renaissance
...er, people from various segments of society—from kings and nobles to merchants and soldiers—studied classical literature and art. Unlike the professional scholars of the Middle Ages, these people were amateurs who studied for pleasure, and their interest in art from the past was soon extended to contemporary works. Medieval art and literature tended to serve a specialized interest and purpose; Renaissance works of art and literature existed largely for their own sake, as objects of ideal beauty or learning. B Curiosity and Objectivity The Renaissance was marked by an intense interest in the visible world and in the knowledge derived from concrete sensory experience. It turned away from the abstract speculations and interest in life after death that characterized the Middle Ages. Although Christianity was not abandoned, the otherworldliness and monastic ideology of the Middle Ages were largely discarded. The focus during the Renaissance turned from abstract discussions of religious issues to the morality of human actions. C Individualism In the Renaissance, the unique talents and potential of the individual became significant. The concept of personal fame was much more highly developed than during the Middle Ages. Renaissance artists, valuing glory and renown in this world, signed their works. Medieval artists, with their focus on otherworldliness and on glorifying God, were more humble and remained largely anonymous. The attention given to the development of an individual’s potential during the Renaissance brought with it a new emphasis on education. The goal of education was to develop the individual's talents in all intellectual and physical areas, from scholarship and the writing of sonnets to swordsmanship and wrestling. It was believed that the ideal person should not be bound to one specific discipline, such as that of scholar, priest, or warrior. This was in stark contrast to the Middle Ages, when specialization had been encouraged. III Interpretations of the Renaissance print section A Renaissance as Rebirth Both the idea of historical rebirth and the use of the term renaissance to describe this process were characteristic products of the Renaissance itself. The term rinascità (an Italian word for "renaissance") was probably first attached to the modern period in a book of biography entitled Le vita de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, ed scultori italiani (1550; The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors, 1568), more commonly known as Lives of the Artists, published by Italian painter Giorgio Vasari. Vasari applied the concept specifically to a rebirth of art that drew its inspiration from antiquity rather than from the work of more recent medieval artists. In the 14th and 15th centuries many Italian scholars began to display a remarkable awareness of history. They believed that they lived in a new age, free from the darkness and ignorance that they felt characterized the preceding era. These scholars compared their own achievements to the glories of ancient Rome and Greece. One group of Italian writers in the 14th century, following the example of the contemporary poet Petrarch, emphasized that their age resembled the great civilizations of the past because it focused on artistic achievement. In their view, this renewed emphasis on the arts had begun in the late 13th and early 14th centuries with the work of Italian painter Giotto and Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Another group, led by Florentine scholar and diplomat Leonardo Bruni, added an equally important political dimension to this concept. Bruni and his followers admired a republican or representative form of government and looked to ancient Rome, as it was before the emperors came to power, as the best model. They applied humanistic learning to social and political life and encouraged patriotism among the residents of Florence and other Italian city-states. The Renaissance originally grew out of cultural and political developments in Italy. Over the next three centuries, writers north of the Italian Alps adopted some of these ideas and soon spread them widely throughout Europe. Northern European Renaissance scholars, such as Dutch writer Desiderius Erasmus, added their own dimension to the Renaissance. They emphasized the need to reform Christian society and believed that this reform could be accomplished through education that was based on the great writings of ancient Greece and Rome. Intellectuals continued to build on the ideas of the Renaissance during the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, a time when scientific advancements led to a new emphasis on the power of human reason. One of the early Enlightenment thinkers was French philosopher and writer Voltaire. He claimed that the Renaissance was a crucial stage in liberating the mind from the superstition and error that he believed characterized Christian society during the Middle Ages. Voltaire applauded the declining power of the Roman Catholic Church during the Renaissance. Later historians and writers who became part of the 19th-century romantic movement evaluated the Renaissance in an entirely different manner. Followers of romanticism emphasized passion over reason. They showed a keen interest in the vital, heroic, and unconventional personalities of the Renaissance such as Italian poet Petrarch, Italian artist Michelangelo, and French philosopher René Descartes. The romantics believed that an important characteristic of the Renaissance was individualism, which emphasized the capabilities and rights of the individual. By the middle decades of the 19th century, two historians—Jules Michelet of France and Jakob Burckhardt of Switzerland—had combined these various perspectives in their interpretation of the Renaissance. Michelet saw the Renaissance as the momentous debut of a new phase in human history. He believed that it made possible all the great achievements of modern man, including the discovery of the Americas, the new science, and modern literature and art. Michelet’s view of the Renaissance as the beginning of the modern era was refined in Jakob Burckhardt's Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1878), first publ...