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Renaissance (meaning "new birth" in French; the form "renascence" is also found) describes a revival in intellectual or artistic effort. In history, this term is used in particular for a period in European History between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. More generally, the term also applies to other bursts of creativity and cultural renewal, such as the so-called Harlem Renaissance in black New York City in the 1920s, the Irish literary renaissance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the Carolingian Renaissance in eighth and ninth century Europe. This article is about the European Renaissance, "the great revival of art and letters, under the influence of classical models, which began in Italy in the 14th century and continued spreading throughout Europe during the 15th and 16th" centuries.[1]


Main Article: Humanism


Humanists tend to believe that human beings can make progress through the application of human intellect without the need for religious authority. Many humanists also believe that "man is the measure of all things",[2] although some people like the ethicist Peter Singer have questioned humanist attitudes to animals. Humanism is derived from both Unitarian Universalism and from the philosophies of the Enlightenment.

Centers of Renaissance


Main Article: Italian Renaissance


During the 14th, 15th and 16th century, the Tuscan city of Florence had an unprecedented cultural boom and gradually became the epicentre of the Italian and European Renaissance. By 1425 Florence had a population of 60,000 and was an independently governed city-state. The town owed its prosperity mainly to a thriving wool industry and the manufacturing of woolen cloth. During the fifteenth century, the Medici, a family of merchants and bankers, gradually took control in the republic. The family mainly owed its wealth to Giovanni de 'Medici (1360-1429). Giovanni's son, Cosimo de 'Medici (1389-1464), enjoyed the support of the poorer strata of the population. While the republican institutions were upheld, he dominated politics. Lorenzo il Magnifico (1449-1492), his grandson, especially enjoyed fame as a poet, connoisseur and patron. Some major Florentine writers like Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and Machiavelli († 1527) helped shape the image of the Renaissance. Florence was also the base for Giorgio Vasari (1511—1574), who wrote the popular and influential Lives of the Artists, thereby establishing the standard view of the artistic side of the Renaissance, culminating in Michelangelo.


The great transformation of Rome began under Pope Nicholas V (1447), whose building efforts renewed much of the city. The humanist scholar Enea Silvio Piccolomini became Pope Pius II in 1458 and he encouraged the development of science and humanism. When the papacy fell under the control of wealthy families from the north, such as the Houses of Medici and Borgia, the spirit of Renaissance art and philosophy began to strongly influence the Vatican. Pope Sixtus IV continued the work of Nicholas V and also ordered the construction of the Sistine Chapel. The popes increasingly behaved as secular rulers and the Papal States were transformed by a series of "warrior popes" into a centralized powerful state. Pope Sixtus V in his turn stimulated a major Roman city expansion. Rome seemed to lose its independence in the field of sculpture by the disappearance of the Cosmati school. Its most notable 15th-century monuments were created by sculptors from other schools: Donatello, Antonio del Pollaiolo, Mino da Fiesole and Andrea Bregno. This led to a certain eclecticism, as artists often worked in their own style on the same monument. Rome itself yielded few sculptors of importance. Paolo Romano (also called "Taccone" or" "Tuccone") had a 'Roman preference' for arranging his sculptures in a circle, but much of his style was indebted to Isaia da Pisa. Neither can Giovanni Cristoforo Romano be considered a representative of a Roman school. He fled to Lombardy and worked there in the Milanese style. The most famous architect and sculptor in Rome was Michelangelo, but he was a Tuscan "immigrant" who spent some periods of his life in Rome.


Doge's Palace

Like Florence, during the Renaissance Venice was a republic. Actually it was rather a state that ruled over a part of the territory of today's Italy and a large part of the Adriatic coast, and controlled many islands. The stable political environment and the booming economy had well survived the Black Death and the collapse of its trading partner Constantinople. This healthy economy was, just as was the case with Florence, a major factor in stimulating the flourishing of the arts. It attracted a lot of artists to Venice where they could find wealthy patrons.

As a major trading port, Venice was also quite capable of finding markets for the products of the decorative arts. Scattered all over the republic one could find potters, glaziers, woodworkers, lace makers and sculptors who like the painters were able to secure a good income.

The government and the religious communities of Venice sponsored the creation of structures, decorations, statues and paintings. Also homes of wealthy individuals were often decorated as if they were small palaces with impressive facades, so this was another opportunity for artists to find patronage. With its wealth of Renaissance architecture and decoration, today Venice is still one of the main tourist attractions in Europe.

Venetian artists and craftsmen joined together in guilds, which ensured that members were properly paid for their services. There were guilds for wood carvers, stone workers, painters, etc. When we talk about the Venetian "School" of painting, this is to be taken quite literally. There were actually schools (scuola), each with its own style and technique, and they were very selective about who could join and who should be excluded. Together, they so rigidly protected and controlled the Venetian art market that it was even difficult to buy paintings produced outside the 'schools'.

The geographic location of Venice made it less susceptible to external influences and this probably contributed considerably to its unique distinctive artistic style. Art critics for example praised the remarkable "Venetian Light" that appeared in the paintings. All these factors and characteristics during the Renaissance led to the birth of a separate school of painting that has become known as the Venetian School. Early masters of the families were Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

Venice also produced its own independent school of sculptors. The Gothic style had many followers in Venice and its influence was still strong. This explains why there was a transition period in which Gothic elements were used next to typical Renaissance art motifs. Artists like Bartolomeo Bon (fl. 1450) belong to this category - he created the decoration of the Porta della Carta of the Doge's Palace. Pietro Lombardo's work (fl. 1500), including his tomb for doge Nicolo Marcello, already belongs to the naturalistic, classical phase of the Renaissance.


Main Article: French Renaissance

French Renaissance is a term used to describe the cultural and artistic movement that profoundly affected France from the late 15th century until the early 17th century. The period of the French Renaissance traditionally starts (roughly) with the French invasion of Italy in 1494 during the reign of Charles VIII and ends with the death of Henry IV in 1610.

A generally held view is that the Renaissance in France began with the expedition of Charles VIII to Naples. Louis XII and Francis I spent a lot of energy to seize possession of Italian provinces. The wife of Henry II was Catherine de' Medici, and her children, Charles IX and Henry III, became italianized French. In the period between 1494 and 1589 there was an ongoing cultural and diplomatic connection between France and Italy. Italians came to France as courtiers, ambassadors, businessmen and artists, the French upper class acquired a strong taste for Italian style, and the court adored the Italian culture and customs.

This Italian influence came to prominence in the school of Fontainebleau, under the patronage of king Francis I. The architectural style that was developed by Bullant, De l'Orme and Lescot however distinguished itself by a national personal touch, as demonstrated by the royal and princely palaces of Chenonceaux, Chambord, Anet Ecouen, Fontainebleau, the Louvre and elsewhere. The style that emerged was a mix of fantasy and richness of decoration, combined with purity of lines and a great feeling of space.

During the reign of Francis I, a lot of Italian painters visited France. Among them we find Francesco Primaticcio, Andrea del Sarto and Leonardo da Vinci. However, their inspiring example did not immediately yield an important French painting school. That would only happen in the next century when Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain with a mixture of Italian and Flemish influences became the undisputed representatives of the spirit of the classical revival.

French sculptors like Jean Goujon, Louis Cousin and Germain Pilon, on the other hand, were as much admired as Italian artists. Meanwhile the 'fine arts' flourished, including glass painting, goldsmithing, jewelry design, the making of engravings, tapestries, carvings, pottery and more.

French literature had responded promptly to the Renaissance influence. Philippe de Commynes, the historian who escorted Charles VIII on his expedition to Naples, differed from the earlier French chroniclers by a shrewdness and analytical style that was reminiscent of a Venetian ambassador. Even François Villon, his contemporary, was in fact already a modern poet because of the vividness with which he describes himself, in a way that we now call "realism".

But the decisive turn came with Pierre de Ronsard and his comrades of the Pleiade. It was their goal to raise the French vernacular to the level of the classics, making use of a variety of Italian verse forms. The refinement they envisioned they particularly found in the work of Francesco Petrarca.

Meanwhile, French classical drama was also developed by Étienne Jodell and Robert Garnier, reaching its apogee in Pierre Corneille and later Jean Racine. As in Italy, the classical unities of time, place and action were followed.

Translations from Greek and Latin into French followed in rapid succession at the beginning of this period. Jacques Amyot 's Piularch and his Daphnis et Chloe are among the finest examples of French prose from that era. And then of course there was the first of the essayists, Michel de Montaigne, whose work illustrates well what was actually happening in the renaissance: although he quotes abundantly from classical authors, they are simply used as illustrations, not as authorities, and the thinking is his own. François Rabelais' masterpieces are also considered to belong to the best works French literature has ever produced.

In general it may be said that France, between Flanders and Italy, succeeded in assimilating the best of both worlds in its own distinctive artistic style.

Low Countries

The Renaissance in the Low Countries, as elsewhere in Europe, was a flowering period of the arts and humanities. During the Middle Ages, the situation in the wealthy Flemish cities such as Bruges and Ghent in terms of cultural influence and fame was even comparable to that of the Italian republics. [3] Their 15th and 16th century architecture incorporated and blended elements of the style coming from Italy. Due to political instability and the religious wars of the 16th century the visual arts in the north developed later than in Italy or France. Some of the painters mentioned here do not fall within the boundaries that historians set for the Renaissance. However, the flowering of the northern painting was animated by the same vital spirit of the Renaissance. The brothers Van Eyck enriched European painting with the perfection of the oil painting technique, followed by Hans Memling, Quinten Metsys, Jan Gossaert and Lucas van Leyden. In the 17th century, painting in the Low Countries gained even more fame with the work of Peter Paul Rubens and Antoon van Dyck in the south, and in the north witch Rembrandt van Rijn, the Dutch landscape painters and the painters of domestic scenes and still lifes. Famous artists from this period include Albert Cuyp and Jacob van Ruisdael as painters of nature, and Gerard ter Borch II, Jan Steen, Gerrit Dou, Adriaen van Ostade and David Teniers who portrayed scenes of daily life.

The vernacular in the Low Countries initially benefited little from the new cultural life that earlier had raised Italian, Spanish, French and English to the rank of the classical languages. But humanism flourished in the north. Desiderius Erasmus played a leading role, as well as a long list of critical scholars and publishers like Justus Lipsius, Daniël Heinsius and Grotius, and the printers Plantijn and Elsevier. Leiden University emerged as the center of intellectual progress.


John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, had a great influence on the development of humanist learning in England. In 1511 he was successful in getting Erasmus to lecture at Cambridge University, of which he was the chancellor. He was also instrumental in the founding of St John's College and in drawing up its statutes (1516), according to which only Hebrew, Greek and Latin were to be spoken within its walls. The college was soon turning out notable scholars, including Roger Ascham, tutor to Princess Elizabeth, who became proficient in Greek and Latin.


Civic Humanism

See also Republicanism and Machiavelli










Studying history


"Early modern" as alternative to "Renaissance"

The word "Renaissance," as a reference to European cultural trends in the 14th through 16th centuries, began to be used in French in 1828 and in English soon thereafter.[10] But in the 1940s, scholars, beginning with the French historians of the Annales school, began referring to that era of European history as the "early modern" period. This phrase, too, soon appeared in English, first among historians, and later in literary studies and other fields.

In current academic discourse, many scholars use the phrase "early modern" instead of "Renaissance." Among the reasons they may do so are:

1. To announce that they are studying not only cultural and political elites but also, as Vanderbilt English professor Leah S. Marcus puts it, the "commonplace lives of common people, economic trends, commercial practices, forms of popular entertainment, and popular 'mentality' -- either strands of culture that cut across class divisions or strands identified as nonculture by Renaissance humanism in its most purely elitist form"; [11]

2. To emphasize the continuity, from the early modern period to the modern and postmodern eras, of certain cultural and social trends, ranging from alienation to the indeterminacy of texts;

3. To distance themselves from a valorization of certain civilizations (especially Classical Greek and Roman) over others (especially the medieval period in Europe) that is allegedly implied by the term "Renaissance" itself (a "rebirth" of the classical ideals that had been lost or suppressed during the medieval "dark ages"); or

4. To suggest that they are engaged in interdisciplinary study, instead of restricting their concern to traditional disciplines such as history or literature.[12]



Further Reading

for a much longer guide, see the Bibliography subpage



  1. Renaissance. Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press (2014). Retrieved on 22 April 2014.
  10. Oxford English Dictionary s.v. "Renaissance."
  11. Leah S. Marcus, "Renaissance/Early Modern Studies," in Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, eds., Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies (New York: Modern Language Association, 1992), 41-63, at 44.
  12. Marcus, "Renaissance/Early Modern Studies."
  13. The 2008 program is online