The Renaissance: All That Matters (Teach Yourself: History & Politics) 9781444192940, 1444192949

Table of contents :
Cover
Book title
Contents
1 History and measuring time
2 Petrarch and classical culture
3 The spread of ideas
4 Rising merchant economies
5 New forms of authority
6 Renaissance painting
7 Renaissance sculpture
100 ideas
Notes
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W

Citation preview

The Renaissance All That Matters

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Michael Halvorson

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ALL THAT MATTERS

The Renaissance

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First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton. An Hachette UK company. First published in US in 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. This edition published 2014 Copyright © Michael Halvorson 2014 The right of Michael Halvorson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Database right Hodder & Stoughton (makers) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographic rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Hodder & Stoughton, at the address below. You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Paperback ISBN 978 1 444 19294 0 eBook ISBN 978 1 444 19296 4 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: on file. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that any website addresses referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher and the author have no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content will remain relevant, decent or appropriate. The publisher has made every effort to mark as such all words which it believes to be trademarks. The publisher should also like to make it clear that the presence of a word in the book, whether marked or unmarked, in no way affects its legal status as a trademark. Every reasonable effort has been made by the publisher to trace the copyright holders of material in this book. Any errors or omissions should be notified in writing to the publisher, who will endeavour to rectify the situation for any reprints and future editions. Typeset by Cenveo® Publisher Services. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd., Croydon, CR0 4YY. Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH www.hodder.co.uk

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Contents 1 History and measuring time

1

2 Petrarch and classical culture

15

3 The spread of ideas

31

4 Rising merchant economies

51

5 New forms of authority

71

6 Renaissance painting

95

7 Renaissance sculpture

119

100 Ideas

137

Notes

150

Index

151

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1 History and measuring time Every period of civilization which forms a consistent whole manifests itself not only in politics, religion, art and science, but also in social life. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

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History and measuring time

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It is 3 p.m. on a sunny Friday afternoon in late June, and the British city of Cambridge is filled with college graduates wearing smiles and white-trimmed black gowns. Although each of the 31 colleges that make up the University of Cambridge will hold individual festivities for their graduates this month, the first wave of students receiving diplomas in the Senate House has already finished. The centuries-old graduation ceremony includes the formal introduction of each candidate; an invitation to kneel in front of the assembly of academic officers, parents, and well-wishers; a ritual clasping-of-the-hands with the vice-chancellor; and then a call to rise and solemnly receive the Cambridge degree. Throughout this festive three days, each of the graduates will proceed through the Senate House to receive their diplomas, beginning with candidates from the oldest Cambridge institution (Peterhouse, founded in 1284) and continuing with the remaining colleges in order of their formation within the University. As a history professor with an interest in medieval and Renaissance history, I can’t help but cheer for these graduates and their families, as I know something of the traditions that shaped this institution and that brought the students to this moment. In fact, the entire concept of a university began in places like Cambridge, which (along with the earliest European schools in Oxford, Paris, Salamanca and Bologna) have been inviting students and professors to their ivy-covered halls since the 13th century. In university towns like Cambridge (but also in places like Toronto, Tallahassee and Tacoma), graduation day is a clear reminder that the past shapes

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and informs the present, right down to the curriculum that students study and the ceremonial gowns that they wear. Hearing the Latin graduation proceedings today in Cambridge makes this link to the past especially clear to me, even if the pageantry is a product of different eras and contexts.

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all that matters: The Renaissance

The Chronophage clock always draws the crowds in Cambridge, but not because it tells time in predictable ways. First, the clock has no hands, nor is there a digital display that reveals the hour numerically; rather, the Chronophage displays the time using three concentric rings of tiny electronic LED bulbs, arranged in circular orbits to indicate the proper seconds, minutes and hours. You tell the time by recognizing how far the illuminated dots have travelled around the clock face, a code that most visitors grasp in just a few minutes. The Corpus Clock is called a ‘time eater’ because there is a monstrous grasshopper-like insect on the top of the clock that simultaneously moves the outer ring with its feet and gnaws at the air with its metallic mouth.

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Down the road from the Senate House is the venerable Corpus Christi College, founded in 1352, and on the outer wall of the college there is a fascinating clock. Called the Corpus Clock or Chronophage (‘time eater’), this giant timepiece has a circular face made of pure gold that is polished to a mirror finish. The unusual device was designed and paid for by the British inventor John Taylor, and it was dedicated in 2008 by the physicist Stephen Hawking, who is famous for his work on quantum mechanics, black holes, and (fittingly) the measurement of time.

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History and measuring time

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The meaning of all this blinking, moving and gnawing is obscure until it dawns on you that the monstrous bug is both running the clock and consuming its ‘product’, i.e. time itself. Adding to the intrigue, the Chronophage does not ‘tick’ at a consistent rate, but sometimes runs a little faster, sometimes a little slower. The locals will tell you that the designer intended this as a little deception to make the passage of time seem both mysterious and unpredictable. Not to worry, though – about every five minutes the clock’s internal circuitry makes things right and displays the precise local time with the accuracy of an atomic clock. At some level, we are all aware that ‘time flies’, and that in the wake of passing time the world changes, and so do the people and places around us. The passing of time is also a reminder of our mortality, something that the Chronophage signifies every hour with the cheerless sound of a chain dropping into a wooden coffin hidden behind the clock. However, the mechanical clock is also a monument to invention and innovation in the Renaissance, a surge in creativity that revitalized education, set new standards for art and scholarship and established the Scientific Method. The first public clock in Europe appeared in Milan in 1335, a faceless mechanical device near the top of a bell-tower that was capable of ringing 24 times a day. As the Renaissance progressed, spring-driven clocks appeared in the major cities of Europe, reaching a more precise level of sophistication after the pendulum experiments of the Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and with the refinements

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of the Dutch inventor Christiaan Huygens (1629–95). From these inventions, Renaissance Europeans developed a deeper fascination with time, calculation and chronology, and important social consequences came along with the clock. For example, the Renaissance schoolmaster Vittorino da Feltre (1378– 1446) suggested that his students should begin to organize their time, and he created an hourly timetable for pupils to efficiently organize their school day.

The subject of this work is the Renaissance movement in Europe (c.1350–1600), which began as a renewal of classical Greek and Roman culture in 14th-century Italy and gradually spread throughout Europe, influencing and shaping western societies up to the present. This small volume attempts to answer two questions:

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all that matters: The Renaissance

◗◗ The Renaissance

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In a similar vein, the Italian humanist and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), the author of the advice book On the Family, described time as something that was ‘precious’; an asset that should be ‘spent’ and not ‘wasted’. The Corpus Clock thus reminds us of a significant turning point in human history, an era when time was being thought about in new ways, and when the discipline of history took on a new chronological dimension. Renaissance clockmakers joined artists, engineers, technicians and mathematicians who studied the world innovatively and set the stage for the scientific revolution.

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History and measuring time

◗◗ What are the essential features of the Renaissance movement that gradually transformed Europe in the two-and-a-half centuries between 1350 and 1600? ◗◗ How do these cultural, artistic and intellectual transformations continue to influence modern societies today? The Renaissance: All That Matters introduces the brilliant writers and cultural innovators of the Renaissance – including Francesco Petrarch, Desiderius Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas More and Michelangelo – who transformed European society through their scholarly, political and artistic activities. Throughout the Renaissance, intriguing visionaries revived the study of literature, reformed medieval universities, invigorated the arts, experimented with new forms of governance, enhanced the economy, sailed around the globe and invented revolutionary devices such as the printing press, firearms and the telescope. The term ‘Renaissance’ is derived from the Italian word rinascita and the French word renaissance, meaning ‘rebirth’ or ‘renewal’. Rinascita was originally used by the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511–74), who described the artists of his era as having more in common with the best Greek and Roman artists of antiquity than the medieval craftsmen of Gothic Europe. The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt also popularized the term, using it to describe a critical period of Europe’s development in his famous book The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). Burckhardt stressed that the Renaissance was a distinctive age of renewal that

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profoundly influenced art, culture and social institutions. According to Burckhardt, Italians first melted the veil of medieval thinking, enabling a dynamic new spirit of the age that produced extraordinary thinkers and artists. The world has subsequently seen these multi-talented polymaths as ‘Renaissance Men’.

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all that matters: The Renaissance

For the purposes of this book, however, the Renaissance will be defined in relatively broad terms, so that a wide spectrum of people, places and events can be considered. I will introduce the era’s major scholars, artists, merchants, political thinkers, inventors, explorers and rebels – along with an assortment of everyday citizens. The presentation will begin with the writing of Francesco Petrarch in the early 14th century, and it will conclude with the sculpture of Michelangelo in the 1560s. Although Italy receives considerable attention in this book, so do the realms of the so-called ‘Northern Renaissance’, including France, Spain, the Netherlands, England and Germany. The book will also survey the important contributions of neighbouring regions to the Renaissance movement, including the Middle East, China and the Americas.

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In the classroom today, many teachers continue to use Burckhardt’s description of the Renaissance as a way of highlighting the fascinating achievements of exceptional people during an important age of transition in European history. On the other hand, some historians prefer to limit the discussion of ‘rebirth’ to classical scholarship, art and the activities of a relatively small circle of educated elites, so as not to overgeneralize the impact of cultural flourishing. In short, not everyone in the academic world finds the term ‘Renaissance’ to be accurate or useful.

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History and measuring time

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▲▲Michelangelo, David, Accademia Gallery, Florence

Are there other ways to define the term ‘Renaissance’? If you continue to study this topic after reading this book, you will find that some other scholars prefer to use the term ‘Renaissance’ (or cultural rebirth) in a very general way, so that the word does not refer to any specific region or time, but describes instead a society’s creative rediscovery and reuse of its own past as a source of inspiration. In other words, some scholars change ‘Renaissance’ from a noun to an adjective so that it more fittingly describes a

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particular society or culture that is going through an historic process of renewal. Thus the term ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ is current among medieval historians who are investigating cultural renewal associated with Charlemagne in ninth-century Europe, the ‘Timurid Renaissance’ is a description of the flourishing of Islamic culture in central Asia during the 15th century, and the ‘Harlem Renaissance’ is known as a period of artistic renewal in African-American culture during the 1920s in New York City. All of these uses of the term ‘Renaissance’ are appropriate, and they allow the historian to undertake comparative study with western Europe during the Renaissance.

England and the Renaissance all that matters: The Renaissance

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England’s most important exposure to the Renaissance began in the early 16th century, when men like Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus, John Colet and John Fisher reformed the educational curriculum in places like Oxford and Cambridge. In fact, Erasmus introduced what was called the ‘new learning’ in 1516, when he created a definitive translation of the Greek New Testament while teaching and working at Cambridge. Henry VIII made his own changes to the Cambridge curriculum soon after, requiring a liberal arts programme that emphasized the Greek and Latin classics, mathematics and Bible study. In the wake of these and other changes, scholars and artists from Italy, France, and Germany came to England, introducing new forms of literature, mathematics, religious reforms, political ideas, art, mapmaking and other innovations.

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As part of this intellectual flourishing in Cambridge, a royal charter was given to the university in the 1530s so that it would have the ability to print and publish books of scholarly merit. This privilege eventually developed into the Cambridge University Press, the oldest academic publisher in the world and a leading source of academic research and textbooks for universities and scholars in the 21st century. Similar developments also took place in Oxford and in the royal courts and religious institutions in and around London. England’s Renaissance is most often associated with the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603. At this time, the literary and artistic achievements of the first half of the 16th century that had blossomed in the works of Thomas Wyatt and Hans Holbein came to fruition with Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. The emphasis on mathematics and natural philosophy in the English universities produced a series of landmark achievements in science and technology in the course of the following century. These advances include the discoveries of Francis Bacon, William Gilbert, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton, and the emergence of philosophical institutions such as the Royal Society. The achievements of these scholars cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the founders of this movement – the humanist scholars, political thinkers and artist-engineers who revived the classical world and introduced new patterns of thought.

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◗◗ Debates about history

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all that matters: The Renaissance

This book will introduce you to some of the ongoing scholarly debates about the Renaissance. One of the most significant concerns of Renaissance scholars today is the problem of ‘periodization’. In other words, what time period are we really talking about when we use the term “Renaissance”, and who are we leaving out of the story when we define the era mainly through the achievements of male, upper-class statesmen, artists and intellectuals?

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To study history means to think about how people, institutions, and ideas have come into being and how they have been transformed (or remained the same) over time. Historians accomplish this work by examining physical objects (city streets and buildings, clothing, works of art, important inventions), as well as reading time-worn books and handwritten manuscripts, like Thomas More’s Utopia or a lawyer’s notes from the trial Brown v. Board of Education. There are many ways to write history, and in the end the result is always personal to the author, who among many possible narratives and ideas must pick specific stories, people and events to help explain the past. Although famous historians such as Herodotus and Edward Gibbon concerned themselves with the rise and fall of great civilizations, today it is just as likely that a history teacher or academic will be asking students to consider how ordinary people lived in the past and either accommodated or resisted the ideas, institutions and inventions that collectively interacted with their families and communities.

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This book works to be more inclusive in its definition of the Renaissance and its understanding of the period. The story features not just intellectuals, but the habits and domestic life of ordinary people, including the diverse social classes that competed in, and contributed to, Renaissance economies. You’ll meet a fascinating collection of tinkerers, inventors and artist-engineers who produced new mechanical devices, printing presses, artistic innovations and other discoveries. In most cases, the most visible, public figures of the Renaissance were male members of the artisan, merchant or noble classes. These men were the physicians, lawyers, soldiers, scholars, diplomats, priests and artists. They operated in the public realm and they performed most public duties and obligations. Women were vitally important members of Renaissance society, but they operated mostly in the private sphere. They were daughters, wives and mothers, artisans, maids, nuns and (occasionally) prostitutes. Women arranged marriages, operated convents, raised children and managed the family workshop. Only a few ground-breaking women, such as Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I of England or Isabella d’Este of Mantua, were significantly active in political life. But once the contours of Renaissance society are fully understood, the more obscure figures of history become visible. It is not only women that left behind few traces; 98 percent of the population could not read or write, and so few left written records of any kind. While there is certainly much truth to the statement that ideas and institutions from the Renaissance continue

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to contribute to modern life, Renaissance Europe was clearly not ‘modern’ as we understand contemporary western society. Renaissance governments in the 16th century were much less sophisticated than any form of modern government. The impact of modern capitalism, banking, industrialization and globalization were not felt during the Renaissance, nor had mass communication or transportation technologies been deployed. For most Europeans who lived between 1350 and 1800 – in what historians call the ‘pre-industrial era’ – life was simple, rural, agricultural and relatively unchanging from year to year. The following description of the French countryside in the 18th century has been used to sum up this age and its cultural distance from our own day:

Renaissance ideas were about human potential. They transformed older social structures and created a common vision for renewal based on inspiration

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all that matters: The Renaissance

And yet, despite the overwhelming poverty of many and the seemingly unchanging cycles of rural life, significant changes in European society did occur during the Renaissance. The process began first in the Italian cities with access to the trade routes, and then a movement of goods, wealth and ideas spread gradually to the urban areas and princely courts of central and northern Europe.

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‘Along rutted lanes, paths through cornfields, and sheep tracks in the mountains, we meet … a multitude of weather-beaten figures, a spectacle of broken teeth, gnarled hands, rags, clogs, coarse woollen stockings and homespun cloaks.’1

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History and measuring time

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from the classical world. Italy led the way during the transformation, and Italy’s vision of reform was imitated by others with the means and ability to receive the message. Italy led the way during the Renaissance much as France led the way and was imitated by others during the Enlightenment. This book summarizes the major developments of the Renaissance movement with a geographic sweep that moves from Italy to the countries of northern Europe. It begins with a discussion of humanism and the formative influence of Greek and Roman literature on European intellectuals and then explores the rising merchant economies of Europe and the new forms of authority and administration that took shape as the Renaissance movement spread. Finally, the book introduces the major achievements of Renaissance artists in painting and sculpture. All history books are selective, and this text is especially so. After all, the Renaissance spanned some 250 years and the movement took shape in different ways in different places. My hope with this book is to introduce to a new generation of readers the outlines of a fascinating era of social transformation and achievement. The influence and energies of the Renaissance are still with us.

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2 Petrarch and classical culture I confess: I admire Cicero more than any who wrote a line in any nation. Francesco Petrarch, On His Own Ignorance

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Petrarch and classical culture

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Arquà Petrarca is a small Italian hill town of 1,800 inhabitants some 13 miles south-west of Padua. In this picturesque village of narrow streets and shady olive trees, Francesco Petrarca (1304–74) or ‘Petrarch’, as he is more often known, spent the last four years of his life, editing his most important poems and letters, and receiving friends and family members for occasional visits until his robust health finally failed him. You can visit Petrarch’s home, which still contains a fine collection of his personal possessions and published writings, and you will enjoy the charm and solitude of his quiet Italian village. Petrarch’s career and pursuits are a fitting way to begin this chapter on humanism and the origins of the Renaissance movement in Italy. The central narrative is that Petrarch’s curiosity about the ancient world and its texts brought about a renewal of classical Greek and Roman culture, which blossomed in the city-states of northern and central Italy, and gradually spread into northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. This literary movement subsequently influenced art, culture, politics and philosophy, and inspired generations of painters, poets, diplomats, teachers and religious thinkers, including Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Niccolo Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, Martin Luther and William Shakespeare. Through these men, humanism (a general term for the movement’s intellectual ideals and programme of studies) kick-started the Renaissance and the Reformation, and changed European society

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in important and long-lasting ways. This chapter and Chapter 3 will explain how this happened.

◗◗ Francesco Petrarch

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all that matters: The Renaissance

Petrarch was trained to be a lawyer in the leading schools of his day, as his father wished, but the precocious student gradually came to favour writing, and in particular composing poetry. Although Petrarch had been groomed to take up lucrative administrative positions within the Church – and could even expect to receive an income or benefice from his ecclesiastical connections – he grew disenchanted with the papal bureaucracy. He once wrote to a friend that the city of Avignon had become

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Francesco Petrarca was the son of a Florentine notary named Ser Petracco, a well-connected mover and shaker who was exiled from Florence in the early 14th century for political reasons. After a time, Petrarch’s father settled in Avignon, now in southeastern France, but in the early 14th century a part of Provence and from 1348 a papal possession. Ser Petracco worked for the series of popes who resided, temporarily, in an administrative centre that was under the influence of the French monarchy. Medieval historians describe this interlude in the history of the Church as the Avignon Papacy (1309–78), and it is usually depicted as a period of growing bureaucracy and concern about political and financial matters – as well as ecclesiastical corruption.

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the ‘Babylon of the West’, with too many job-seekers and clients scrabbling around for money.

▲▲Statue of Francesco Petrarch, portico of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Petrarch found his true passion in literature and writing books, and on an ethical level he became concerned with reconciling faith and good morals (what he called virtue) with a life of earthly accomplishment and success (what he called glory).

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Modern readers will be able to recognize contemporary parallels in Petrarch’s struggle. In most times it is hard to balance moral purity with recognition and achievement. Petrarch hoped to achieve the elusive balance, and he believed that he could do so for all the right reasons. It was a tenuous equilibrium that Petrarch pursued until his last days at Arquà Petrarca.

◗◗ Sonnets to Laura

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all that matters: The Renaissance

By the year 1330, Petrarch had written over 300 Italian sonnets in honour of Laura, and as the poems rolled off his pen he circulated the verse in little manuscript bundles to friends, churchmen and scholars. (Keep in mind that at this time all books were essentially handwritten by professional scribes; the printing press had not been invented yet.) Before you think ‘stalker’ here, let me assure you that Petrarch was not sexually interested in Laura.

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As Francesco Petrarch began his journey of accomplishment and self-discovery, his life took a fascinating turn: on 6 April 1327, in the Church of St Claire in Avignon, Petrarch noticed a beautiful woman named Laura. The 23-year-old writer was captivated and smitten; although he had never met Laura or had any tangible relationship with her at all, the sensitive poet began composing love poetry in her honour. His fascination gradually became more than a passing fancy – over time it became obsessive and a kind of trigger for his intellect and the source of all his creative energy.

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However, he found this beautiful (and married) woman to be a kind of muse, or the angel of his dreams. Laura had become a holy and ethereal presence that allowed Petrarch to sublimate his passions and compose carefully structured poetry that both inspired and entertained the educated Italians and Frenchmen in his circle. In fact, it turned out that Petrarch’s poems were not just good, they were amazingly good – he was, in literary and scholarly terms, a gifted innovator. This rather lonely, backward-looking poet had found a way to draw on the structure and mythology of Ovid’s poetry (a celebrated master-poet of first-century Rome), while also speaking to a contemporary religious audience that sought to reconcile feelings of erotic love with a love for the divine. Through his poetry, Laura became Petrarch’s ‘better half’. His act of loving Laura became part of an authentic human journey that started with infatuation and physical love and gradually moved to self-assessment, contemplation of God’s mercy and (in the best case) spiritual fulfilment. Here are two translated excerpts from Sonnet 30 in the collection known as Il Canzoniere (‘The Songbook’), which Petrarch worked on until his death in Arquà Petrarca: A youthful lady under a green laurel I saw once, whiter and more cold than snow Untouched by sun for many, many years; I liked her speech, fair features, and her hair So much that I keep her before my eyes – And ever shall, though I’m on hill or shore. Because time flies, however, and since years Soon flee until one fetches on death’s shore –

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Whether with locks of brown or with white hair – I’ll follow still the shade of that sweet laurel Through the most parching sun and through the snow Until the final day shall close these eyes.2

The laurel wreath In antiquity, the laurel wreath was reserved for the mostcelebrated poets and heroes. It was given to famous writers, athletes or military commanders as a kind of lifetime achievement award. This sense of distinction is still reflected

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all that matters: The Renaissance

And then in 1341 came his defining moment: the young Petrarch was summoned to Rome by King Robert of Naples and crowned ‘poet laureate’ in the evocative ruins of Rome’s Capitoline Hill. The literary coronation ceremony was a rather eclectic rite that featured ancient artefacts and emphasized the ideals of the Roman republic. Petrarch received a symbolic laurel wreath for his head, indicating that he had become Rome’s greatest living poet.

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Petrarch’s verses have an antique quality to them, but still resonate with meaning and emotion. Did you see how the sonnet compares the green laurel of nature to Laura, his muse? Did you also notice that each line is exactly ten syllables long? In addition to the beauty of individual sonnets (each typically 14 lines long), it was also the comprehensive body of work (hundreds of sonnets) that mesmerized Petrarch’s contemporaries. In Italy’s literary circles, Petrarch became a sensation. By the late 1330s, the poet’s works had circulated so widely that he was well-known and eagerly welcomed into courts and literary circles wherever he travelled.

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in the modern word baccalaureate. Petrarch’s reception of the laurel wreath made him a celebrity among scholars and princes.

In his formal acceptance speech or oration, Petrarch praised the great poets of the ancient world and indicated that he would sacrifice everything to be worthy of their company. It was one of the few times since the fall of the Roman Empire that a poet had been honoured with the laurel wreath in this way. Petrarch enthusiastically accepted the title and all the benefits that came to him from it. Most practically, the fame and financial support allowed him to pursue his writing interests exclusively. He was delighted that he would be able to avoid working in local government, the Church or the legal profession – duties that seemed to him boring and bureaucratic. The poet laureate episode also reminds us that Petrarch was not a shy fellow. Fame was definitely OK with him as long as he could maintain his core commitments to a balanced interior life, Christian morality and the classical role models he so admired.

Sonnets honouring women Although it may seem strange that a writer could spend so much time composing letters and love poems to people that he did not really know, there were other Europeans in the Middle Ages who did essentially the same thing. The bestknown example is Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), a Florentine who wrote sonnets in honour of a woman named Beatrice, whom Dante saw occasionally in his youth but never had a serious relationship with. After Beatrice’s early death, Dante

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used her as an allegorical representation of Divine Love in his masterwork The Divine Comedy, which gained him great fame and may have motivated the competitive Petrarch to undertake his own projects. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) also built on the sonnets of Dante and Petrarch, writing love poems that utilized (among other tropes) a mysterious ‘dark lady’ who seduced and fascinated Shakespeare and served as his muse. About this woman Shakespeare wrote: ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. / Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.’3

◗◗ Letters to dead men all that matters: The Renaissance

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Petrarch’s travels and research brought him into contact with numerous writings from the ancient Roman world, including the works of Cicero, Seneca, Ovid and Livy. Petrarch was truly fascinated by these men and the intellectual worlds that they lived in, and he explored their culture, values and systems of thought. He studied the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the medieval understanding of his writings, which had been commented on by numerous Byzantine, Islamic and Christian commentators. He studied St Augustine and late Roman philosophy and theology. He studied Cicero and several formal models of discourse, speaking and persuasion (what we now call Ciceronian rhetoric). Petrarch also studied Roman poetry and history writing, as well as what he could learn about Greek philosophy and literature, although he could not read Greek himself. Along the way, Petrarch became so fascinated by ancient learning and

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ideas that he began to drift a bit between his own world and the classical past. Petrarch withdrew from most public activity and began to spend his time composing letters to his (dead) heroes from the ancient world, asking them their secrets and telling them his own.

The idea of writing formal dialogues with real or imagined debate partners is a time-honoured tradition in western philosophy, and the practice stretches back to at least the Greek philosopher Plato. What makes this unusual personality trait so fascinating is that he took it beyond mere nostalgia. Petrarch wrote a systematic collection of letters to the dead entitled, rather enigmatically, Letters to Famous Men (1345). In the compilation, Petrarch wrote directly to Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Homer and other dead men – basically, the great writers and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome. Letter by letter, he explained his current circumstances and he asked the deceased for their advice. The overall tone of the collection is one of contemplation and even lamentation – Petrarch bemoans the situation in Italy and indicates how much he misses his long-dead heroes. But crucially, he also began to circulate the manuscript to his scholars and

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friends. It is not only a work of nostalgia, therefore, but a serious literary attempt to bridge the gap between past and present, and to bring classical style and ideas into his 14th-century context. Here is one example of how Petrarch wrote to Cicero, the famed Roman philosopher from the first-century bce:

There is a similar teaching exercise that humanities instructors use today to connect students to an author that they are studying in a history or literature course. The professor asks the students to write letters to the artist or poet that they are studying, so that they will recognize how different the past is from the present, as

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Even at a distance, you can feel Petrarch’s words pulse with criticism for his own times: the accusation is levied that people in his age just don’t take the classics seriously. However, Petrarch’s scorn is also mediated by his praise for Cicero, the esteemed Roman writer and statesmen who was known for his impeccable Latin style.

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‘You have heard my opinions about your life and your talent. Do you also wish to hear about your books, how fortune has treated them, and how the public and scholars view them? Some splendid volumes still exist … moreover, your works enjoy an immense reputation … but rare are those who study you, whether because the times are unfavourable or men’s minds dull and sluggish, or, as I think more likely, because greed has bent their minds to other pursuits.4

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well as how surprisingly familiar and understandable some ideas from the past can be if you appreciate them within their contexts. After all, when you are forced to write to someone, you need to say things that your reader will understand and relate to, or you will look naïve or foolish. It really makes no difference if your correspondent is alive or dead – the process will help you defend your point of view and understand what the letter recipient’s perspective is. Such an assignment has value if you really want to learn from the past (as Petrarch did), rather than just see it as an alien terrain populated by people in unusual clothing.

◗◗ The Ascent of Mont Ventoux In addition to composing sonnets to Laura and writing letters to famous dead men, Petrarch also wrote a striking allegorical piece entitled The Ascent of Mont Ventoux, which he completed in 1336. This short essay recounted a hike that Petrarch and his brother Gherardo took in the French Alps. In addition to depicting an openness to the natural world that was quite unusual for his day, Petrarch used the book to measure his own spiritual and emotional development. As the narrative of the story moves along, the hike up the mountain (the outward journey) diminishes in significance and Petrarch becomes self-reflective, turning his ‘inner eye’ towards himself (the inward journey). Petrarch

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makes his way through the forests, valleys and rocks, using the experience to contemplate his vices – the sins, bad habits and shortcomings that continually drag him down. But Francesco also finds a way to console himself and meditate on the Christian path of virtue, the path to the summit that seems continually beyond his grasp and understanding.

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Petrarch completed the hike, but he was not finished using the venerable Church Father in his writings. The most notable example is the fictional dialogue Secret Book (1343), in which Petrarch confessed his shortcomings to ‘Augustine’ and the theologian replied that Petrarch should avoid the comforts of the mob and pursue only virtue, which was in the end the only thing capable of making a person happy. Through Augustine’s influence, Petrarch discovered that sensual indulgence had an adverse effect on the soul and the only release from eroticism and sensuality was death. Petrarch really could feel the ancients breathing down his neck, and the ghosts sometimes criticized the poet laureate as well as comforted him.

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Petrarch’s virtual spiritual advisor on the ascent was another famous dead man, the eminent Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo (354–430), who was wellacquainted with personal struggles involving morality and sexual purity. In fact, The Ascent of Mont Ventoux reaches a kind of climax when Petrarch takes a portable copy of Augustine’s Confessions out of his pocket and reads a passage in Book Ten that upbraids those who would spend their time admiring high mountains and neglecting the internal, spiritual life.

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Documents and history Petrarch’s obsession with searching for historic documents is expressed today as doing primary document or original source research, a mainstay of historians and literary scholars that comes from the Latin expression ad fontes or ‘to the source’. This scholarly fascination with primary documents became an important aspect of Renaissance humanism and it evolved into a desire to study texts in their original languages. In the Renaissance, this meant unlocking the secrets of Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. It also meant understanding how the meaning of words in original texts has changed over time, or what later scholars would call the discipline of etymology.

◗◗ Recovering classical Latin style When Petrarch wrote his letters to ancient dead men, he was actually introducing Europeans to a new way of approaching the past and learning from it. Petrarch wrote to Cicero, Livy, Seneca and the others as long-lost friends, and he seems to have sincerely wished that they could understand him. As Petrarch prepared to write his letters, he reviewed the ancient world’s history, culture and politics, as well as the poetry, philosophy and literature that seemed to be at its peak during the age of the Roman emperor Augustus. But Petrarch went even further, learning the Latin style that his Roman heroes had used, and among the different linguistic models he adopted Cicero’s particular word patterns and grammar as his favourite.

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If you read Petrarch’s letters in the original language (not in English translations), you will see that they are in Classical Latin, not Medieval Latin, and that they mimic the way that Cicero wrote in the first century bce. Through his research, Petrarch came to understand that the Latin language had changed over the centuries, and in his opinion, it had been degraded. Petrarch worked to right this linguistic wrong by adopting Cicero’s elegant formulations and using them in his major Latin publications. After Petrarch, most other European humanists adopted the style of Cicero for prose and Virgil for poetry, although some picked other masterful Roman stylists, such as Seneca or Quintilian, as their personal favourites.

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Renaissance humanists sought to purge Latin of the Medieval Latin vocabulary and stylistic additions that had developed in the years after the decline of Rome in the third and fourth centuries. However, by reverting to classical style, Renaissance humanists unintentionally interrupted the language’s natural progression and

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Such a stylistic restoration was possible because Latin is a highly inflected language, meaning that the grammatical function of each word varies based on its spelling and syntax (and usually its ending). The inflection of verbs is usually called conjugation, and the inflection of nouns, adjectives and pronouns is usually called declension. Because Latin is a highly inflected language, you can place Latin words in almost any order that you want and effectively change the style without losing a particular sentence’s meaning. This flexibility is very valuable for poets, song lyricists and other writers who seek to rhyme Latin sentences.

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adaptation to the circumstances of daily life in the Middle Ages. Although this reintroduced classical Latin to scholarly communities and universities, it also contributed to the development of vernacular European languages, which came into regular use in the 14th and 15th centuries.

◗◗ Petrarch’s legacy Francesco Petrarch died in 1374, but his impact would be long-lasting in the western world. His fascination with Classical Latin and the literary heroes of classical Rome had a formative influence on generations of scholars that came after him. The next chapter explains how his ideas and methods influenced humanists and educators in Italy and northern Europe.

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3 The spread of ideas By the 16th and 17th centuries, virtually all professional men had received training in ‘the humanities’ as an aspect of their formal education.

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Petrarch believed that he had helped to revive the glories of classical Latin scholarship after a period of medieval ‘darkness’ that had dimmed the achievements of Rome’s great poets and statesmen. However, this intellectual ‘rebirth’ would only be completed with the work of succeeding generations of scholars in Italy and northern Europe. An essential characteristic of this Renaissance would be the idea of imitatio, or the imitation of classical models and genres. Beyond creating new works of art in the classical style, however, Renaissance humanists also worked to make themselves useful – even indispensable – in schools, halls of justice and princely courts. This chapter charts the flow of ideas from Petrarch’s immediate circle to the wider worlds of Renaissance scholarship.

◗◗ Giovanni Boccaccio Although Francesco Petrarch spent most of his life in the cities of Avignon, Rome, Milan and Padua, the renowned scholar made an important visit to Florence in 1350 to visit Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75), a talented writer and poet who became one of Petrarch’s leading literary successors. Through Boccaccio and his contemporaries, the city of Florence became a centre for intellectual life in Italy, and the city’s wealth also provided the funding to support major scholarly projects and artistic endeavours. In 1350, Petrarch was Europe’s most famous poet, so the Florentine government tried to convince Petrarch to settle in the thriving city-state, and they offered him a professorship at the University

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of Florence. The government also pledged to restore all of the property confiscated from his family when his father, Ser Petracco, had been unceremoniously exiled from Florence in 1302 for being a member of the wrong political faction.

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The two men also began a study of Homer’s poetry, and they collected as many primary documents from the ancient world as they could find, often locating them in monasteries that had at one time specialized in manuscript production. Boccaccio also began work on his literary masterpiece, The Decameron (completed in 1353), a collection of a hundred bawdy and romantic tales told by a fictional troupe of seven women and three men who fled Florence in the wake of the Black Death (1348). Although Petrarch moved on to other cities and patrons (and never quite forgave Florence for exiling his father), Boccaccio and others continued Petrarch’s work and set the stage for Florence to become the leading centre of humanism in Italy.

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Petrarch turned down the Florentine government’s offer, but he continued to correspond with Boccaccio in a manner that fuelled both men’s passion for writing and reviving the classics of antiquity. Through Petrarch, Boccaccio came to rejoice in ancient manuscripts and the texts and ideas of the ancient world, and he also became obsessed with the biographies of Rome’s great figures. Soon, he composed his own works, including Concerning Famous Women and On the Fates of Famous Men. Both were written, in part, to honour Petrarch’s fascination with classical authors.

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◗◗ Coluccio Salutati In 1375, a fortuitous event gave the budding classics revival a wider significance and influence. A new chancellor was elected in Florence to lead the government; this was Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), a local Latin scholar who admired Petrarch’s work and who had worked closely with Boccaccio. Just like his mentors, Salutati carefully studied the Roman classics and he had become a master of Latin rhetoric in the style of Cicero. Salutati also loved hunting for manuscripts, and one of his most important discoveries was a collection of lost letters from Cicero that he subsequently edited and distributed to friends and scholars under the name Letters to his Friends (Epistulae ad familiares). From this work the Florentines learned that Cicero was a great teacher of civic virtue, a fierce defender of republican liberty and the enemy of tyrants. The lesson was to have a major impact on the development of political thought in the Italian citystates, which were fighting against popes and emperors for their independence at this time. Coluccio Salutati put his formidable skills to work for the Florentine republic and argued that humanist scholars elsewhere should do the same. When relations between Florence and Pope Gregory XI deteriorated over border disputes, Salutati began a long correspondence with the pope designed to reassure the pontiff that Florence was a loyal ally despite its recent show of independence. Although war eventually broke out between Florence and the Papal States (the territories surrounding Rome that were under the pope’s direct control), Salutati gained

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fame throughout Italy for his astonishing correspondence rendered in Cicero’s elegant Latin style. The letters set a new pattern for political and diplomatic rhetoric that would become a standard in Renaissance Europe. As it turned out, humanists made excellent letter-writers and diplomats. This would not go unnoticed by princes and other leaders looking to expand their administrative and diplomatic corps.

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Admittedly, Florence’s communal government was hardly a republic in the modern sense of the word; few men actually qualified for citizenship, and fewer still were allowed to run for office. But Salutati’s rhetoric did point out the important distinctions between the city-states that were modelled on Roman ideals of representative government and democracy, and the tight-fisted strongmen who dominated their lands through feudal regimes and dynastic succession. (See also Chapter 4.)

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When headstrong Florence went to war with the duchy of Milan during Salutati’s tenure, Chancellor Salutati wrote a scathing attack on Milan’s ruling despot, Giangaleazzo Visconti. Salutati’s war of words defended the Florentine Republic against what he described as Milan’s vile despotism and tyranny. In 1400, Salutati also produced a superbly written work entitled On the Tyrannt, which continued the attacks on the Visconti and reprimanded any rival who sought to replace Florence’s republican liberties with dictatorship. Making reference to Salutati’s brutal literary salvos, Giangaleazzo Visconti later remarked that the chancellor’s distressing letters could ‘cause more damage than a thousand Florentine horsemen’5.

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◗◗ Manuel Chrysoloras During Petrarch’s and Boccaccio’s lifetimes, the Italian scholars who studied the classical world did so primarily through the Latin language, and they looked for inspiration among Roman authors like Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Virgil, Ovid and Augustine. This approach to the ancient world began to change when Robert of Anjou (1277–1343), the king of Naples, invited some Greek scholars to his court in southern Italy to teach local scholars the language. Perhaps the most significant development took place in 1396, however, when Coluccio Salutati invited the Greek scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (1355–1415) to teach Greek in Florence and to offer instruction on the ideas of major Greek thinkers. Although a basic knowledge of contemporary Greek was available to Italian sailors and merchants who had contact with the Byzantine Empire, few academics knew the ancient Greek syntax of Plato or Aristotle in the 1300s, nor was there much scholarly exchange between scholars in Italy and the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. This changed when Chrysoloras was welcomed into Florence’s thriving scholarly community. Chrysoloras began teaching Greek grammar and syntax to the Italians, as well as Homer, Plato and Aristotle in the Greek original. More advanced Greek students moved on to the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the orator Xenophon, the dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the Greek Church Fathers St Basil and St John Chrysostom.

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Petrarch and Boccaccio collected Greek manuscripts during their scholarly travels but they could never completely decipher them. By the middle of the 15th century, influential circles of humanist scholars throughout Italy could read Greek and quickly considered it an essential element in a thorough humanist education.

One of the most important consequences of the recovery of the Greek language was a renewed interest in an ancient school of thought known as Neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism is based on the work of the philosopher Plato, who established the Academy for scholars in Athens in the fourth century bce. Through the years, Plato’s ideas were expanded upon as they came into contact with other traditions, including ancient Egyptian religions, Jewish theology, Roman philosophy and Christianity. Under the patronage of Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, Neo-Platonism became a philosophical system for discussion of diverse topics such

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Neo-Platonism

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Manuel Chrysoloras performed this vitally important work in Florence for four years, and then moved on to Bologna, Venice, Rome, Paris and cities in Germany, attracting new students and eventually writing western Europe’s first Greek grammar. His book of instruction would be used by many of Europe’s most eminent humanist scholars, including Desiderius Erasmus at Cambridge and Thomas Linacre at Oxford. Like an intellectual baton, the Greek language was handed from scholar to scholar until it played a significant role in the university curriculum.

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as the relationship between God and the created universe, the immortality of the soul, the place of human beings in the world, the Platonic ideal of love and the concept of beauty in art. Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) and Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) are closely associated with this movement in Florence. Neo-Platonism became a defining intellectual tradition of the Renaissance.

◗◗ Leonardo Bruni The successor of Coluccio Salutati in Florence was Chancellor Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444). Bruni was also a brilliant humanist who became known for his eloquent Latin translations of Aristotle and Plato, and for his promotion of an active life (vita activa) in the service of the community and the state. Bruni had studied Greek for two years with Manuel Chrysoloras, and he had also served as papal secretary in Rome for ten years. When Bruni returned to Florence and became chancellor, he followed Salutati’s lead and worked to defend the Florentine republic against the inroads of rival city-states, most notably Milan, which threatened Florence with war on several occasions in the early 15th century. Bruni’s important work Praise of the City of Florence (1404) extolled the virtues of Florence’s republican traditions during these struggles, and the book demonstrated the enormous impact a humanist scholar could have on political affairs if he put his rhetorical skills to work defending the city-state against real or imagined enemies.

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Along the same lines, Bruni’s magisterial Histories of the Florentine People (1416) defended the city-state, and also was innovative in an historical sense. Bruni divided the history of Florence into three epochs – Antiquity, Middle Ages and Modern – and the analytical detachment with which he addressed his subject has led some scholars to call Histories of the Florentine People the first modern history book. Interestingly, Bruni’s three-part division is still the way that European history is organized and taught in most colleges around the world.

At this point, some fundamental characteristics of humanism and humanists should be summarized. First,

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◗◗ Essential characteristics of humanism

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In 1436, Leonardo Bruni also published Life of Petrarch, a short biography that honoured Petrarch as ‘the first with a talent sufficient to recognize and call back to light the antique elegance of the lost and extinguished style’6. He praised Petrarch as a master of both prose and verse, and he particularly admired Petrarch’s dedication to Cicero, who in Bruni’s day continued to be the supreme humanist model. Leonardo Bruni was chancellor of Florence for 17 years, from 1427 to 1444. He oversaw the Florentine government during a period of rapid economic expansion and development, and associated the events of Petrarch’s life with the recovery of the classical world.

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humanism was originally a revival of classical literature and ideas. This recovery was spurred by the belief that the ancients knew more and better things than medieval peoples (those living in what became known as ‘the dark ages’), and that classical wisdom was still worth hearing. The revival was textual, fundamentally, and it involved the search for and the discovery of primary texts in their original setting and languages. We now refer to this impulse as going ad fontes (‘to the source’). As the original Latin (and later Greek, Hebrew and Arabic) texts were found, Renaissance humanists began to prize and imitate the style of Cicero for prose and Virgil for poetry. As I will mention later in a discussion of the arts, Renaissance painters and sculptors were equally impressed with Greek and Roman artistic styles, which they tried to revive and enhance. Second, as humanist ideas filtered into grammar schools, monastic schools and universities, a new curriculum took shape that has had a lasting influence on western culture up to the present. During the Middle Ages, a liberal arts curriculum had taken shape that involved the study of the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). Collectively, these were known in monastic schools as the seven liberal arts. The humanists reorganized the medieval Trivium and renamed it the Studia humanitatis or ‘the humanities’. The humanists removed the discipline of logic, retained the disciplines of grammar and rhetoric and added the subjects of history, moral philosophy (or ethics) and poetry. While the medieval curriculum emphasized Latin, to prepare

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students for work in law and the Church, the humanist curriculum emphasized Latin, Greek and other languages – whatever would be required for individual subjects. A practical consequence of the new humanist curriculum was that colleges and universities added new subjects and instructors to their faculties. In particular, Greek professors were needed, as well as professors learned in history, ethics, poetry and other languages.

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What practical skills did humanists get from their instruction? The major humanist thinkers believed that their programme of study taught practical skills which went beyond a scholarly appreciation of texts and their ancient messages. The humanists believed that their goals and curriculum created good Christians and many worked to include Christian themes in their work, as Petrarch had done in The Ascent of Mont Ventoux.

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Third, most early humanists were men from the higher social classes because education was typically reserved for boys from families that had the means to pay for it. School attendance was not compulsory during the Renaissance, nor were there any schools open to students free of charge. However, private tutoring was an option for families that could afford it. The success in the 15th century of female humanists such as Isotta Nogarola (1418–66) and Laura Cereta (1469–99) indicates that women could also attain high levels of scholarly achievement if their families were willing to arrange for it. The education of girls took place despite the prevailing attitude that girls were intellectually inferior to boys and should be trained for domestic life and experiences, not public life.

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Humanists also believed that the study of classical texts taught practical political skills, good morals, and thus social responsibility and good conduct. In other words, humanism created the best citizens. Further, humanist education taught an ethic of curiosity, self-improvement and orderly moral behaviour. Rather than neglecting their Christian faith, as some critics supposed by their ‘worldly’ concerns, the humanists believed that they instilled a deeper appreciation for humankind and the created world with their learning. In their minds, the Earth was a place of incredible beauty that provided a foretaste of the perfect world to come.

◗◗ Northern humanism As Italy’s programme of humanistic studies expanded and attracted more followers, it gradually became an intellectual road-map for scholars throughout Europe. Universities gradually integrated the Studia humanitatis into their curricula, emphasizing rigorous instruction in Latin and Greek grammar, rhetoric, ethics, poetry and history. Leading humanists collected books and founded libraries; they sought influential positions in town governments, princely courts, grammar schools and universities, and important posts within the Church. In the second half of the 15th century, enterprising Italian scholars with humanist training also took their skills and ideas on the road, seeking employment and patronage throughout western Europe, including France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England and Germany.

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Fundamentally, humanism flowed out into Europe from Italy as scholars found employment in places conducive to their work. But princes and teachers also sent their students to Italy for training in what was now called ‘the new learning’. The Italians responded to the influx of visitors by establishing academies in Florence, Venice, Padua and Rome to train new generations of leaders. These young scholars soon returned to their homelands with a passion for classical studies and ancient languages and the practical job skills for work in schools and princely governments.

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In France, the first humanists received support from the powerful French monarchy. Francis I (reigned 1515–47) played a major role in Italian politics and invited the artists Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71) and Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) to his court and residences. In 1529, Francis I founded the Collège de France in Paris to encourage humanist studies. When the printing press became influential in France in the early 16th century, French humanists specialized in editing and publishing many noteworthy volumes of Greek and Latin literature. The major voices in French humanism

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By the 16th and 17th centuries, virtually all professional men – doctors, lawyers, professors, administrators, diplomats and church officials – had received training in ‘the humanities’ as an aspect of their formal education. Many humanists continued on for advanced degrees and a lifetime of classical scholarship. In this way, the insights of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Salutati, Chrysoloras and Bruni changed the way that Europeans learned and thought about education and public service.

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included Robert Gauguin (1433–1501), Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1455–1536), Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) and François Rabelais (1494–1553).

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The printing press A unique aspect of northern humanism is that the movement corresponded roughly with the development of the printing press in western Europe. The printing press was invented about 1450 by Johann Gutenberg (1395–1468), Johann Fust (1400–65) and Peter Schöffer (1425–1502), three inventors and businessmen who worked around the central German town of Mainz. What we call ‘the printing press’ was actually the integration of several different specializations. Movable, metal type (one tiny piece per letter) allowed the typesetter to build an entire page of text. Ink transferred the image of this type to paper when a wood press was used to hold them tightly together. (The paper was made from animal skins or shredded linen rags at first, not wood pulp.) The first works produced by the Mainz printers were religious ones, including Gutenberg’s famous Bible. By 1500, the printing press had had a considerable impact throughout Europe. The cost of printed books was much less than manuscript books produced by hand. Printed texts could be standardized, made more accurate and disseminated rapidly, which was a boon to scholars and leaders. Since printed books were cheaper and more widely available than manuscripts, the printing press sparked a rise in literacy and innovation in numerous fields, including science, religion, education and the arts.

On the Iberian peninsula, Aragon and Castile united and conquered Muslim Granada in the late 15th century,

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forming modern-day Spain. Meanwhile, Portugal continued as an independent kingdom, although with reduced influence as the Renaissance gained momentum. During the second half of the 16th century, Spain entered its Golden Age and Spanish humanists translated the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio into Castilian (the dialect that would become modern Spanish). Spanish and Portuguese literature flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries, often concerned with religious interests. Leading humanists in Spain and Portugal include Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), Juan Luis Vives (1493–1540), Leão Hebreo (1465–1521) and Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616).

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In the Netherlands, humanism was influenced by an earlier religious movement known as the devotio moderna (‘modern devotion’), which emphasized an internal Christian spirituality that rejected formulaic rituals and the increasingly rigid hierarchy of the Church. An early Dutch humanist was Rudolph Agricola (1443– 85), a Greek and Hebrew scholar who prized the works of Cicero and Quintilian above all else. The greatest of all the so-called ‘northern humanists’ was Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), who merged his interests in classical scholarship and languages with a deep sense of piety and Christian belief. Erasmus travelled widely in Europe and published works on Christian morality, ethics, satire and philosophy. He also uncovered or commented on numerous texts from the ancient world and published a New Testament in Greek (1516) based on the most accurate ancient sources that would transform Biblical scholarship for centuries.

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In England, humanist scholars arrived from Italy in the late 14th century. They first received support from the new Tudor king, Henry VII (reigned 1485–1509). William Grocyn (1446–1519) introduced the study of the Greek language to Oxford University in the 1490s and was a friend of Erasmus. John Cheke (1514–57), Thomas Smith (1513–77) and Roger Ascham (1515–68) were the pre-eminent teachers of Greek at Cambridge, which also developed an increasing interest in mathematics and astronomy in the late 16th century.

▲▲Pietro Torrigiano, Bust of Henry VII, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Roger Ascham wrote an important treatise on education that explained how humanist values should reform the curriculum. Ascham also served as tutor to the future Elizabeth I, and as a result her languages were excellent. John Colet (1467–1519), an Englishman who had studied in Italy, returned and taught theology at Oxford. Colet also founded St Paul’s School in London, which trained young men vigorously using the new humanist curriculum. Thomas Wyatt (1503–42) introduced the sonnet form to England, translating the work of Petrarch into English and himself writing sonnets that would have a significant influence on William Shakespeare and other English poets.

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Thomas More (1478–1535), who wrote works on history, politics, law, religion and classical scholarship, was a regular correspondent with Erasmus and also served Henry VIII as Lord Chancellor. He was a committed defender of the traditional Church in an era that was growing politically and religiously divisive. As part of his defence of traditional Catholicism, More refused to accept Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church of England, and he was executed for treason in 1535. However, More’s extensive writings were widely read and influential. He was among the first humanist scholars to take full advantage of the printing press, and his Utopia (1516) described an imaginary society whose ideals and customs severely criticized contemporary England.

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At the centre of the humanist circle in England stood Thomas More.

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The spread of ideas

◗◗ Humanism and the Reformation A recurring theme in this chapter has been the close relationship between classical study and religious reflection in the development of humanism. In Germany, the early humanists were often indebted to religious organizations such as the Brethren of the Common Life as well as monastic institutions for their training and classical scholarship. A number of German universities were also founded in the 15th and 16th centuries that encouraged humanist scholarship, including at Vienna, Heidelberg, Basel, Erfurt, Wittenberg and Leipzig. Some of the German humanists travelled to Italy and England. Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) met Pico della Mirandola in Italy in the 1490s, and returned to Germany to become a great scholar of Greek and Hebrew. Reuchlin’s vigorous scholarship led to a critical reassessment of the Bible within the German universities. The Dutch humanist Rudolph Agricola also brought classical learning to Germany and inspired a young circle of German humanists. Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523) was a German humanist with a nationalist agenda – he used humanist methods to uncover a glorious German past and to press for the liberation of Germany from outside interference, mostly notably the papacy in Rome.

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Building on the work of Agricola, Reuchlin and Erasmus, Martin Luther (1483–1546) began his career as a professor of theology in the humanist mode, but soon became a committed religious reformer. As a scholar at the University of Wittenberg, he encouraged Biblical study in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and eventually translated the entire Bible into the German language (1534) so that it would be accessible to those who could read and could afford printed books.

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Luther’s method of going directly to the original sources for inspiration and authority (sola scriptura) was directly related to the humanist scholarly agenda. However, several humanists, such as Erasmus and More, rejected Luther’s reforms when Luther’s teaching diverged from traditional Catholicism and threatened to divide Christendom. Luther’s reform movement became known as Protestantism, and it changed the religious outlook of many Europeans as well as the political formation of several European states. The Reformation is deeply entwined with the values and transformations of the Renaissance. The spread of ideas in the Reformation was made possible by the printing press, a Renaissance invention.

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4 Rising merchant economies The central figure in the expanding economy of the Renaissance was the merchant.

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The economic history of Renaissance Europe can be divided into four significant phases: commercial growth relating to agriculture and urban development (1150–1350); crisis and renewal relating to the Black Death (1350–1450); the revitalization of merchant-based economies (1450–1550); and the expansion of global trade networks (1550–1650). Despite the demographic catastrophe of the Black Death, the financial and economic narrative of Renaissance Europe is largely one of expansion and prosperity. This affluence set the stage for many of the cultural achievements of the Renaissance, including the modernization of cities; the creation of new universities; spectacular achievements in painting, sculpture and architecture; and innovation in science, technology, printing and shipbuilding. However, the economic expansion of Europe did not benefit all citizens equally. Some of the new business methods created social tension that strained relationships and disrupted the established order.

◗◗ Agriculture and urban growth Throughout the early modern period, 90 percent of Europe’s population was involved in agriculture in some form on a daily basis. Most people lived in the country, not in cities or towns. Their primary occupation was food production. The term that historians use to describe this economic system is manorialism, a form of social

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organization in which serfs (a legally defined status) were bound to specific estates to produce basic staples such as grain, hay, wool and meat. In control of the manor house and its assets was typically a landlord, a nobleman who had hereditary control of the buildings and property, and who was able to pass control of the estate to his heirs.

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What was life like for peasants and other agricultural workers in this system? Basically, it was very difficult. Peasants and basic wage-workers typically laboured for six days a week, and when they worked, they worked during all of the daylight hours. This meant that they worked more during the summer and times of harvest than during the winter months. What did they do? The fields needed to be ploughed, the bread needed baking, houses and communal buildings needed upkeep, and the flocks needed to be tended and driven to market. Wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans

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In all likelihood, the landlord was also a vassal of another more powerful nobleman, connected to his superior (or lord) through a hierarchy of social and political relationships that stretched all the way to the king. Throughout Europe, dense networks of lords and vassals were bound together by oaths of homage and fealty. Typically, vassals were granted the use of property in return for rendering military service to a lord when it was needed. This system was one of the ways that European governments and leaders attempted to maintain order in the absence of a powerfully organized state. The military service was especially useful during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance because dukes and kings had no money for standing armies or a police force.

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and hay were cultivated and preserved as food for people and animals. Artisans, carpenters and ironworkers laboured diligently to construct watermills, fences, pens, buildings and churches. But there was also a measure of joy, or at least satisfaction, to be found in rural life. Close kinship bonds gave most agricultural workers a deep sense of place and community. Events connected to the cyclical progression of the church calendar provided regular activity and the prospect of religious feast days and festivals. Baptisms, weddings and funerals marked the major events in the life of a European villager or city dweller, regardless of class or nationality. Community celebrations and rituals also allowed families to forge new relationships, plan engagements, enjoy pastimes, drink some beer and take a break from work. Between 1150 and 1300 there were many good harvests in central and western Europe. A continent-wide climatic shift brought warmer temperatures which prolonged the growing season. A series of improvements in technology and farming methods brought in bigger harvests and more revenue for manor houses and farmers. This benefited the landlords most of all, but also the small tenant farmers, who were able to cultivate small plots of lands when they were not working for the nobles. The improvements included three-field crop rotation, more systematic irrigation, better and sturdier ploughs (which could furrow more deeply into the ground) and the effective use of manure and other fertilizers. Crop surpluses made the quality of life better for most peasants and town-dwellers during the 13th and early

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14th centuries. Crop surpluses improved nutrition and caused fertility rates to rise. The agricultural gains put the population of Europe on an upward trend. Surpluses also meant that landlords and tenant farmers had enough crops and produce to sell on the open market, and this led to the development of bigger market towns, expanded trade networks and (over time) larger cities. The impact was not the same in all places, of course, but the economic expansion became significant in Italy, the Rhineland (the area between France and Germany along the Rhine River), England and the Netherlands.

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In some cases, the expansion was not simply the result of larger harvests, since not all of the towns were surrounded by rich farmland. Instead, the expansion is evidence that the towns had become regional centres for trade and shipping. More goods flowing into the towns meant the construction of shops, warehouses and

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Historians have studied this period of vitality by examining the surviving trade records, documents written by landlords and city records with information pertaining to taxation and urban architecture. One significant piece of evidence from this age is the expansion of protective walls around cities and towns during the early Renaissance. Beginning about 1150, and continuing until the early 14th century, most of the towns in western Europe that lay along trade routes expanded their walls to accommodate new residents and increased levels of commerce. For example, an archaeological analysis of the Italian towns of Genoa, Pisa, Siena, Florence and Milan shows that these market centres expanded their boundaries significantly in the years after 1150.

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new marketplaces. This led to an increased demand for workers and, correspondingly, the urban population. Although overall population numbers are hard to calculate for the Middle Ages and Renaissance, historians have determined that in many places the population doubled or tripled between 1150 and 1350. For example, in the 1080s the population of England was recorded as approximately 1.1  million people. In the 1340s, the population in the same country was estimated at 3.75 million people. Gains in agricultural productivity led to a better standard of living, more trade and a rising population.

Hanseatic League An important measure of economic expansion between 1150 and 1350 is the development of trade associations, such as the Hanseatic League in northern Europe and Scandinavia. The Hanseatic League began in the 1200s as a sworn organization of cities who allied themselves so that they could protect and enhance trade activities among the member cities and guilds. Most of the members were located in maritime ports along the Baltic Sea and North Sea, including the cities of Hamburg, Lübeck, Brügge, Cologne, Bergen, London, Riga and Novgorod. The stimulus in agricultural productivity led to the rapid development of trade networks to sell goods. Soon, the range of products expanded well beyond farm produce to include fish, timber, wax, amber, resins, furs, metals, armour and imported luxury goods. These products needed to be transported from port to port, warehoused, registered, taxed and protected. In addition to selling the goods, participants in the Hanseatic League began to exchange currencies, create banking and financing services and learn the languages of member cities.

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◗◗ The Black Death The first major challenge to the rising prosperity of European merchants and landlords came in the form of drought and bad harvests in the 1320s and 1330s. Following these hardships, the outbreak of the Hundred Years War between England and France in 1337 created uncertainty in those lands. However, the greatest catastrophe came in 1348, with the arrival of the Black Death (or bubonic plague). This pestilence originated in central Asia and arrived in Genoa in the spring of 1348, following the old Silk Road and the Byzantine trade routes. By the end of 1350, between 40 percent and 50 percent of Europe’s population had been killed by the devastating plague.

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The pestilence arrived at the beginning of the Renaissance, during the lifetime of Francesco Petrarch. Historians still have access to a letter that Petrarch wrote in 1348 to his brother Gherardo about the plague, shortly after the pestilence had taken away Petrarch’s beloved Laura, the muse of his sonnets. Gherardo was a monk at a Carthusian monastery in Montrieux (now in southern France), in the foothills of the Alps. Petrarch’s anguish is obvious in the letter as he recounts the farreaching effects of the disaster:

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In some towns and cities, the death toll from the Black Death was almost total, with virtually no men, women or children left alive. In other regions with less outside contact, such as the high mountain valleys of Scandinavia, fewer were killed by the disease. However, scholars estimate that between 75 and 200 million people world-wide died from the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century.

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Alas! My beloved brother, what shall I say? How shall I begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow; everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that I had never been born, or, at least, had died before these times … When has any such thing been even heard or seen; in what annals has it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the country neglected, the fields too small for the dead and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth? 7 Gherardo’s reply was equally grim. He reported that he was the only living person remaining of the 35 men in the monastery. Yet Gherardo and his trusty dog remained behind, walking together around the shattered settlement and guarding it from intruders. The Black Death had a terrible psychological impact on Europe. In addition to a profound spiritual crisis, the plague challenged basic assumptions about life and mortality. In addition, there were severe economic and demographic consequences. In corporeal terms, the Black Death cut the population of Europe roughly in half by 1350. Death came for all classes and genders, with little regard for station, riches or nationality. Peasants, artisans and wage-workers died, but so did priests, doctors, landlords and princes. The shrinking population meant that overall economic output dropped, and so did the price of most goods and commodities. The basic laws of supply and demand took over – the price of food and basic supplies fell because there were fewer people to purchase those items (there was less demand). The poor and middling classes could then afford to buy more items at a lower cost – if they were

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lucky enough to be survivors.The Black Death provided another economic benefit for those who survived its terrible effects. Not only did the price of basic commodities fall, but the cost of labour went up because there was more demand for workers. So where market conditions prevailed, people could buy food for less and they were paid more for their work. Although the surviving nobles tried to fight this pricing trend, they were often unable to enforce the old wage and price standards.

The economic gains from two centuries of agricultural expansion disappeared with the arrival of the Black Death. But in some areas, new building projects arose out of the ashes of the pandemic. For example, Corpus Christi College in Cambridge was founded in 1350 as a direct consequence of the Black Death. The town realized that the need for parish priests was especially acute, and so the citizens founded Corpus Christi in order to replenish the supply of ecclesiastical workers.

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Building in the aftermath of the plague

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After 1350, there were also vast tracts of land that were under-used or that lay unclaimed because their owners had died. In many of these locations, the net price of real property fell, and plague survivors (whether peasant or noble) had the chance to buy land for a cheaper price than would have been possible a generation or two earlier. In short, plague survivors enjoyed better wages and lower prices for a period of time after the pestilence had passed. It took two to three generations for the population to rebuild and for the marketplace to return to its pre-plague equilibrium.

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◗◗ Merchant economies By 1450, the population of Europe had largely recovered, and the medieval dynamic of supply and demand turned the tables on peasants and other agricultural workers. The landlords were able to charge higher rents and prices, and peasants experienced lower wages and increased competition for basic consumer goods. In England, the Netherlands and Germany, large tracts of arable land were converted from farming to sheepraising so that the landlords could gain greater profits from the wool and textile industries. As a result, many peasants complained about their situations and some even took up arms in protest. As an example of this trend, consider the timing (and names) of the following peasant uprisings in Germany: the League of the Shoe Revolt (1481), the Poor Conrad Revolt (1514), the German Peasants War (1525). All of these conflicts took place in central Europe, where peasants, miners, artisans and basic wage-workers were feeling the pressures of the rising population and the tightening economy. But there was also a new trade authority in the market towns of Europe. The merchant was a commercial specialist in the Renaissance, an opportunistic businessman who managed every detail about the creation and distribution of products in an international marketplace. The Renaissance merchant invested in household workshops that produced goods, organized shipments and transportation, delivered products to the market at the appropriate time, managed warehousing and storage, understood banking and financing, handled

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insurance and currency exchange, and participated in the retail sale of goods.

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This new type of merchant was not an industrial capitalist in the modern sense, as we have understood it since the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. During the Renaissance, products were still produced largely by hand and they were made in relatively small quantities. Often the workshops were family businesses located in the towns along the major roads. The merchant’s family lived on the upper floors and the ground floor was used for retail space and warehousing the heavier goods and equipment. The workers were supervised by

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In the Middle Ages, a merchant was typically a producer that stayed in one region and made a profit by creating products and selling them through a family business. Occasionally, medieval merchants travelled to fairs or sold their goods using trade networks, such as the Hanseatic League or the old Silk Road to China. But Renaissance merchants expanded on this model by opening businesses in multiple cities and regions, connecting branches and cultivating larger networks of consumers than medieval merchants had. To increase profit and gain efficiencies of scale, Renaissance merchants created international trade networks and attempted to control more links in the supply and distribution chains. The Renaissance merchant also used more sophisticated accounting practices to monitor assets and liabilities and to hold regional branch managers accountable for their actions. They leveraged their investments through borrowing, speculation, insurance and other emerging business practices.

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senior family members, and they were paid a daily wage and given some food to eat. Sometimes the workers were also permitted to sleep in humble lodgings on the premises or in nearby buildings. While some of the workers were skilled artisans, with specific skills in glove-making, paper-making, or embroidery, others were less-skilled wage-workers who lived on the margins of society. They worked for a time doing the heavy, hard work of the wool, leather or iron industries, then moved to a new location. Little in the way of historical records of their lives has come down to us. However, artisans or craftsmen with more training, or those who had apprenticed with a skilled master or business owner, could expect better treatment and pay. Many of these skilled labourers created the vast works that we have come to associate with the Renaissance, including royal palaces, town halls, villas, cathedrals and military fortifications. Poor wage-workers also worked on these projects, but they typically only received a few coins for the day and some food. The rising merchant economy thus employed a wide range of workers and specialists, but they did not all benefit equally from the new system. The first Renaissance merchants were active in the cities that enjoyed good connections to the trade routes. In Italy, this meant Naples, Genoa, Florence, Siena, Venice and Milan. But merchants were active in many other places during the Renaissance, including the northern centres of Antwerp, Brussels, Hamburg, Lyon, Paris, Seville and London. In each of these communities, sworn associations of merchants gathered together to support one another and to seek favourable treatment from local governments.

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A characteristic feature of merchant economies was the guild system, which controlled many aspects of political, social, and economic life.

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▲▲Ghiberti’s statue of St John the Baptist outside the Orsanmichele, the guilds’ chapel in 15th-century Florence

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In most cases, the artisan and professional guilds worked to protect the interests of business owners and workers. Many of the guilds were in direct competition with each other, and to gain influence they built impressive buildings, formed political parties and organized festivals. Typical guilds in the Renaissance protected weavers, cloth-makers, furriers, blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers, bankers, lawyers and physicians.

◗◗ The Medici A useful case study of an elite merchant family during the Renaissance is the Medici of Florence, who founded valuable banking and textiles businesses. They also dominated Florentine politics for centuries. The Medici Bank was established in 1411 by Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici (1360–1429), who developed a close relationship with a succession of Renaissance popes and founded a bank in Rome to manage papal deposits and finances. The Medici bank became very profitable as much of the revenue received by the Roman Church was routed through the papacy and its trusted institutions. Building on this success, Giovanni established branch banks in the prosperous cities of Naples, Venice and Florence. The Medici then loaned money to the pope when it was needed, a system which brought considerable sophistication to the banking industry. Early in his career, Giovanni had recognized that there was a problem with the way that earlier banks had loaned money in Europe. Despite having branches throughout

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the continent, some of these banks loaned money in ways that put the entire organization at risk. In fact, the Bardi and Peruzzi banks in Florence had run into just these problems in the middle of the 14th century. Both banks had loaned significant sums to monarchs around Europe, including Edward III of England. When Edward III defaulted on his loans in 1345 (because he was gearing up for the Hundred Years War), it caused a ripple effect throughout the financial system that bankrupted both families.

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Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464) took over the family business after the death of Giovanni and he also cultivated an interest in politics, forming a coalition government in Florence that made peace with Milan and lowered taxes. The Medici soon expanded their banking and financing interests into cloth manufacturing, eventually acquiring and operating three textile firms. This was highly opportunistic, as Florence and the surrounding region was famous for its textile workers and high-end clothing products.

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Giovanni addressed this problem by making individual Medici branch managers responsible for their own loans and investments, putting their own capital at risk when they established a mortgage. In addition, the Medici family always kept at least 50 percent of a branch bank’s stock in their own hands. By following these two principles, and always safeguarding the interests of their main clients, the Medici were able to protect their institutions from insolvency. The close ties to the papacy paid dividends in other important ways: no fewer than five members of the Medici family held the papacy over the next two centuries, including Pope Leo X (1513–21), Pope Clement VII (1523– 34), Pope Pius IV (1559–65), and Pope Leo XI (1605).

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The Medici also benefited from the discovery of alunite, the principal source of alum, in the Italian city of Tolfa, near Rome. Alum is a substance used to fix dye in cloth during the dyeing process, and it was especially valuable in the Renaissance. Pope Pius II gave the Medici a monopoly in the alunite mine, making them the primary producers of alum in Europe. In this way, the Medici’s banking, textile and mining businesses were mutually beneficial. Between the three enterprises, the family’s fortunes skyrocketed. In 1451, a Medici report disclosed that the value of the bank alone was 90,000 florins, making the family the richest in Europe. Cosimo and his descendants lived a life of privilege, and as part of their upbringing they received a thorough humanist education. Cosimo invited several leading humanists and artists to court, including Marsilio Ficino, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Donatello and Brunelleschi. Under Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–92), the family continued its patronage of learning and the arts, footing the bill for libraries, building projects, sculptures, paintings and other works of beauty and prestige. In this way, humanism and merchant values reinforced each other and changed the landscape of Florence and other cities during the Renaissance.

◗◗ Global trade networks The final phase of economic development in the Renaissance took place between 1550 and 1650, when

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Europe’s economy expanded through interaction with new regions and markets. The most significant expansion in global terms was the exploration and colonization of the Americas, beginning in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus (1450–1506) to the Caribbean. Columbus’s voyages to the ‘New World’ expanded upon the older systems of trade to the Byzantine Empire, Africa, the Middle East and overland trade routes to India and China.

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During the early Renaissance, Europe’s emerging economy was much smaller than the traditional overland systems, but in the decades after 1450 Europe developed a measure of technical and financial sophistication. Initially, Europe’s only connection to the world economy was through the Byzantine lands – a connection that was managed by the Italian maritime fleets – but after 1500, the trade routes were expanded by Portuguese sailors travelling around the horn of Africa to India, and Spanish, English and Dutch sailors travelling to China and the Americas.

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The world economy at the time of the Renaissance was dominated by three major trading systems. The first stretched from Constantinople and the Black Sea overland to China, and this route served the lands of the Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Indians and Chinese. The second system stretched from Palestine and communities on the eastern Mediterranean coast to Baghdad, the Persian Gulf and India. The third system stretched from Alexandria and Egypt to the Red Sea, the east African coast and on to India, China and Sumatra.

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▲▲The Sultan Mehmet II (1480), attributed to Gentile Bellini, who worked in Constantinople 1479–81 at the behest of the Venetian government (National Gallery, London)

The story of Renaissance Europe’s encounter with the peoples of China and the Americas is a fascinating and inglorious one. It involved major leaps of courage and imagination on the part of the explorers, but also misunderstanding, colonization and destruction. In a certain sense, Europe’s contact with new peoples and lands shocked the humanists because the classical texts that they had discovered made no mention of the

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new continents or peoples. Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566), Hernán Cortés (1485–1547), Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1489–1573), Jean de Léry (1536–1613), Montaigne (1533–92) and other Europeans wrote books about the significance of the discoveries. Most vexing was how to explain, understand or classify the new peoples and languages that were being encountered. Bartolomé de las Casas argued that the Indians of the Americas were fully human and that they should be recognized and protected as new Spanish subjects. However, many did not share his opinion, and the Spanish introduced a harsh system of exploitation in the Americas that treated the Indians badly. Even more devastating were the diseases that Europeans unwittingly brought to the Americas.

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Within Europe, commercial changes began to take place as a result of cultural contact with Africa, the Americas and south-east Asia. The process was enabled by the development of sophisticated sailing ships and navigation technologies, as well as innovation in mathematics, astronomy, map-making and naval armaments. The Spanish gradually colonized and controlled central America and the Caribbean; the Portuguese established colonies in Brazil as well as trade routes along the African coast to Madagascar and India. The English and Dutch established footholds in north America, India and Sumatra. The Italians and Germans participated less in the development of new European trading patterns than the Spanish, Portuguese, English or Dutch. But all Europeans would be changed – intellectually, economically and culturally – by the explorers’ contact with new geographic worlds.

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In terms of trade goods, Renaissance sailors began their voyages in search of traditional goods such as gold, spices, silk, dye, ivory and cotton. Eventually, they returned with porcelain, tea and silks from China; cotton, timber and ivory from India; and cacao beans, corn, potatoes, cassava and tobacco from the Americas. In the 1440s, the first European export of slaves from west Africa took place through the activities of Portuguese merchants. Between 1500 and 1866, Europeans took approximately 12.5 million people from Africa, transported them across the Atlantic and sold millions of them as slaves in the Americas. The Atlantic slave trade changed the lives of all who were connected to it, enriching the lives of some, disrupting or ending the lives of most. The major new trade network that developed out of the contact between the eastern and western hemispheres during this period has been called the ‘Columbian exchange’ by historians. It is a term that tries to capture the comprehensive system of interchange that took place between the Old Worlds and the New. The exchange included, but was not limited to, the introduction of new products and technologies; the movement of people, plants and animals; the spread of plague and diseases; and the development of a global economy. In short, the Renaissance witnessed the rise of European economic power and the birth of what we now call globalization.

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5 New forms of authority Well-organized states and wise princes have always taken great pains not to make the nobles despair, and to satisfy the people and keep them content. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Book XIX

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A look at a political map of Europe during the Renaissance era reveals a patchwork of territorial states, independent cities, ecclesiastical lands and prosperous kingdoms such as France, England, Aragon and Castile. During the Renaissance, European governments made the transition from medieval/feudal monarchies to sovereign states with centralized administration, taxation systems, the power to enforce laws and the ability to wage more substantial wars. This took place gradually and in different ways in different places. Two significant innovations during the Renaissance were: ◗◗ the development of a diplomatic corps that managed relationships between competing princes and governments ◗◗ a balance of power system in which the major powers defended their interests and built alliances to create a state of equilibrium among governments. This chapter begins its discussion of Renaissance politics with a look at the early republican system of government in the Italian city-states of Florence, Siena and Venice. These cities usurped the powers of the pope and emperor and established communal governments on Roman models. Enriched by commerce and trade, they used propaganda and diplomacy to defend republican values, but fell prey to invading armies and the schemes of rival Italian city-states. Beginning in 1494, several decades of war in Italy persuaded political theorists like Niccolo Machiavelli that a prince who ruled with the ferocity of a lion and the cunning of a fox would be best suited to preserve the state and its values. Renaissance

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politics thus initiated modern debates about the role and function of government in society and the attributes of successful leaders.

◗◗ Italian city-states The economic expansion of Europe in the early Renaissance led to the growth of towns and cities. Urban governments responded to the situation by expanding their walls and recognizing the importance of trade, especially in the cities that were hubs in the new commercial networks.

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Sensing the power vacuum in northern Italian politics, dozens of Italian cities declared their independence

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Traditionally, most of the towns and cities in western Europe were dominated by feudal overlords who controlled vast estates in the countryside. In Germany, France and England these aristocrats held the hereditary titles of duke, count or baron. They were connected to each other through a network of feudal relationships. But the commercial success of Italian cities during the early Renaissance led to a new independence for these governments, especially in northern Italy. In this region there was no king, as the lands were technically under the control of the Holy Roman Emperor. But this nominal ruler resided in Germany and made few trips to Italy to enforce his overlordship. The papacy was also a traditional source of power and authority in Italy. But the Church only had limited control over secular matters, and after 1309, when the papacy moved to Avignon, the popes were less influential in Italian politics.

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during the 13th and 14th centuries, indicating that they would defend their liberty by force. At first, local bishops or nobles ruled the cities and they expanded their influence into the countryside. (Among other things, this gave the cities the ability to feed and protect themselves.) But in some cities, self-governing bodies emerged to take power. Historians call these organizations communes, based on the Italian word comune (plural comuni). A commune was a sworn organization of free men collectively holding public authority. The emergence of communes in the Italian cities represented a new act of political and social assertion in the Renaissance. The development of communes offers evidence that leading men were resolved to have self-government. The first Italian communes were aristocratic, including wellborn property owners who were long-time residents of the city. These men hoped to work together so that they would survive and prosper in troubled times. They also hoped to gain a measure of financial independence from their former overlords so that their businesses could flourish. It is important to note that everyone in the city was not a member of the commune. Membership was limited to the leading male property owners and some senior bishops and churchmen. Over time, however, the rising middle class (most notably the merchant class) would aspire to be members of the commune. The Italian communes were called ‘consular’ because they were run by small councils of leading nobles called consuls. Between four and 12 consuls would run the city, make war and peace, lead armies, defend the city, levy taxes, run the courts and suggest legislation. The consuls

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served for terms of about one year, and then they had to sit out for at least two full years before being elected to the post again. Typically, those who received or were elected to these posts were backed by high-born nobles and they had significant financial resources. In some of the bigger cities, the citizens also elected a larger general council to hear reports and voice their input on the more major decisions that were facing the city. Typically, the matters before the general council simply required a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ vote. In some cities, such as Florence or Venice, this general council was called the ‘great council’.

Renaissance city-states

In the 1320s, a man known as Marsilius of Padua (c.1280–1343) was engaged in a political struggle in his home city-state of Padua. At issue were the rights of the

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◗◗ Renaissance republics

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Historians use the term city-state to describe the independent cities in Italy when they possessed their own governments and began to accumulate territory beyond the physical borders of their municipality. A city-state is an independent political entity, typically run by some form of communal government. In the contentious and politically unstable environment of the Renaissance, one Italian city-state would often go to war against another and the losing city-state would be subsumed into the territory of the victor. Independent city-states organized around coastal ports with offshore possessions are typically described as maritime states.

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clergy, and to what extent the clergy were required to respect decisions made by the town council. Marsilius joined a number of his countrymen in arguing that the clergy should have no special exemptions simply because they were subordinates of the pope. As part of the struggle, Marsilius wrote a book entitled Defender of Peace (1324) which suggested that all effective political power on earth actually resided with ‘the people’. The traditional view was that authority flowed in a downward direction from God to the pope, then to the king and finally to the people. But Marsilius argued that it was only through the will and consent of the people that any political or ecclesiastical power came into existence at all. Thus the pope’s power had limits, and so too did the Holy Roman Emperor’s right to manage affairs. These leaders only ruled, Marsilius argued, by the consent of the citizens. The concept that people could not be fully human or ‘civilized’ unless they lived in a city and were active in politics is a classical idea. Humanist scholars highlighted this concept in their recovery of the Greek and Roman classics, including the works of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero and Livy. One of the government structures that humanists admired during the recovery of classical texts was the Roman republic, founded c.500 bce in Rome and lasting until the time of Augustus (d. 14 ad). The Roman republic was a form of democracy in which the citizens elected a senate and other government offices. The senate proposed legislation and oversaw the activities of two consuls, who handled the day-to-day

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affairs of the republic. The Roman republic was representative, in the sense that the citizens elected leaders who then represented their interests. Not all of the people were eligible to vote, of course – in ancient times, as in the Renaissance, women, children, slaves and foreigners were not able to participate directly in the government.

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▲▲Giovanni Bellini’s 1501 portrait of Leonardo Loredan during his tenure as doge (leader) of the Venetian Republic (National Gallery, London)

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During the 13th and early 14th centuries, dozens of Italian city-states declared their independence from the pope and emperor and used the language of ancient Rome to fashion themselves as republics. Foremost among these city-states were Siena, Lucca, Florence, Genoa and Venice. In the republican governments that developed during the Renaissance, the leading male citizens of the community elected the members of the town council, and the council elected various officials to run the city-state. Since control of the republic was often in the hands of a small circle of powerful men, historians often describe the city-states as oligarchies, because the governments were dominated by a relatively small number of elite patricians. Nonetheless, the humanists praised the democratic ideals of their cities and compared their republics to ancient Rome or Athens. Self-governance was seen as a victory for the people (popolo). ‘It is from the dynamic movement of men and especially the republican activities of the popolo that the Italian city-states dramatically changed their urban space, created new values, and had a pervasive effect upon imaginative literature, political thought, art, architecture, and historical writing.’8

Western political philosophy The impact of Renaissance republics was wide-reaching in western political thought. In England, France and the Americas, political thinkers studied the history of Rome and the Italian city-states for examples of representative government and

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self-rule. The American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution all drew on Renaissance political ideas and the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the Italian city-states. In particular, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson closely studied the governments of Renaissance Italy when they were creating the foundation documents for the United States.

◗◗ Political consolidation in Italy all that matters: The Renaissance

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The greatest dread for Renaissance republics was domination by an external foe, such as a regional strongman or despot. However, by the early 1300s many of the independent city-states had gradually been transformed into signorie, or territorial states under the power of a local prince. For example, Ottone Visconti seized Milan and the surrounding territory in 1278 and bequeathed the state to his descendants. In the 14th century, Florence annexed most of Tuscany (with the exception of Siena and Lucca), bringing the territory and its cities under direct rule. Although Venice and Florence continued to maintain the impression that they were thorough-going republics in the tradition of early Rome, these governments were actually controlled by small circles of wealthy elites, such as the Medici. The result was political consolidation in Italy.

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By the 15th century, there were five main territorial states in Italy: the duchy of Milan, the republic of Venice, the republic of Florence, the kingdom of Naples and the Papal States. The governments leading the five major Italian states gradually became sophisticated bureaucratic institutions, that is, institutions run by elected or appointed officials who were professional specialists in their own right. Most of the officials were educated with the new humanist curriculum popular in Italy. These men were competent in Latin, made extensive use of written records, understood mathematics and accounting procedures, and were skilled at rhetoric and diplomacy. This new style of administration was a significant outcome of the humanist movement. More than ever before, Renaissance governments were managed by professional secretaries, lawyers, diplomats, tax collectors and cohorts that managed specific departments of administration.

◗◗ Monarchy The experiments with republican government were discussed widely in Europe, but they were not the typical mode of administration. The main style of rule was monarchy, in which the state was controlled by a prince who based his authority on conquests or the hereditary right to rule. The central players in the monarchy system were the prince and his family. In a symbolic sense, the principality was a kind of extended household

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controlled by the monarch’s representatives. This model also fit well with classical Roman values – at the top of the national ‘household’ was a father figure who commanded his subjects, looked after their interests and transferred authority to his heirs.

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The Renaissance papacy can also be considered a monarchy in a political sense. The office of pope was not hereditary, of course, as a new pope was elected by the College of Cardinals after the death of the previous pontiff. However, the diplomatic and administrative bureaucracies developed by the popes during the 15th and 16th centuries made them look like monarchies to most observers. As a result, the pope was a formidable player on the European political scene. The pope controlled the bureaucracy of the Papal States and managed political life in the complex that would become known as the Vatican. Many of the popes were from leading aristocratic families in Italy.

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The duchy of Milan was ruled as a hereditary kingdom during the late Renaissance. When Francesco Sforza (ruled 1450–66) seized the kingdom, he solidified his power base and was able to successfully transfer administrative power to his son and grandson. The Sforza dynasty ruled from a huge castle that they built in the centre of Milan. From this centre they built up an administrative bureaucracy that patronized important humanists and artists. Beyond Italy, monarchy was the major mode of governance in the rest of Europe, including most of the German territories, France, Spain and England.

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◗◗ The consolidation of sovereign states In the 15th century, many of the divided feudal monarchies of Europe began a shift from isolation and competition to united national kingdoms where ‘sovereign’ rulers reigned. In England, France and Spain, the competing medieval kingdoms merged and those countries took on something close to their modern borders, languages and identity. In Italy and the German lands, however, fragmentation and division remained the pattern throughout the early modern period. In fact, Italy and Germany would not unify until the second half of the 19th century. In England, the dynasty most associated with unification and consolidation was the Tudors, who ruled from 1485 to 1603. England was naturally protected from continental Europe by the English Channel, and it had conquered and absorbed Wales by the 14th century. The English monarchs claimed the ability to govern through legal, financial and religious means. Also to tax, mint coins, declare war and give aristocratic titles. The English Parliament existed as a representative body, passing laws and supplying money to the monarchs, but England was otherwise dependent on the monarchy for its privileges and operation. The achievements of the Elizabethan Renaissance were made possible by the development of a strong central government in England. Noteworthy during this period were the reigns of two female monarchs, Mary  I (reigned 1553–8) and Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603).

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In the later Middle Ages, Spain was not a unified kingdom but a group of independent states that represented a number of religions, cultural traditions and noble families. Since the 700s, Granada, the southern part of the Iberian peninsula, had been a possession of the Moors, an extension of the Muslim empire. Aragon was a small kingdom in Spain with a population of less than one million. Castile was the richest kingdom, with a population in the late 1400s of about five million. Religiously, Spain was a melting pot where Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities lived together in relative harmony.

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The union took place in 1469 when Isabella of Castile (reigned 1474–1504) and Ferdinand of Aragon (reigned 1479–1516) married. Isabella and Ferdinand were able to do together what neither could do separately: subdue their realms, secure their borders, venture abroad militarily and Christianize the whole of Spain. Between 1482 and 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand conquered the Moors in Granada, then forced all the remaining Jews and Muslims in the country to convert to Christianity or go into exile. Although the policy was extremely harsh and

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Near the end of the 15th century, the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile united, and together they were able to make Spain one of the most powerful national monarchies in Europe.

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disruptive, it accelerated the process of centralization and consolidation that was distinctive in this period. Ferdinand and Isabella also promoted overseas exploration, sponsoring Christopher Columbus and other adventurers. The riches from this period of rapid expansion made Spain the wealthiest nation in Europe in the 16th century. France went through a similar period of consolidation around a strong national monarchy. The Hundred Years War between France and England ended in 1453, with a strong rally by the French that finally threw the English off French soil. This signalled a significant shift in the European balance of power, and the emergence of France as a major nation-state. In the following decades, the French monarchy was able to consolidate its holdings, integrating most of the territory of modern-day France and then some. In 1477, Louis XI (reigned 1461–83) absorbed Burgundy, an independent duchy. Louis XII (reigned 1498– 1515) added the province of Brittany by marriage. Francis I (reigned 1515–47) became a great patron of Renaissance art and culture. He expanded the French military and diplomatic corps, and invited numerous artists and scholars to his palaces at the chateau of Chambord in the Loire valley and the chateau of Fontainebleau outside of Paris. Among the artists were Andrea del Sarto, Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini.

◗◗ The Italian wars The Italian city-states initiated the Renaissance from a position of economic wealth and the creative rediscovery of the classical world. By the end of the 15th century,

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however, the balance of power had shifted to the consolidated national monarchies to the north and west. Recognizing the danger posed by this shift, the five territorial states of Italy signed a defensive agreement called the Peace of Lodi. In 1455, the agreement was extended into a union known as the Italian League. This union stipulated that if one of the five territorial states in Italy was attacked by an outside force, all the remaining states would come to its aid.

Charles VIII arrived in Italy with the French army, Swiss mercenary troops, an impressive cavalry and 40 pieces of artillery. The systematic use of gunpowder by the French shocked Italians and offered a preview of how

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In September 1494, Charles  VIII of France crossed the Alps into northern Italy with approximately 30,000 troops. Charles hoped to expand his kingdom as his father and grandfather had done during the consolidation of France. Although his primary objective was to pursue his ancestral claims to the kingdom of Naples, Charles needed to travel the entire length of the Italian peninsula to get to the southern principality. This brought him into direct military contact with Milan, Florence and the Papal States.

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By the 1490s, however, diplomatic relations among Milan, Venice, Florence, Naples, and the Papal States had become strained. As the Italian powers competed and squabbled, the great monarchs of France and Spain eyed the rich lands of Italy with dreams of conquest. When Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence died in 1492, the loss signalled the beginning of the end for the Italian state system developed in the Renaissance.

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future European wars would be fought. The immediate result was higher casualties on the battlefield, more destruction in the cities and new military tactics. Charles defeated Milan first, and by October the invasion force had moved to the border of the Florentine republic. Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son and heir, Piero de’ Medici (1472–1503), tried to appease the French rather than fight. He accompanied an entourage that visited the French leaders, but his submissive tone was perceived as betrayal by the Florentines and he was removed from office. However, when the French army entered Florentine territory, the Florentines were soundly defeated at their great fortress of Sarzana. From there, the French were able to ride directly into Florence and they quickly occupied the city. The republic was forced to give up much of its territory and to pay 200,000 florins to the French king to finance the war. It was a major humiliation for Florence, considered by many Europeans to be the most impressive Italian city-state.

Gunpowder in the Renaissance Gunpowder is a chemical explosive made from sulphur, charcoal and potassium nitrate. It was in use in China as early as the ninth century, but it was Renaissance soldiers and inventors who first made widespread use of gunpowder in weaponry. In 1248, gunpowder was reportedly used to ignite primitive cannons in Seville. A Florentine document from 1326 describes two officers apparently making iron shot and a metal cannon for the defence of Italian fortifications. However, the first decisive use of gunpowder came in 1453, when the Ottoman Turks used gunpowder to fire a battery of cannons

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at the fortress walls of Constantinople. The walls eventually collapsed and the Ottomans defeated the Byzantines, changing the balance of power in Europe. In 1526, the Battle of Pavia also demonstrated how a trained regiment of soldiers with harquebuses could repel a wave of mounted knights. These developments forced a shift in battlefield tactics and the gradual introduction of muzzle-loaded firearms. Another result was that guns and gunpowder vastly increased the size of armies. After the 16th century, battles were usually fought by the common foot soldier with firearms, pikes and bayonets, not aristocrats in armour on horseback.

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This period of crisis and political reorganization is known to Renaissance historians as the Italian Wars (1494–1559). The conflict essentially marks the end of the Renaissance in Italy, as the economic and political basis of the Italian state system was shattered by the struggle. Not only the Italian armies were involved;

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Although Charles VIII’s invasion force left Italy in 1495, the damage was done. Commercial activity plummeted in Italy, and soon after there were more invasions. The powerful northern monarchies realized that they could benefit from the division in Italy and they annexed large swaths of territory to enhance their prestige. Charles VIII died at a young age, but Louis XII of France returned to Milan in 1499 to claim the duchy. Likewise, Ferdinand of Spain invaded in 1502 and seized a portion of the kingdom of Naples. The Papal States did not escape damage: in 1527, the forces of Holy Roman Emperor Charles  V sacked Rome, terrorizing the people and bringing destruction to the city.

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the wars affected land owners, peasants, artisans and merchants. Between 1500 and 1540, the number of wool shops in Florence decreased by 75 percent. The Italian town of Como was literally wiped out in 1507, after which point all industry ceased in the area. Brescia was horribly sacked by French troops in 1511, Pavia was sacked and looted in 1528, and the port city of Genoa was sacked in 1532. The Italian countryside also suffered. For example, the area around Milan was almost constantly ravaged, with farms disrupted and burned, convents and monasteries looted, and peasants injured by hunger and disease. Two generations of Italians felt the terror, devastation and ruin of the Italian Wars. The extended conflict brought a crisis upon the region that seeped deeply into the Italian consciousness. A metaphor for the age was the wheel of the Roman goddess Fortune (fortuna). Fortune had somehow been given control over human affairs by God, and she dished out bad luck with the good. The metaphor of fortuna for fate helped Italians cope with distressing events. Fortune’s wheel turned and mystically predicted the destiny of all human beings. In addition, there were Christian interpretations of the crisis: the Italian Wars were seen by many as a sign of the coming apocalypse. This dark vision was seemingly confirmed when reports of comets, famine and monstrous births were reported in popular sermons, pamphlets and broadsides that circulated widely. Pessimism reigned throughout the era – the common belief was that the wars and pestilence were judgments from God against Italy.

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◗◗ Political thought

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Living in the Netherlands in the early 16th century, Desiderius Erasmus witnessed the rise of Spain and France, and the intrigues of powerful monarchs such as Charles  V of Spain, Francis  I of France and Henry VIII  of England. Erasmus was known for his satirical depiction of European sovereigns and he tried to draw Christians back to simple lives of piety, contemplation and study. In Praise of Folly (1511), Erasmus criticized what he saw as the worldly and hypocritical behaviour of popes and the clergy. In Complaint of Peace (1517), Erasmus waged a savage attack on monarchs who took their countries to war for personal glory and profit. Unlike some earlier humanists, Erasmus rejected the decisive role that war could play in international

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In addition to the Italian Wars, several other dynastic conflicts raged in Europe. The Habsburgs and Valois contested for western Europe, and the Habsburgs and Ottomans struggled for eastern Europe. When the Protestant Reformation began in the 1520s and 1530s, rival religious denominations took up arms to fight in the struggle as well. The most tragic conflict of the late Renaissance was the Thirty Years War (1618–48), which caused tens of thousands of deaths and involved almost every country in Europe. As the conflicts raged, a succession of political thinkers critiqued the violence and what they saw as greedy, malevolent behaviour among the territorial monarchs. Chief among the critics were the humanists Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More and Niccolò Machiavelli.

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affairs. He believed that war and violence were utterly opposed to Christian fellowship. Erasmus’s critiques were widely read and they fostered an international movement to cultivate peace and limit the use of war in national politics. Thomas More also detested war, and as a member of the English government he also had personal experience of serving an unpredictable monarch. More was Lord Chancellor in England from 1529 to 1532, in charge of England’s domestic policy as well as advising the king on international policy and legal and religious matters. But More had deep personal reservations about the political process, and he frequently lamented the pitfalls of public service in his writings. In Book I of Utopia (1516), for example, More reflected on how challenging it could be to serve a monarch who was obsessed with personal conquest and glory. More also asked how practical it was for a scholar to patiently advise a monarch when in the end the prince could simply follow their own (disastrous) course of action. More’s political misgivings were not idle musings: shortly after agreeing to be Lord Chancellor, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for refusing to accept Henry VIII’s new title of Supreme Head of the English Church. The new title was precipitated to allow Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and take a new wife. But the legal process usurped the rights of the pope and seemed heretical to More. The humanist resisted the king and was eventually beheaded for challenging the monarch’s authority.

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◗◗ Machiavelli The most significant political thinker of the Renaissance was Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) of Florence. Machiavelli was a civic humanist in many respects. He was passionate about the Latin classics, government service and publishing his ideas. Machiavelli wrote a play, a history of Florence, numerous letters and poems, and several important works of political theory. Machiavelli also worked as a diplomat and a member of the Florentine government.

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The Discourses on Livy is a work describing the character and benefits of republican government, a tradition with much relevance to Florence. The book is a commentary on the thought of Titus Livy, a Roman historian who had carefully scrutinized the Roman republic in his writing.

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Machiavelli was born during the reign of Lorenzo de’ Medici. As a Florentine statesman, Machiavelli had visited the pope in Rome, the court of Louis XII in France and the court of Maximilian I in Germany. He had also witnessed the 1494 invasion of Florence, a republican interlude under the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola (1452– 98) and the return of the Medici oligarchy in 1512. The re-establishment of Medici rule cost Machiavelli his job in the government, and he retired to his small family farm outside Florence to read and correspond with his humanist colleagues. The forced period of exile also allowed him the time to create two of the more remarkable political treatises of the Renaissance, The Discourses on Livy (c.1514) and The Prince (c.1516).

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Machiavelli concluded that republics were the best form of government for preserving the liberty of citizens in the long term. However, Machiavelli also believed that Florence was no longer in a situation that was conducive to democracy. His experience in the Italian Wars had shown him that what was needed in the early 16th century was a strong-willed leader who could defend the state and restore it to health and glory. The Prince was written specifically about such a leader. The treatise was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in the hopes that the new leader would be such a man. What Machiavelli most feared for Italy and Florence was instability. Machiavelli observed that instability produced chaos, and that chaos produced weakness and probable defeat. If a city-state were defeated, all that it had worked for – its economic vitality, its flourishing arts, the people and their liberty – would be lost. Such a dire calamity seemed the exact opposite of what a government should work for. So Machiavelli believed that it was time for a strong, virtuous prince to emerge and save Italy. Even if such a ruler dominated the state as a despot or a tyrant, it would be better to have such a man than to let the state fall into ruin. Accordingly, Machiavelli offered his treatise as a guidebook, a ‘mirror for princes’, to identify the attributes and skills that were most needed. Machiavelli’s advice for princes has become famous for its directness and realpolitik, or practical politics. Machiavelli suggested that a prince should fight with his own citizen militia, not mercenary troops from another land. When a prince successfully expanded his kingdom,

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the prince should live in his new lands and make his enemies fear him. The prince should take care to leave existing laws and customs intact, but destroy utterly the family of the old prince as they would never forget their kinsman’s defeat. The prince should avoid extraordinary vices; these are perceived as repulsive and will create enmity. However, it is better to be miserly than overly generous. Likewise, it is better to be feared than to be loved. Machiavelli counselled princes to be both like a lion (who is ferocious and commands respect) and like a fox (who is cunning and clever). A prince who would do these things might defy the odds, protect their states and create their own good fortune.

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Machiavelli’s advice was directly related to his experience as a citizen and diplomat for Florence during the Italian Wars. However, his books shocked most Europeans. Even humanists, who respected his research and methods, publicly rejected the implication that the ‘ends’ in politics somehow justified the ‘means’ taken to get there. It is said that the English term ‘Old Nick’ has come down to us as a euphemism for the devil because of Niccolò Machiavelli’s sinister reputation. However, Machiavelli’s provocative works had an impact that persisted well beyond the Renaissance. His insistence on understanding things as they are, not as we would like them to be, challenged traditional conventions and brought political philosophy a step closer to the modern discipline of political science. The Florentine diplomat initiated an important debate about ethics, leadership and authority that is still with us today.

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6 Renaissance painting Painting embraces within itself all the forms of nature. Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks

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It is only eight o’clock in the morning, but the line of tourists outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence is already stretching around the corner. The museum has not yet opened, but a Florentine standing nearby tells me that the wait will be about two hours from where I am standing. Despite this, the mood is cheerful and we all settle in for the wait. I should not be surprised, of course; the Uffizi is one of the most visited museums in the world. But it is still fascinating to consider why so many people are determined to see this particular collection of paintings. In many ways, the works of Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci have become synonymous with the Renaissance. But what is it about these particular artists and images that so captivates the world’s imagination? Was the Renaissance really a decisive turning point in the history of western art? This chapter examines the achievements of several important artists to find an answer, looking at the essential features and attributes of Renaissance painting, including realism, naturalism, emotion and the development of perspective.

◗◗ Artists and workshops In the expanding economy of 14th-century Italy, painters were skilled craftsmen who competed with other artists in the commercial marketplace. Painters vied for commissions with rival artists, and they operated within a commercial network that could extent to neighbouring

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cities and even distant regions. The most successful artists secured long-term contracts for work on major renovations or commissions that could continue for years or even decades. Rather than creating their own artworks and selling them in galleries, as a modern artist might, Renaissance artists sought lucrative commissions from wealthy patrons or town governments, who paid for the embellishment of homes, villas, churches, municipal buildings and tombs. In some cities, painters and other artists were supported by the minor guilds, business and social organizations that allowed for collective action.

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At the height of the Renaissance, many successful artists enjoyed fame and fortune. Highly regarded painters and sculptors became a conspicuous symbol of brilliance and creativity. In Italy, the artist’s workshop was known as the bottega. Workshops were typically located in the city, where artists had access to materials, labour and customers. The owner and operator of a workshop was known as the master. A master artist served as the head of the business and taught others how to create works of art in his style and favoured media. In addition to the master and his family, a variety of employees would also live and work near the workshop. They helped the master locate materials, prepare wood panels or stone, grind pigments, mix plaster, design new pieces, build frames, erect scaffolding, clean up and other tasks. Like other family businesses based on the workshop model, a successful Renaissance master would have one or more apprentices helping with manual tasks and learning the trade. Apprentices did basic tasks at first, and then gradually learned the master’s secrets for preparing

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pigments, designing a painting, applying the undercoating on panels or walls, and painting all but the most central figures and images in a painting. Journeymen continued their training with the master and completed more important tasks. Using apprentices and journeymen, the master artist could work on several commissions at once and focus his attention on the most crucial tasks of design, layout and painting the delicate faces and hands of a commission. Once the intervals of instruction were complete, an established young artist might leave his master and formally enter the guild of painters, sculptors or artisans in the city. He might establish his own workshop or continue working with his master, disseminating their style and adding his own innovations. Renaissance historians are fascinated by the training that apprentices and journeymen received from experienced masters. This person-to-person contact was one of the major ways that artistic style passed from one generation to the next. Leonardo da Vinci was an apprentice in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop in Florence in the 1470s. Through this experience, Leonardo learned first-hand how to design, paint and sculpt as well as how to operate a successful workshop. Leonardo’s work as an apprentice is clearly visible in some of Verrocchio’s paintings, such as the Baptism of Christ (1474–5) in the Uffizi Gallery, which historians believe was partially completed by the young Leonardo. Once an apprentice had learned the foundations of painting and preparation (a process that could take five to ten years or longer), he was able to seek out his own patrons and commissions.

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◗◗ Giotto di Bondone Since the early years of the Renaissance, the Italian Giotto di Bondone (1280–1337) has been considered the originator of a new manner of painting that was no longer Gothic or Byzantine, but is best described as a new style, a break with the medieval past. The historian Giorgio Vasari described Giotto’s work as i primi lumi (‘the first lights’) of a new style of naturalism and realism, one that we now call early Renaissance painting. You can see some of Giotto’s art in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

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Giotto was born near Florence in 1280, and he spent a portion of his youth herding sheep. We can imagine that Giotto was among those in the orbit of Florence who watched the gradual surge of the economy and perhaps even the excitement about republican governance that was the talk of the town in the early 14th century. As with many precocious young men in those days, Giotto was brought to Florence by his father, who arranged for the boy to be apprenticed to the late-Gothic master Cimabue. From this subtle painter of religious scenes and altarpieces, Giotto learned the trade of painting and how to compose numerous Christian motifs, including the Madonna and child, the crucifixion, the annunciation, and the miracles of Jesus. Gradually, however, Giotto began to create a different type of art. His religious figures came to have more volume and substance than Gothic or Romanesque bodies. The main characters in his narratives resided in more naturalized landscapes, and they were organized with a greater sense of depth and dimension than medieval artists had previously attempted.

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On the first floor of the Uffizi is a large altar panel by Giotto known as the Ognissanti Madonna (c.1310). The painting shows Mary, the mother of Jesus, holding her son and presenting him as the Saviour of the World. All around the Madonna and child are winged angels, showering the two holy figures with praise and worship. In fact, the angels are shown on a shimmering gold background to indicate that this is a heavenly scene, not an historical moment from the first century ad. Giotto and his patrons intended this image to draw the Christian worshipper into religious

▲▲Giotto, The Ognissanti Madonna, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

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reflection and acts of devotion. The panel was designed for the high altar of All Saints’ (Ognissanti) Church in Florence. Although the painting has a similar theme to earlier works by artists such as Berlinghieri, Duccio and Cimabue, Giotto brought a radical new sense of space to the Madonna and child motif. There is an illusion of three-dimensionality here, complete with foreground and background figures. The throne creates a box within a box in the painting, highlighting Mary, Jesus and the angels in a geometric frame with the illusion of space. Within the frame, the major figures portray depth and classical styling, as if they were modelled after classical Roman statues.

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Giotto’s skill was immediately recognized by his contemporaries, and this skill translated into important commissions in Florence, Padua, Assisi, Rimini and elsewhere. He was a contemporary of both Boccaccio and Dante and so he learned at first hand about the humanist movement and its early advocates and achievements. Giotto also established a series of workshops around northern Italy that became profitable. In this way, he matched his artistic production to the new commercial economy that was developing in Europe. Giotto’s new realism and naturalism attracted followers, imitators and disciples. In other words, he developed what art historians describe as a new school of Renaissance painting.

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In terms of format, the work is over ten feet tall, it is painted on poplar wood, and uses the painting technique called ‘egg tempera’ (see Painting formats box). Altarpieces offered churches several advantages, because they could be created in an artist’s workshop and then moved around the church as different needs or styles arose.

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Painting formats During the Renaissance, there were three main formats for painting: egg tempera on poplar wood, fresco on a fixed wall, and oil on canvas. An egg tempera painting was a portable format that could be produced in a variety of sizes. The paint pigment was mixed with egg, the egg yolk serving as an emulsifier to help the pigment bond properly to the surface of the wood panel. A fresco was a painting that was adhered to a wall by mixing pigment and plaster together, then applying the mixture to the surface of the wall. Frescos contained numerous undercoats. They were also durable, which allowed large walls to be easily decorated in churches and public spaces. However, the fresco process took considerable skill, as the plaster dried quickly, and once it was finished a fresco could not easily be moved or changed. The oil on canvas format, one of the most important artistic developments of the late Renaissance, did not come into use until the early 1500s. Oil paints took longer to dry but allowed for a wider range of colours and textures. The major innovators of this style included Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci.

Masaccio

After Giotto, the painting of Taddeo Gaddi, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti captured the vitality and piety of everyday life in 14th-century Renaissance Italy. These artists were influenced by Giotto’s new style and they offered their own artistic innovations and interpretations to patrons and followers. However, when the Black Death arrived in 1348, the pandemic severely impeded artistic progress and commercial growth. The plague ended or interrupted the lives of many artists,

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and it also depressed the economy and the financial capacity of patrons. When the economy picked up again, the Italian artist Masaccio (1401–28) was the next major innovator in artistic style. Although Masaccio died young, he brought a new geometric awareness to painting that astonished his fellow artists. The innovation would later be described as ‘single-point linear perspective’, meaning the simulation of three dimensions in a two-dimensional space, such that the background of each painting appears to recede to a single vanishing point. When the linear perspective technique became widely known and understood, it became a standard feature of Renaissance painting.

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Also, Jesus looks directly at the viewer in the Masaccio painting, holding his hand in his mouth as a teething infant might do. Masaccio has also carefully employed light and shadow to create the illusion of depth. In fact, the

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For an early example of Masaccio’s work, consider the Virgin and Child altarpiece created in 1426 for the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. This egg tempera painting is now in the National Gallery in London. Like the earlier Madonna and child by Giotto, this composition depicts Mary and her infant son on a throne, surrounded by angels. The painting also preserves a few elements from earlier styles, such as the gold background and the basic organization of the figures. However, Mary and the baby appear much more realistic and lifelike in this image. Mary has depth to her face, shoulders and legs. The baby Jesus clearly sits on Mary’s lap and the baby is physically in front of Mary.

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shadowing is so lifelike that historians believe Masaccio used clay models to get the lighting effects just right. In addition, the baby in Mary’s lap is completely nude, unlike earlier paintings with this theme. This subtle transformation allows the human body to take centre stage, as the human form had done in the writings of the humanists. Rather than looking like a ‘little man’, as Jesus is depicted in most Gothic paintings, Masaccio’s baby looks like an actual child. In terms of three-dimensional space, Mary sits on a throne that has precise geometric proportions. The throne also appears to recede into the background. Mary’s blue robe and the painting’s other attributes evoke naturalism and a respect for emotion, light and colour. Masaccio did not change the imagery depicted in western art – it was still religious in nature and often invoked the same themes as Gothic, Byzantine or Romanesque art – but he changed the way that traditional Christian themes were presented. Painters throughout Europe flocked to see his ground-breaking work, including Tribute Money (1425), Trinity (1425–8) and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1426–7). Tragically, Masaccio died at the age of 26.

Perspective studies The Renaissance is known for the development of singlepoint linear perspective. The use of complex geometric ideas in painting was a gradual innovation that began with the work of Giotto and Masaccio, and gained momentum in the second half of the 15th century. Leon Battista Alberti was one of the main theoretical innovators of this breakthrough.

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Masaccio’s style strongly influenced the direction of painting in Italy and the rest of Europe. One of Masaccio’s heirs was Fra Filippo Lippi (c.1406–69), a painter who delighted patrons with the sweetness, harmony and reality of his figures. The ‘Fra’ prefix before his name refers to his status as a monk in the Carmelite order of Florence. However, Lippi struggled with celibacy and the requirements of his monastic order. Eventually (and by mutual agreement), Filippo Lippi was removed from the Carmelite order or ‘defrocked’. He married a beautiful former nun named Lucrezia and they had several children together. Filippo Lippi expressed his

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◗◗ Fra Filippo Lippi

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Alberti was deeply influenced by the humanist recovery of mathematical and philosophical writings, and he wrote books that popularized humanist discoveries. In 1435, Alberti began circulating a manuscript entitled De pictura (‘On Painting’), which proposed a theory of artistic perspective based on medieval studies in optics. This theory required the artist to draw a human figure in the foreground of the painting and then to divide the painting into several lined segments. Just above the human figure, the artist was to establish a horizontal line leading to a central vanishing point. The vanishing point was then connected to base lines on the picture via diagonal rules called orthogonals. The resulting grid allowed the artist to simulate three dimensions in a two-dimensional space. After his revolutionary treatment of perspective in painting, Alberti applied similar ideas to sculpture and architecture. By 1450, Alberti had created a ten-volume series on architectural design principles based on the Roman architect Vitruvius.

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adoration for Lucrezia by using her face as the model for many of the figures in his paintings. The innovative artist spent the last decades of his life painting for Cosimo de’ Medici and other Italian patrons. Filippo Lippi’s masterpiece Madonna and Child (1465) is an egg tempera image that employs the sacred Mary and Jesus motif that we have considered already. However, this scene seems more casual and domestic. The throne is gone, and the infant Jesus reaching out to Mary is a chubby, even clingy, child. Jesus is so heavy, in fact, that two angels are seemingly required to lift the infant on their shoulders. In a gesture of incomparable sweetness, however, one of the angels looks directly out at the viewer and seems to ask: ‘Can you believe this?’ or ‘Isn’t this baby cute?’ The direct appeal through eye contact is an innovation of Filippo Lippi and his generation. It is meant to engage the viewer and invite them into the unfolding narrative. The glance is also designed to produce a religious response. As a work of devotional art, the painting is meant to stir the heart of the believer and summon them to worship. Lippi took great care to make Mary appear beautiful in this painting, and she is wearing the contemporary fashions of a Florentine aristocrat. Mary is dressed with pearls and lace in her hair. Her eyebrows, eyelids and forehead are carefully plucked or shaved to match aristocratic norms. She is wearing the blue and red colours in which Mary is traditionally dressed, but her outfit is now sophisticated and fashionable. The use of light, vivid colours and softness, however, should be attributed to the formidable influence of Masaccio, whom Filippo Lippi deeply admired.

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Something quite new, however, is the emphasis on naturalism. Notice the background of the painting – the rocks, plains and receding horizon that are so carefully depicted. This receding background effect, which Alberti carefully explained in his books, provides additional evidence of the adoption of single-point linear perspective. Filippo Lippi and his contemporary Fra Angelico (1400–55) established new modes of naturalism and sweetness that had an indelible influence on the Renaissance. They

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▲▲Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

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became famous as artists, and they were eagerly supported by the Medici family and other patrons. A new era had dawned for Renaissance painters – they were becoming famous for their art and for their individual styles.

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◗◗ Piero della Francesca By the middle of the 15th century, the most lavish and skilful art had become a luxury item – a high-cost product that could be bought and sold in the commercial economy. But painting also had social and cultural consequences, especially in the realm of religion. After all, most Europeans could not read or write during the early modern period, so what they saw in the public spaces and church interiors of Europe influenced their conception of God and the Christian faith. Gradually, the churches embraced the new artistic style, first in Italy and then in the cathedrals of France, Germany, Spain, England and the Netherlands. The norms of Renaissance art – based on religious ideas, humanist ideals and new stylistic preferences – became highly esteemed in the western world. One important innovator in the changing contours of western art was Piero della Francesca (1415–92), an Italian artist who applied realism and naturalism to new ends in the late 15th century. Piero was not a Florentine but a resident of the small town of San Sepolcro, near the Papal States. His family was involved in farming and the wholesale leather business. As a young artist in the 1430s and 1440s, Piero visited Florence and absorbed the style of Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico. However, the talented painter was uncomfortable in the

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Florentine metropolis and chose to live and work in the rural environs of his homeland. Piero did not use beautiful, idealized figures, as Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico had done. Instead, Piero utilized faces and personalities from his daily experience in rural Italy. One of the most dramatic examples of this design approach was Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ (c.1450), which Piero created for the priory of San Giovanni in San Sepolcro.

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▲▲Piero della Francesca, The Baptism of Christ, National Gallery, London

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In this painting, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. Three angels watch the baptism from the left of the painting, and one angel looks directly at the viewer, inviting us (as Filippo Lippi had done) to watch Jesus and appreciate the scene. Piero shows his dynamic skill as a painter with layout, colour and light. The torso of Jesus, along with the body of the second baptismal candidate (at the back, to the right) reveals Piero’s careful study of Greek and Roman statuary. Like other artists, this study was motivated in part by the work of Renaissance humanists, who uncovered classical antiquities and lionized the human body and its earthly glory and potential. However, the face of Jesus (centre figure, hands folded) looks essentially like an Italian peasant farmer; this Jesus has shaggy hair, heavy lidded eyes, big ears and a rather blank expression on his face. The body of Jesus is white and statuesque, but the face is common and hard, with earthy qualities. The art historian Frederick Hartt wrote of this painting: ‘Piero’s Christ is astonishing in the homeliness of his features, unprecedented in the Italian tradition, dominated since Giotto’s day by the Gothic conception of a handsome Christ with fine, clearcut features.’9 The contrast between the body and face of Jesus is significant. Piero’s interest in realism has led the artist to use a peasant as a model for the face and personality of Jesus. Francesca realized that a peasant would be a more realistic example, because Jesus was himself a peasant from first-century rural Palestine. The innovation served to underline the humanity and vulnerability of Jesus,

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which, Piero hoped, would help the believer appreciate the extent that God stooped to earth to become man. Although the insight was not appreciated by many of Italy’s great aristocratic patrons (some did not like the peasant Jesus), Piero’s talent and skill was undeniable. The artist from San Sepolcro is now considered to be one of the great masters of the Renaissance.

◗◗ Botticelli

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Botticelli operated in a thoroughly Christian culture and many of his paintings developed traditional themes, such as The Adoration of the Magi (early 1470s). But Botticelli’s interests in Neo-Platonism and classical mythology led him to create a radically new type of painting with explicit connections to ancient philosophy and symbolism. The most interesting of these works are Botticelli’s Pallas and the Centaur (1482), Primavera (1482), Venus and Mars (1483)

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Renaissance humanism contributed much to the study of Christianity, but it also popularized pagan authors, preChristian philosophy and mythological stories from the ancient world. One example of the ‘rebirth’ of classical, pagan literature is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a work from first-century Rome that circulated widely during the Renaissance. Ovid’s collection of mythological stories made its way into Renaissance poetry, drama, painting and the humanist curriculum. Among the Italian painters who employed classical mythology in their art is Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510), who worked in Florence and was supported by Lorenzo de’ Medici.

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and The Birth of Venus (after 1482). These works are best understood as allegories in which the figures represent classical or Christian virtues. In most cases, there are both Christian and pagan interpretations associated with the paintings, a thematic ambiguity that allowed the paintings to be displayed in religious or secular contexts. A stunning example of this ambiguity is The Birth of Venus, in the Uffizi Gallery, which always draws large crowds. This painting was commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici and was originally located in Lorenzo’s villa. The titular theme is the birth of Venus from the sea, which occurs in classical mythology when Uranus’s genitals were severed and thrown into the ocean. Although the subject is potentially offensive, Botticelli recreates it in a serene manner, painting Venus as a classical nude woman in a modesty or Venus pudica pose. A wind god blows Venus to shore, and Venus is about to be robed by a waiting woman, one of the mythological beings known as Horae or Hours.

▲▲Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

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In addition to realism and the exploration of mythological themes, another, later innovation of Renaissance artists was the portrait, a genre designed to depict a person’s actual likeness for posterity. Lifelike portraits were a departure from medieval art, which tended to show idealized figures, such as rulers, saints or biblical heroes. Based on classical Roman busts, portrait paintings give us visual evidence of what the historian Stephen Greenblatt has called ‘Renaissance self-fashioning’: the deliberate attempt to construct one's identity and public image through a set of socially

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◗◗ Bellini and portraits

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Neo-Platonists like Botticelli saw Venus as an allegorical figure, a heavenly nymph who represented the highest ideals and moral qualities of humanity. This idealized woman actually appears twice in the painting. Venus first arrives on the left side, carried by the wind god. Venus then stands in the middle, with her long golden hair blowing in the wind. In a probable reference to Christian baptism, however, Venus can also be seen waiting patiently in a cockleshell, which was an ancient baptismal symbol. The Christian interpretation would have allowed more pious viewers, including high-ranking churchmen, to accept the image despite the painting’s rather obscure pagan and Neo-Platonic imagery. However, it seems that most of the people in Florence simply appreciated Botticelli’s harmonious composition and his beautiful style. The mood is restful and all the major surfaces in the painting are smooth and colourful.

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acceptable standards and images10. Renaissance portraits began with miniatures, medals and busts. By the 16th century, the archetypal portrait was a panel painting depicting a well-dressed nobleman or noblewoman from the waist up. The movement toward realism and commercialism fuelled the demand for portraits. Self-conscious noblemen, courtiers and princes commissioned these paintings, and they were used to project an image of self-confidence and individuality. Portraits were used to inspire trust in rulers, to allow noble families to see potential brides and bridegrooms, and to represent dignitaries or families at state functions. The most successful portrait artists of the Renaissance were Piero della Francesca, Hans Holbein, Jan Van Eyck, Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Jean Clouet, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Giovanni Bellini (active 1459–1516) was a great portrait artist in Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries. Among his surviving paintings are several masterpieces that show how the new portrait genre could be used to project power, elegance and confidence. In Venice, the republic was led by a duke called, in the local dialect, a doge. This man was a central figure in state politics and he performed many ceremonial functions, including the reception of dignitaries, leadership in the Venetian senate and the annual ‘marriage of Venice to the sea’ ceremony. The Bellini portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan in 1501 (see Chapter 5) shows the Venetian dignitary near the beginning of his rule.

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At the time of the portrait, the Venetian doge is an older man. However, he is dressed beautifully, and his steady gaze suggests a wise, decisive ruler. His ornate hat and robe are key elements of his state wardrobe, the clothing that he wears for official diplomatic functions. With its cool tones and stoic subject, the portrait has many similarities to a Roman bust. Bellini was a great master of Renaissance painting. He also shared in the general self-confidence and dignity of painters during this age. In an act of self-representation, Bellini signed his own name in its Latin form on a small painted slip of paper that appears at the bottom of the portrait. It is one of the first signatures on a painting during the Renaissance.

For the purpose of this chapter, we consider how Leonardo approaches the subject of the Madonna and child, a very familiar theme in medieval and Renaissance painting. In The Virgin and Child with St Anne (1508–13), Leonardo paints Mary and a young Jesus with Anne,

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The art and ideas of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) offer us a final example of the stylistic changes that we have been charting in this chapter. Leonardo da Vinci stands alone as one of the great masters of Renaissance art, and his name is virtually synonymous with the Renaissance. Leonardo’s numerous skills and talents have led many to dub him the original ‘Renaissance Man’, i.e. a polymath that excels in many areas of human endeavour.

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◗◗ Leonardo da Vinci

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who according to popular mythology was the mother of Mary. Mary sits on Anne’s lap while Mary reaches out to hold and caress Jesus. The three intertwined figures form a pyramid shape that separates the mountain landscape in the background from the rocky foreground. Jesus is busy playing with a lamb, and the task takes all his energy and concentration. The lamb was a familiar symbol for Christians, of course; it meant that Jesus was already acting like the Good Shepherd.

▲▲Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne, The Louvre, Paris

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The theme and iconography of this painting are traditional. Mary wears a blue robe and a red dress (her traditional colours). But the stylistic comparisons that we might make to Gothic, Byzantine or even early Renaissance art stop there. The serenity of Leonardo’s figures and his overall composition are astonishing. Mary reaches out in sweetness and love for her child. Anne watches approvingly with a sublime smile that is reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. A graceful light illuminates the figures and also casts deep shadows. Below and behind the figures are rocks and jagged geological formations, a common and intriguing attribute of Leonardo’s paintings.

The hazy sfumato or ‘smoke’ effect in much of Leonardo da Vinci’s work is a unique visual attribute of High Renaissance painting, meant to simulate atmospheric disturbance on the horizon. The best way of studying the sfumato effect is if you can view the entire painting up close and in colour. The best way to do this with The Virgin and Child with St Anne is to visit this and other Leonardo paintings in the Louvre in Paris. However, large-format art history books and high-quality images on the internet will also allow you to examine this visual effect.

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Sfumato

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In the background is a hazy mountain scene consistent with the Dolomite range in northern Italy. Nature is completely on display. It is a natural world that Leonardo knows and has investigated carefully. There are ramparts, crags, lakes and rivers interacting in the background landscape.

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Leonardo da Vinci was one of the giants of the Renaissance, a master in painting, architecture, engineering and military science. He also had a serious interest in anatomy, geology, botany, hydraulics and optics. Leonardo was largely self-taught, which allowed him to avoid the academic specialization that had become a feature of higher education in some universities during the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was an avid hiker, explorer and experimenter; a tinkerer with an engineer’s intellect and a painter’s heart. Modern scholars know much about Leonardo’s thoughts from his many notebooks, which contain thousands of pages of notes, drawings, inventions and figure studies. Despite their intelligence, however, Leonardo’s notebooks had virtually no impact on Renaissance history. The volumes were filed away and then misplaced, coming to light only in modern times. For this reason, Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest historical legacy was a modest collection of beautiful paintings that graced the courts and churches of Italy and France. Leonardo’s work is in many ways a reflection of the humanist impulse to examine the life experience and potential of human beings. Leonardo studied the human body as it had never been studied before, using nude models and what he could learn from dissections in the local morgue. Leonardo considered the human body to be a great work of nature. He drew bones, tendons, joints and muscles over and over again to understand their proportions. Leonardo was fascinated by reproductive systems, the ageing process, the colour of light on human skin and the complex emotions of human beings. His painting and academic interests offer a fascinating parallel with the humanist movement in the visual arts.

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7 Renaissance sculpture Here is perfect sweetness … Wonder herself must marvel that the hand of a craftsman should have been able to execute so divinely and so perfectly, a work so admirable. Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists

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In 2007, the American public was afforded a rare opportunity to see extraordinary sculpture from the Renaissance when the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (the cathedral museum) in Florence arranged for three bronze panels from Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise (1425–52) to tour the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Seattle. The exhibitions generated long lines and enthusiastic crowds, attracting journalists, researchers and (most significantly) an adoring public. In the 16th century, the art historian Giorgio Vasari had described Ghiberti’s bronze doors as the ‘most beautiful the world had ever seen among the ancients and the moderns.’11 From the moment of their unveiling, Ghiberti’s bronze relief panels have held a special position in the history of Renaissance art. The rare American viewing of these masterpieces simply confirmed what cultural observers had long known: around the world the public has an enduring fascination with the Renaissance, and among the arts of the Renaissance, sculpture is the most iconic.

◗◗ Styles and influences New stylistic breakthroughs in sculpture followed a similar trajectory to painting in the Renaissance. The major Renaissance artists created both paintings and sculptures in their workshops, and innovative artists sought to project a similar sense of realism and emotion in both art forms. More than painting, however, Renaissance sculptors were deeply influenced by the recovery of ancient objects and designs. There was more sculpture than painting available from the ancient world,

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and the discovery of ancient statuary and relief panels gained momentum especially in Rome, where classical architecture was still visible and in greater abundance. An important inspiration for Renaissance sculpture was humanism, which celebrated the body and the capabilities of human beings. The humanists valued classical virtues in their treatises and texts; admirable human qualities such as intelligence, reason, knowledge, control, balance, perception, harmony and dignity. As the humanist agenda became more broadly recognized, Renaissance sculptors sought to depict these values in their art through the careful control of facial features, posture, emotion, movement and the dynamic structures of the human body.

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Sculpture is a uniquely physical art form, requiring substantial stamina and strength from the artist. Renaissance sculptors also needed to locate suitable materials, which could be a complicated process involving long scouting trips, negotiations with stonemasons and the use of numerous intermediaries and middle men.

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The Renaissance also produced sculptures in new designs and formats, including the equestrian monument, the portrait bust, new interpretations of the free-standing statue and distinctive relief panels. By the middle of the 15th century, sculptors had also become fascinated by linear proportion and the simulation of depth in pictorial space. The theoretical works that communicated these structures included Alberti’s De statua (‘On Sculpture’, c.1443) and De re aedificatoria libri X (‘Ten Books on Architecture’, 1452).

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In terms of composition, the four major materials for statuary were marble, bronze, wood and terracotta. Marble statues were highly desirable, as they resembled ancient Greek and Roman models, but marble was also hard to find, cumbersome to work with and very expensive. Special tools were required to cut and transport marble blocks, as well as to shape, sculpt and polish the stone. An important source of marble during the Renaissance was the Carrera mountains in Italy. Bronze sculpture was an ancient art form at which the Romans had excelled. However, bronze statues had been largely abandoned in the Middle Ages. An important model of classical Roman bronze statue was the lifesize Marcus Aurelius on Horseback, an equestrian statue which survived from antiquity. Lorenzo Ghiberti is credited with reinventing the ancient lost-wax method of casting bronze (discussed below), which became a major inspiration for Renaissance sculptors. Ghiberti used this method to create the massive Gates of Paradise doors for the baptistery of the cathedral in Florence. He also established a professional workshop in Florence where new artistic and engineering techniques were tried out. Ghiberti worked for decades in Florence and personally trained a generation of artists and craftsmen, including Donatello, Masolino, Michelozzo, Uccello and Pollaiuolo. A number of statues, crucifixes and relief panels were also made of wood, a less expensive medium that could be finished with paint or varnish. Many excellent examples of wood statuary survive today in European

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museums, churches, villas and castles. A small number of ivory statuettes and relief panels also survive from the Renaissance. This rare medium came from walrus or narwhal tusks, or the imported horns of African elephants or rhinoceroses. The scarcity of ivory in Europe made it a highly desirable but exceedingly rare medium.

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Through the movement of artists like Torrigiano, it is possible to see how the innovative styles and techniques of Italy were transmitted throughout Europe. As a young

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Terracotta, or clay from the earth, was also an important medium, especially in places where marble was unavailable or too costly. Terracotta clay was carefully mixed, shaped and sculpted into an image, fired in a kiln and then painted with several coats. In technical terms, terracotta was an additive process, involving the shaping and building up of clay to create a likeness, rather than carving (or removing) stone or wood to make a statue. Most terracotta statues and busts were hollow, and occasionally scholars find tools, drawings or other materials in surviving terracotta works when they are opened. One important advantage of terracotta was that it took paint extremely well, so it could produce very lifelike results. The style was not limited to Italy. An important example from the early Renaissance in England is the bust of Henry VII (1509–11) created by Pietro Torrigiano (1472–1528) for the Tudor court (see Chapter 3). Shortly after the death of Henry VII, Torrigiano moved to Spain and created several free-standing terracotta statues, including St Jerome (1525), now in the Museum of Fine Art in Seville.

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man, Torrigiano trained in Italy, and then he moved to Austria, England and Spain, picking up commissions and other work. During his apprenticeship, Torrigiano fought with Michelangelo (1475–1564) in Florence, breaking Michelangelo’s nose during a fight. (It may have been this that prompted him to leave town.) Later, Torrigiano interacted with Benvenuto Cellini (1500– 71), a well-known sculptor in Italy and France. Cellini remarked that Torrigiano was skilled but also arrogant, with the manners of a soldier. Torrigiano died in 1528 after being thrown in prison by the Spanish Inquisition. His crime was defacing a statue of Mary that he had created in Spain for a local duke. The duke refused to pay and Torrigiano chiselled away at his own creation to even the score. (The Inquisition regarded the defacing as blasphemy.) How were sculptors perceived in the cities where they worked? Renaissance sculptors participated in the same commercial marketplace as painters and other artisans, and they were often represented by minor guilds. The dusty, physically demanding work could lead to social stigma, however, which is sometimes recorded in the surviving records. For example, Leonardo da Vinci once remarked that while Michelangelo was a significant artist, he was always covered with marble dust, dressed crudely and cared little about his appearance. The comment tells us something about the rivalry between Leonardo and Michelangelo, and also about the humble status of sculptors, who lived in a world of dust, debris, noise and heavy tools.

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◗◗ Lorenzo Ghiberti

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The illustration below shows a detail from a panel on the east set of doors, which gained Ghiberti the most fame. These doors were the ones described by Michelangelo as the ‘Gates of Paradise’. The colourful phrase has two meanings: not only were the doors an incomparable work of craftsmanship and design, but they were associated with Christian baptism and therefore the entrance to heaven (or paradise) in medieval theology. The panel depicts a scene from the book of Genesis in which the patriarch Isaac sends his son Esau out to hunt. The panel was one of the three sent to the US during the 2007–8 American tour of Ghiberti’s work.

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The beginning of Renaissance sculpture is typically associated with the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378– 1455), who initiated his career by winning a competition to produce a set of monumental bronze doors for the baptistery of the cathedral in Florence. The contest took place in 1401, and it pitted Ghiberti against Filippo Brunelleschi, Jacopo della Quercia and other prominent artists. By winning the competition, Ghiberti assured himself of decades of work as Florence’s pre-eminent sculptor and bronze artist. The first set of doors was completed between 1401 and 1425. They were for the north entrance of the baptistery and they contained scenes from the New Testament. The second set of doors was completed between 1425 and 1452. They were for the east entrance to the baptistery and depicted scenes from the Old Testament.

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▲▲Ghiberti, Isaac sends Esau to hunt (panel detail), east doors, baptistery of the cathedral, Florence

Immediately apparent in this relief-panel sculpture is Ghiberti’s astonishing use of single-point linear perspective. In the foreground are four servants (to the right), two dogs (to the left), and the central figures of Isaac and Esau, who are wearing heavy robes. Esau’s legs are visible, showing musculature and a complex pose resulting from one foot being elevated slightly off the ground. On the right side of the painting, the square tiles of the flooring recede off into the background, creating the illusion of depth. The vanishing point is framed by the central arch of a Renaissance building. Here Ghiberti is using three-dimensional perspective in a similar way to Masaccio and his contemporaries in paint. Ghiberti was probably also influenced by the sculptor Donatello

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(1386–1466), who was Ghiberti’s great contemporary in Florence.

A successful commercial artist, Ghiberti worked not only on the baptistery commission, but also on several freestanding statues which are masterpieces in their own right and are considered among the greatest sculptures

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Ghiberti’s workshop had dozens of apprentices, journeymen and assistants working collaboratively to create the commissions. We know something of his techniques and ideas due to a lengthy book that he wrote called The Commentaries. This text describes practical matters in the workshop as well as more philosophical ideas, such as how the human eye works (its structure and functions) and the properties of light.

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The technique that Ghiberti used to create the doors has been called the ‘lost-wax technique’; in this, a complex wax model is embedded in plaster and then slowly melted away. This process allows liquid bronze to be poured into the area previously occupied by the wax. Ghiberti’s team created 28 bronze panels for the north doors and ten (larger) bronze panels for the east doors. The larger panels on the east doors (including Isaac sends Esau to hunt) are 31.5 inches by 31.5 inches in size. Ghiberti joined the panels together and reinforced them to create substantial doors for the baptistery. He then mixed gold dust with mercury and painted the slurry on the face of each panel. To get the gold to affix properly to the panels, Ghiberti heated each panel to burn off the mercury. This was a toxic process that could damage the lungs and other organs and is no longer in use.

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of the Renaissance. One of the most impressive examples is the free-standing bronze statue of St John the Baptist (1412–16), originally located in a niche on the outer wall of the Orsanmichele in Florence (see Chapter 4). The Orsanmichele originally served as a grain exchange for the republic, but during the later Renaissance the building was associated with the guilds of the city, and each of the principal guilds had a niche in which they placed a statue of their patron saint.

During the Renaissance, there were seven major guilds, or Arti, in Florence. Florence’s painters belonged to the guild of doctors and pharmacists, because painters ground their paints as pharmacists ground medicines. The bronze sculptors (such as Ghiberti) belonged to the Arte della Seta, a significant guild in the city. However, the wood and stone sculptors were members of a minor guild (the Arte di Pietra e Legname), and they never rose above this lower social ranking. Ghiberti’s St John the Baptist was created for the Calimala guild, which represented the textile industry and importers of woollen cloth. The Calimala guild took its name from the street in Florence where its merchants and artisans had their shops. Ghiberti’s bronze statue was at the time the largest bronze work to be cast in Florence, standing over eight feet tall. Ghiberti depicts a saint who is monumental in size and posture,

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with disordered beard and hair, and a subtle layer of animal skin and fur (to match the Biblical narrative) beneath his long flowing robe. The figure is very human and reminiscent of Roman statues, but it also contains elements of the lyrical Northern Gothic style popular in the later Middle Ages.

◗◗ Donatello

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An important example of Donatello’s sculpture is his freestanding David (c.1440), a bronze statue found today in the Bargello National Museum in Florence. Images of the young David of the Old Testament were popular in Florence during the Renaissance. Just as the adolescent David had stood up to the mighty Goliath and defeated

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Donato di Niccolò Bardi (1386–1466), known to historians and art lovers as Donatello, was a contemporary of Ghiberti who had a long career in Florence, creating sculpture in marble, wood and bronze for almost 60 years. Like many great masters, Donatello constantly experimented, and he was seemingly always interested in the inner life of his subjects. Donatello was influenced by humanism in his fascination with the human spirit, the emotional range of characters, and perspective and optical representation. More than anyone before Michelangelo, Donatello was concerned with where the works he created would be located and how they would appear to the viewer. As a result, Donatello was known to distort the legs, torso or other features of the body so that they would appear correctly when viewed from below.

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him in Biblical times, so too the Florentines hoped they would defeat outsiders who challenged Florence through acts of unwarranted aggression. Donatello’s David is astonishing in its lyric composition and sensuality. Art historians believe that it is the first freestanding nude statue in the round that was created during the Renaissance. But rather than a fierce and virtuous warrior (as David is often depicted in art), this future king of Israel is effeminate, adorned with a flamboyant hat and wearing highly decorative leather boots. The boy has one hand on his hip and another on the large sword that he has just used to behead Goliath. (The head is resting on the ground under David’s left foot.) The curious mixture of religious imagery, sensuality and violence is unusual and shocked some Florentines. With this sculpture, Donatello has broken with the past and created a new style from elements of the classical, medieval and Renaissance worlds. In Donatello’s vision, the human body and its emotional needs take priority over all else.

◗◗ Michelangelo At the pinnacle of Renaissance sculpture is the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). This Florentine artist represents, for some, the culmination of High Renaissance art and the first fruits of later styles, including Mannerism. Michelangelo was born near the Apennine mountains in northern Italy, in a small village named Caprese where his father served as podestà. At the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed in Florence

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to Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most successful painters of the late 15th century, and he soon received his own commissions, working for Lorenzo de’ Medici until Lorenzo’s death in 1492. Then Michelangelo worked for Pope Julius II, the Florentine Republic (after the expulsion of the Medici during the Italian Wars) and other patrons. Michelangelo was active for almost 75 years as an artist, working in marble, wood and paint. At the age of 23, Michelangelo took a commission in Rome for one of his most important works, a pietà for

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▲▲Michelangelo, Pietà, St Peter’s Basilica, The Vatican

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St Peter’s Basilica. The marble sculpture, completed in 1499, movingly depicts Mary holding her son Jesus after he has been taken down from the cross following his crucifixion. The flowing drapery and delicate features of Christ and Mary show elements of classical shapes and form. Jesus looks in some ways like a fallen Apollo; his body is beautifully rendered, and Michelangelo pays the greatest attention to Jesus’ face, features and body. It is a work of anatomical precision, and also a devotional image of deep religious conviction. In the tradition of medieval and early Renaissance art, Michelangelo is hoping to use this sculpture to draw Christian worshippers to a deeper appreciation of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and the important role of Mary in the life of the Church. In 1504, Michelangelo was back in Florence, working for the republic to create a colossal sculpture in marble of David (see Chapter 1) that was eventually placed near the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio. Medici overlords were no longer in the city and the giant statue was created as a great symbol of republican defiance, both to the despots of foreign lands and to the Medici, who were never far from view. Michelangelo’s monumental work shows a teenage David looking out in defiance at Goliath, with a simple sling-shot over his left shoulder. The work is also a nude in the round. The figure possesses almost superhuman grandeur and beauty. Despite the seriousness and emotional quality of David’s face and expression, the viewer is drawn overwhelmingly to the rest of the body – the torso, individual muscles, bones, tendons and skin of the defiant figure. The figure is leaning to one side, so that his weight shifts, and by

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association so do his hips. David’s right shoulder dips, and his right arm extends as a result. The left arm acts as a counterweight to the body shift. Michelangelo’s David represents a culmination of Renaissance sculpture and the fascination with the human body and the classical form that began with humanism and the work of earlier artists. However, it is also an extremely political sculpture – David represents the soul of the Republic of Florence and its projected sense of self.

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One beautiful example is another pietà, which Michelangelo started in the 1540s but which remained unfinished at his death in 1564, a date that for some marks the end of the Renaissance in Italy. The marble sculpture is a depiction of four interconnected figures: Joseph of Arimathea, Mary, Mary Magdalen and a dead Jesus about to be lowered into a tomb. The group is grieving and straining to lower Jesus; the movement is not classically inspired but something new. The torso of Jesus is beautifully carved, showing bones, muscles and the wounds of crucifixion. It is a beautiful, poignant scene in which friends rush to the aid of one whom they love and lament.

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Michelangelo lived a long life and worked almost exclusively on religious subjects. He returned periodically to Rome to work for Pope Julius II and other patrons. Here, he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, created a new design for St Peter’s Basilica and worked on a lavish tomb for Julius II. When the Protestant Reformation galvanized and divided Europe in the 1530s and 1540s, Michelangelo responded by emphasizing the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional piety and subject matter.

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What makes this piece even more interesting is that Michelangelo apparently intended the sculpture to be used for his own tomb. The face of Joseph of Arimathea actually resembles Michelangelo’s face, and so it is Michelangelo’s tenderness towards Christ that is on display as the artist helps to lower the Saviour into the tomb. The work also reveals new stylistic interests. No longer High Renaissance in composition, the curved, almost distorted features fit better the patterns of Mannerism, a new direction in post-Renaissance art that Michelangelo helped to initiate.

▲▲Michelangelo, Pietà, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

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In 1555, Michelangelo apparently abandoned this sculpture, setting it aside. It would appear that the psychological complexity of working on his own tomb while creating a new style and format was too overwhelming. The serenity of this self-portrait is, however, a fitting tribute to an age that witnessed the formative influence of humanism, the revival of classical culture and new forms of economic, political and religious organization. Michelangelo’s life demonstrates the transformative power of art and the dynamic, public role that many artists played in Renaissance society. At his death, the social and cultural transformation was still incomplete – Italy was fragmented and in decline – but the energies of the Renaissance would not be extinguished.

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What, then, is the enduring significance of the Renaissance movement in Europe? This intriguing period of dynamism and change is associated with the rise and fall of early modern Italy, but the creative energies of Renaissance society transcended local events and continue to shape western societies. The Renaissance began with agricultural growth and economic development in emerging city-states, most notably in Italy and northern Europe. The rising Renaissance economy was transformed by the merchant, who developed regional trade networks and participated aggressively in the commercial marketplace. The discovery of new geographic worlds, waterways and peoples spread Renaissance ideas and culture around the globe, contributing to the process of international integration that we now call globalization.

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When Renaissance humanists recovered classical texts and ideas, they established a new agenda for scholarship and education that reformed medieval universities and political life in western Europe. Renaissance humanism also gave birth to religious reform movements, new forms of political thought and the surge in scientific creativity that we associate with the Scientific Revolution. In fields as disparate as art, history, politics, science, business, education and leisure travel, the Renaissance created a lasting legacy that continues to shape global events and individual lives.

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100 Ideas

This 100 Ideas section will help you learn more about the Renaissance.

20 Renaissance humanists to know 1

Francesco Petrarch (1304–74), Italian; poet and scholar.

2

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), Dutch; scholar.

3 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II (1405–64), Italian; diplomat and scholar. Thomas More (1478–1535), English; politician and scholar.

5

Juan Luis Vives (1493–1540), Spanish; philosopher.

6

Rudolph Agricola (1443–85), Dutch/German; scholar.

7

François Rabelais (1494–1553), French; monk, physician and satirist.

8

Lorenzo Valla educationist.

(c.

9

Giovanni Pico philosopher.

della

10 Leonardo Bruni politician.

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1407–57),

Italian;

Mirandola

(1370–1444),

scholar

(1463–94),

Italian;

and

Italian;

scholar

all that matters: 

4

and

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11 Jacques Lefèvre theologian.

d’Etaples

(1455–1536),

French;

12 Laura Cereta (1469–99), Italian; writer and scholar. 13 Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), Italian; philosopher. 14 Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75), Italian; writer. 15 Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Italian; scholar and politician. 16 Isotta Nogarola (1418–66), Italian; writer and scholar. 17 Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), Spanish; prelate, politician and patron.

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18 John Colet (1467–1519), English; scholar and theologian. 19 Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), German; scholar. 20 Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), Italian; writer, politician and historian.

Ten original texts from the Renaissance 21 Francesco Petrarch, Italian Sonnets (1330s–1370s). The Italian poems written to Laura throughout Petrarch’s career made him famous. Most collections of the poems are organized under the name Canzoniere. An accessible translation in English is: Petrarch, Canzoniere, trans. M. Musa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 22 Boccaccio, Decameron (completed 1353). A collection of bawdy, humorous and romantic tales set in a villa outside Florence after the arrival of the Black Death. Boccaccio’s works influenced the development of humanism and inspired Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. A masterpiece of literature and storytelling from a transitional age. 23 Leon Battista Alberti, Book of the Family (1434). Alberti was a humanist, architect and art theorist who lived during

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Florence’s economic and cultural rise in the 15th century. This text reveals his moral and social concerns and many of the attitudes of the emerging merchant class in Florence. A good English translation is: Leon Battista Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence, Book Three, trans. Renée Neu Watkins (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1994). 24 Laura Cereta, ‘Letters’ (1488). Laura Cereta was a female humanist in a society in which scholarly activity was limited largely to men. Her surviving letters open a window on the topics of gender, education, and social structure in the Renaissance. A good selection of the letters is available in: Diana Robin, Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

27 Machiavelli, The Discourses on Livy (c.1514). This presents Machiavelli’s ideas about republics and republican rule. Although The Prince (c.1516) is better known (and also recommended), a fuller appreciation of Machiavelli’s systematic thought is visible in The Discourses, which nominally comment on the political thought of Livy, the Roman historian of the first century ad. A useful edition is: Machiavelli, The Discourses on Livy, trans. H. Mansfield and N. Tarcov (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1987).

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26 Thomas More, Utopia (1516). A fictional account of an imaginary island in the Atlantic Ocean that has radically different social and economic values from Tudor England. Written as a social and political critique of European society, the book also emphasizes the humanist values of education and self-improvement.

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25 Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (1509). The bestknown work of the famous northern humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam is this satire inspired by the classical Greek satirists, including Lucian. The book criticizes senior churchmen and deteriorating religious practices in an attempt to pull Christians back to piety and devotion.

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28 Leonardo da Vinci, ‘Notebooks’ (1519). Although Leonardo da Vinci left only a few dozen complete works of art, his notebooks reveal much about his wide-ranging thought related to engineering, optics, hydrology, anatomy, geology, architecture and other subjects. An intriguing selection of these original writings can be found in: Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, edited by Irma A. Richter, Martin Kemp and Thereza Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 29 Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1527). The courts of political leaders took on great importance during the Renaissance. Castiglione’s book presents a series of imaginary conversations about the qualities and decorum of the perfect courtier, based on his experiences in Italy. An accessible edition is: Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1967). 30 Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography (1558–66). Cellini was a goldsmith and sculptor in Italy and France during the late Renaissance. His autobiography offers a vivid and entertaining picture of an era. An accessible English translation is: Cellini, Autobiography, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1956).

Ten inventions and discoveries of the Renaissance 31 Clocks. Accurate time-keeping devices were significant inventions of the Renaissance with important social consequences. The first public clock in Europe appeared in Milan in 1335. Within several decades, spring-driven clocks had appeared in most of Europe’s major cities. Clockmaking reached a new level of sophistication after the pendulum experiments of Galileo Galilei and Christiaan Huygens in the 17th century.

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32 Single-point linear perspective. In 1435, Leonbattista Alberti began circulating a manuscript entitled De pictura (‘On Painting’), which proposed a theory of artistic perspective that could more convincingly depict three dimensions in a twodimensional space. His book became a standard reference work and inspired several generations of European artists to create works with stunning depth and realism. 33 Printing press. The invention of movable type and the printing press by Johannes Guttenberg and others (c.1450) fostered a rise in literacy and the rapid distribution of new ideas.

36 Rotation of the Earth around the Sun. The publication of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543) by Nicolaus Copernicus reformed astronomy by arguing that the Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun. 37 Knowledge of human anatomy. The publication of On the Structure of the Human Body (1543) by Andreas Vesalius corrected over 200 errors in the most authoritative anatomical texts. Vesalius’s breakthrough writings and

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35 Discovery of the Americas. Using innovative deep-hulled ships and new navigation technologies, Christopher Columbus made four sailing voyages from Spain to the Caribbean between 1492 and 1503. The discovery of new geographic worlds and peoples changed trading patterns, led to colonization and caused a shift in the European balance of power.

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34 Gunpowder. Europeans made the first systematic use of gunpowder for weaponry during the Renaissance, a development that changed the way that wars were fought, the cost of the conflicts and the resulting devastation. The first decisive use of gunpowder for artillery took place in 1453, when Ottoman forces breached the walls of Constantinople. The first decisive use of firearms was at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, where 3,000 Spanish harquebusiers played a major role in defeating the French cavalry.

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research changed the way that people understood and cared for the human body. 38 Scientific method. Among the ancient, medieval and Arab texts commented on by humanists were mathematical and scientific treatises. The appraisal of these documents led to a new working methodology for investigating nature called the Scientific Method. The procedures included observing a particular phenomenon in nature, hypothesizing about how it came to be, testing the hypothesis by evaluating the cause and observing the effects of the test, and modifying the hypothesis. Contributors to the development of the Scientific Method included Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei and Rene Descartes. 39 Magnetism. In 1600, the Elizabethan physician and scientist William Gilbert published the first detailed study of magnetism, Concerning the Magnet. Among other things, Gilbert demonstrated that the Earth itself is a giant magnet. 40 The elliptical orbits of the planets. Based on the meticulous astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler demonstrated in 1609 that the planets orbit the Sun with elliptical orbits based on magnetic attraction and repulsion. Kepler’s work laid the groundwork for Isaac Newton’s universal law of gravitation in 1687.

20 Renaissance paintings to know 41 Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne (c.1508–13), The Louvre, Paris. 42 Michelangelo, ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–12), The Vatican, Rome. 43 Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (after 1482), Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

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44 Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors (1533), National Gallery, London. 45 Giotto, fresco cycle in the Scrovegni (or Arena) Chapel (1303–5), Padua. 46 Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), National Gallery, London. 47 Bronzino, Exposure of Luxury (1540s), National Gallery, London. 48 Titian, Venus of Urbino (1538), Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 49 Piero della Francesca, The Baptism of Christ (c.1450), National Gallery, London. 50 Fra Angelico, Annunciation (1434), Diocesan Museum, Cortona.

53 Masaccio, The Trinity (1427–8), Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 54 Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi (1423), Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 55 Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child (1455), Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 56 François Clouet, Diane de Poitiers (1571), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 57 Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I (1519), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. 58 Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano (c.1438–55), three panels, one each now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; the National Gallery, London; and The Louvre, Paris.

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52 El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (1586–8), Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo.

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51 Raphael, The Transfiguration of Christ (1517), Pinacoteca, Vatican, Rome.

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59 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of an Old Man with a Boy (c.1490), The Louvre, Paris. 60 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Allegory of Good Government (1338–9), Council Room, Town Hall, Siena.

15 Renaissance sculptures to know

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61 Michelangelo, Pietà (1499), marble, St Peter’s Basilica, The Vatican, Rome. 62 Michelangelo, David (1504), marble, Accademia Gallery, Florence; a replica is situated at the original location in the Piazza della Signoria outside the Palazzo Vecchio. 63 Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise (1403–52), bronze, the north and east doors of the baptistery of the cathedral, Florence. 64 Donatello, Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata (1453), bronze, Piazza del Santo, Padua. 65 Donatello, David (c.1440), bronze, Bargello National Museum, Florence. 66 Michelangelo, Pietà, or The Deposition (before 1555), marble, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence. 67 Lorenzo Ghiberti, St John the Baptist (c.1412–16), bronze, Orsanmichele Church and Museum, Florence. 68 Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus (1545–54), bronze, Piazza della Signoria, Florence. 69 Donatello, St Mary Magdalen (1454–5), wood with polychromy, baptistery of the cathedral, Florence. 70 Andrea Verrocchio, Equestrian Monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni (1479), bronze, Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo, Venice.

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71 Michelangelo, Moses (1513–16), marble, Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. 72 Pietro Torrigiano, St Jerome (1525), terracotta, Museum of Fine Art, Seville. 73 Pierre Bontemps and Jean Juste, tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany (1516), marble, Basilica of Saint-Denis, Paris. 74 Nicola Pisano, pulpit (1265–8), marble, baptistery of the cathedral, Pisa. 75 Luca della Robbia, Cantoria (1431–8), marble relief panel, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence.

Ten best books about the Renaissance

78 Kenneth R. Bartlett, A Short History of the Italian Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). A broad overview of Italian culture, politics and intellectual history during the Renaissance. Emphasizes

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77 Guido Ruggiero (ed.), A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2002). A collection of influential academic essays on the subject of the Renaissance in Europe. Emphasizes the importance of the Renaissance in world history, including the encounters between Europeans and other civilizations.

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76 Frederick Hartt and David Wilkins, History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 7th edn, 2010). The most comprehensive and richly detailed analysis of Italian Renaissance painting, sculpture and architecture in the English language. This large-format book is available in several editions, all of which are excellent. Originally published by Prentice-Hall.

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the importance of humanism, trade, Rome and the citystates of Florence, Pisa, Genoa and Venice.

146 100 Ideas

79 Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: W.  W. Norton, 1998). A creative synthesis about the importance of international trade and the Renaissance economy. Jardine shows how expanding business opportunities provided the enormous fortunes that funded artistic production and new markets for luxury goods. 80 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in FifteenthCentury Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1988). A seminal art history book that examines commercial and business practices related to the Italian painting trade. Uses art as a way of understanding currents in the broader society. 81 Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012). A book about the recovery of ancient texts during the Renaissance, and the impact of classical ideas on history, philosophy and western identity. The main focus is on Poggio Bracciolini, a papal secretary and humanist who searched for lost manuscripts in the monasteries of Germany and Switzerland. 82 Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2nd edn, 1999). An introduction to the art and culture of Renaissance Italy. Burke discusses the legacy of Jacob Burckhardt, the social framework of the Italian city-states and the important ways that art functioned in society. 83 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume One: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). A classic treatment of European politics during the age of the Renaissance. Includes important discussions of Renaissance republics, Machiavelli and More.

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84 Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). A groundbreaking presentation of urban ritual and ceremony in the Renaissance, focusing especially on Venice. Includes a discussion of carnival, political processions and the annual ‘marriage of the sea’ ritual which underscored the power of the state. 85 John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: Touchstone, 1993). A wide-ranging discussion of the Renaissance and its importance in European history. Explains how the concept of ‘Europe’ came to be understood, the rivalry of European states and the important cultural and social features of the era.

Ten websites

88 www.luminarium.org/renlit – 16th Century Renaissance English Literature (1485–1603). Essays, articles and texts relating to the major figures of Tudor literature and drama. 89 http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/library/digital-collections – Digital Collections of the Warburg Institute, King’s College

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all that matters: The Renaissance

87 http://crrs.ca – Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto. A university website devoted to research and teaching about the Renaissance in Europe, c.1350 to 1700. Contains information about lectures and seminars, online texts, published books and more.

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86 http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu – Online Sources for European History. A website with translations, facsimiles and digitized texts from most of the countries of Europe. Includes an excellent selection of original documents relating to the Renaissance.

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London. Beautiful digital books and original documents from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

148 100 Ideas

90 www.fordham.edu/Halsall/sbook1x.asp – Internet History Sourcebook, Fordham University. A selection of primary documents relating to the Renaissance, including Dante, Petrarch, Vasari and Machiavelli. 91 www.musee-chateau-fontainebleau.fr – the official website of the chateau of Fontainebleau, an extensive Renaissance palace outside of Paris. Fontainebleau was the country residence and hunting lodge of Francis I and later kings of France. Francis I brought numerous Renaissance artists here, including Leonardo da Vinci. The website contains historical materials, visitor information and stunning photos. 92 www.rsa.org – The Renaissance Society of America. This society is a leading academic organization dedicated to the study of the Renaissance in Europe. Provides information about academic conferences, emerging scholarship, recent publications and more. 93 www.uffizi.com – a website dedicated to the art museums of Florence, including the Uffizi Gallery. Take a virtual tour of the paintings in the Uffizi and see them in their current location. 94 www.bl.uk – the official website of the British Library, London. The British Library has one of the world’s most impressive collection of history and art books, including thousands of original sources from the Renaissance. The online learning centre also features digitized copies and materials relating to the Renaissance. 95 www.medici.org – The Medici Archive Project. Contains links to some three million letters (primary sources) sent and received by members of the Medici family, c.1537–1743.

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Five films about the Renaissance 96 Prince of Foxes (1949). Starring Orson Welles as the Machiavellian Prince Cesare Borgia, this film about Italian politics c.1500 is shot entirely on location in Italy. Adapted from Samuel Shellabarger’s novel Prince of Foxes. 97 The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison play two of the Renaissance's most significance characters in a film set in Rome in the early 16th century. Pope Julius II (Harrison) commissions Michelangelo (Heston) to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The depictions of fresco painting and Renaissance Rome are evocative and entertaining. Based on Irving Stone's bestselling novel.

100 Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). A depiction of the flourishing Tudor court during the Elizabethan Renaissance. Depicts the Spanish Armada (1588) and Elizabeth’s relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh. Stirring naval battles.

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all that matters: The Renaissance

99 Shakespeare in Love (1998). Joseph Fiennes plays the lead role of William Shakespeare, who is experiencing a debilitating case of writer’s block while writing Romeo and Juliet. It is a fictional story, but with many interesting scenes inspired by life in Elizabethan England. The cast also includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Judi Dench (Elizabeth I), Geoffrey Rush and Ben Affleck.

149

98 Othello (1952). A film version of Shakespeare’s Othello created by Orson Welles and filmed in Italy. The movie evokes the Renaissance in period costumes and locations and the text of Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

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Notes 1 John McManners (1999), Church and Society in Eighteenth Century France, (Oxford: Clarendon Press), vol. 1 p. 96. 2 Sonnet 30 in Petrarch’s Il Canzoniere, quoted in Kenneth Gouwens (2004), The Italian Renaissance: The Essential Sources (London: Blackwell Publishing), pp. 40–1. 3 Gwynne Blakemore Evans (2006), The Sonnets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Sonnet 130.

150 Notes

4 Petrarch, Rerum Familiarum XXIV, 4, quoted in Gouwens, The Italian Renaissance: The Essential Sources, p. 37. 5 Quoted in Ronald Witt (2000), In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Boston: Brill), p. 2. 6 Bruni’s Life of Petrarch, quoted in Kenneth Gouwens (ed.), The Italian Renaissance: The Essential Sources, p. 46. 7 Quoted in George Deaux (1969), The Black Death 1347 (New York: Weybright and Talley), pp. 92–4. 8 Lauro Martines (1988), Power and Imagination: City-states in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 59. 9 Frederick Hartt (1987), History of Italian Renaissance Art (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 3rd edn), p. 270. 10 Stephen Greenblatt (2005), Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 11 Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, translated and edited by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 98.

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Index Agricola, Rudolph 48 agriculture 52–5 Alberti, Leon Battista 5, 104–5, 138–9 the Americas 67, 68–9, 141 anatomy 141–2 artisans 62 artists 96–8 see also individual artists The Ascent of Mont Ventoux 26–7, 41 Ascham, Roger 47 astronomy 141, 142 Augustine of Hippo 27

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economic history agriculture 52–5 Black Death 57–9 global trade networks 66–70 merchant economies 60–6 urban growth 55–6 Edward III 65 egg tempera 102 Elizabeth I 10, 47, 82 England 9–10, 46–7, 55, 60, 81, 82 Erasmus, Desiderius 9, 45, 89–90, 139 farming 52–5 Ferdinand and Isabella 83–4 feudal systems 73

all that matters: The Renaissance

Cambridge 2–3, 9–10, 59 Carolingian Renaissance 9 Cellini, Benvenuto 124, 140 Cereta, Laura 41, 139 Charles VIII 85–6 China 67, 68 Chronophage (Corpus Clock) 3–4 Chrysoloras, Manuel 36–7 Cicero 28–9 city-states, Italian 73–5, 84–8

da Feltre, Vittorino 5 Dante Alighieri 22–3 David (Donatello) 129–30 David (Michelangelo) 8, 132–3 da Vinci, Leonardo 98, 115–18, 140 The Decameron 33, 138 della Francesca, Piero 108–11 democracy 76–7 The Discourses on Livy 91 Donatello (Donato di Niccolò Bardi) 129–30 dynastic conflicts 89–90

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The Baptism of Christ 109–11 Bellini, Gentile 68 Bellini, Giovanni 77, 114–15 The Birth of Venus 112–13 Black Death 57–9 Boccaccio, Giovanni 32–3, 138 books, about the Renaissance 145–7 Botticelli, Sandro 111–13 bronze sculpture 122 Bruni, Leonardo 38–9 bubonic plague 57–9 Budé, Guillaume 44 Buonarrotti, Michelangelo see Michelangelo (Buonarrotti) Burckhardt, Jacob 6–7

clocks 3–5, 140 Colet, John 47 colonization 69–70 Columbian exchange 70 communes 74–5 Complaint of Peace 89 Copernicus, Nicolaus 141 Corpus Clock (Chronophage) 3–4 craftsmen 62

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152 Index

Filippo Lippi, Fra 105–8 films 149 Florence 32–3, 34–9, 64–6, 79, 86 France 43–4, 81, 82, 84, 85–6 Francesca, Piero della 108–11 Francis I 43 frescos 102 Galileo Galilei 4 Gates of Paradise 120, 122, 125–7 Gauguin, Robert 44 Germany 48–9, 60, 81, 82 Ghiberti, Lorenzo 63, 120, 122, 125–9 Gilbert, William 142 Giotto di Bondone 99–101 globalization 70, 135 global trade networks 66–70 governments 72–3 Greek language 36–7 Greenblatt, Stephen 113–14 guild system 63–4, 128 gunpowder 86–7, 141 Hanseatic League 56, 61 Harlem Renaissance 9 Henry VII 46, 123 Henry VIII 9, 47, 90 humanism characteristics 39–42 northern 42–7 and the Reformation 48–9 and sculpture 121 as a term 16–17 humanists 34–5, 38–9 Huygens, Christiaan 5 Iberian peninsula 44–5 Italian Sonnets 19–21, 138 Italian Wars 84–8 Italy 14, 42–3, 55, 72–80, 82

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Kepler, Johannes 142 Latin 28–30 laurel wreaths 21–2 Lefèvre d’Etaples, Jacques 44 Leonardo da Vinci 98, 115–18, 140 Letters to Famous Men 24–6 linear perspective 103, 105, 126 Lippi, Fra Filippo 105–8 Loredan, Leonardo 77, 114–15 lost-wax technique 122, 127 Luther, Martin 49 Machiavelli, Niccolò 89, 91–3, 139 Madonna and Child (1465) 106–7 magnetism 142 manorialism 52–3 marble statues 122 Marsilius of Padua 75–6 Mary I 82 Masaccio 102–4 the Medici of Florence 64–6 merchant economies 60–6 Michelangelo (Buonarrotti) 8, 130–5 Milan 81 monarchy 80–1 More, Thomas 47, 89, 90, 139 Neo-Platonism 37–8 the Netherlands 45, 55, 60, 89 Niccolò Bardi, Donato di see Donatello Nogarola, Isotta 41 Ognissanti Madonna 100–1 oil painting 102 oligarchies 78 Orsanmichele, St John the Baptist statue 63 painting formats 102 papacy 81

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Salutati, Coluccio 34–5 Scientific Method 4, 142 sculptors 120–4 see also individual sculptors sculpture 120–4

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terracotta statues 123 Thirty Years War (1618–48) 89 Timurid Renaissance 9 Torrigiano, Pietro 46, 123–4 trade associations 56 trade networks 61, 66–70 Tudors 82 Uffizi Gallery 96 unification 82 uprisings 60 urban growth 55–6 Utopia 47, 90 Vasari, Giorgio 120 Vesalius, Andreas 141–2 Virgin and Child altarpiece 103–4 The Virgin and Child with St Anne 115–17 Visconti, Ottone 79 von Hutton, Ulrich 48 wars European 89–90 Italy 84–8 websites 147–8 women humanists 41 wooden sculptures 122–3 workshops (bottega) 97–8 Wyatt, Thomas 47

all that matters: The Renaissance

Rabelais, François 44 Reformation 16, 48–9, 89, 133 Renaissance as a term 6–7 definition 7–9 representative government 78–9 republics 75–9 Reuchlin, Johannes 48 revolts 60 Rhineland 55 rural life 52–5

Sforza, Francesco 81 sfumato effect 117 Shakespeare, William 23 sheep farming 60 single-point linear perspective 103, 104, 126, 141 slave trade 70 sovereign states, consolidation 82–4 Spain 44–5, 81, 82, 83–4 St John the Baptist statue 63, 128–9

153

Peace of Lodi 85 periodization 11 perspective 103, 105, 126 Petrarch, Francesco The Ascent of Mont Ventoux 26–7 background 17–19 Black Death 57–8 and Cicero 28–9 and Latin 28–30 Letters to Famous Men 24–6 sonnets to Laura (Italian Sonnets) 19–21, 138 studies 23–4 Pietà (Florence, Michelangelo) 133–5 Pietà (The Vatican, Michelangelo) 131–2 portraits 113–15 Portugal 45 Praise of Folly 89 primary documents 28 The Prince 91, 92 printing presses 44, 141 Protestantism 49 protests 60

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Picture credits The author and publisher would like to give their thanks for permission to use the following images: Statue of Francesco Petrarch © Tomasz Bidermann/Shutterstock.com Torrigiano’s bust of Henry VII © Victoria and Albert Museum Ghiberti’s St John the Baptist © Conde/Shutterstock.com

154 Picture credits

Ghiberti panel of Isaac sending Esau to hunt © Yu Lan/Shutterstock.com Michelangelo’s Pietà (Rome) © Pandapaw/Shutterstock.com Michelangelo’s Pietà (Florence) © Rex Features/Alinari

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