture of the High Renaissance (1450–1527), when art and sculpture achieved their pinnacle. Whereas medieval art tended to be abstract and conventional, Renaissance art embraced the natural world and human emotions wholeheartedly.

Renaissance painters gave their creations a logical, even mathematical order—perfect symmetry and proportionality expressing a confidence in the universe's equilibrium.

Leonardo, a real master of many talents, exemplified the Renaissance ideal of the universal individual. He was a renowned painter who also advised Italian princes and the French monarch Francis I (r. 1515–1547) on military engineering. He was a self-taught botanist who encouraged scientific research and dissected corpses to study anatomy. His innovative thinking predicted contemporary devices such as aircraft and submarines.

His hobbies were so diverse that they threatened to decrease his attention span. His mastery of capturing interior feelings through complex facial expressions is evident not just in his most renowned painting, the Mona Lisa, but also in his self-portrait.

The emergence of new technical abilities throughout the fifteenth century aided Renaissance painters. Aside from the availability of oil paints, they had an advantage in two ways: the application of shadowing to increase naturalness (chiaroscuro) and the modification of the scale of figures to give the spectator a sense of continuity with the picture (linear perspective).

These approaches allowed the artist to depict space in a more realistic manner and to paint a more natural universe.

In comparison to its flat Byzantine and Gothic equivalents, the result was a three-dimensional picture brimming with vitality and life.

The patriarch of Renaissance art, Giotto (1266–1336), heralded the new course. Giotto painted a more natural world as a fan of Saint Francis of Assisi, with whom he shared a love of nature.