History
Italy
The Renaissance
by Angela and Elisa
The Renaissance was a cultural
movement that spanned the period
roughly from the 14th to the 17th
century, beginning in Italy in the Late
Middle Ages and later spreading to the
rest of Europe. Though availability of
paper and the invention of metal movable
type sped the dissemination of ideas from
the later 15th century, the changes of the
Renaissance were not uniformly
experienced across Europe.
As a cultural movement, it encompassed
i n n o va t i ve f l o w e r i n g o f L a t i n a n d
vernacular literatures, beginning with the
14th-century resurgence of learning
based on classical sources, which
contemporaries credited to Petrarch, the
development of linear perspective and
other techniques of rendering a more
natural reality in painting, and gradual
but widespread educational reform. In
politics, the Renaissance contributed the
development of the conventions of
diplomacy, and in science an increased
reliance on observation. Historians often
argue this intellectual transformation was
a bridge between the Middle Ages and the
Modern era. Although the Renaissance
saw revolutions in many intellectual
pursuits, as well as social and political
upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its
artistic developments and the
contributions of such polymaths as
Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who
inspired the term “Renaissance man”.
There is a consensus that the
Renaissance began in Florence, Italy, in
the 14th century.Various theories have
been proposed to account for its origins
and characteristics, focusing on a variety
of factors including the social and civic
peculiarities of Florence at the time; its
political structure; the patronage of its
dominant family, the Medici;and the
migration of Greek scholars and texts to
Italy following the Conquest of
Constantinople in the hands of the
Ottoman Turks.
The Renaissance
has a long and complex historiography,
and in line with general scepticism of
discrete periodizations, there has been
much debate among historians reacting
to the 19th-century glorification of the
“Renaissance” and individual culture
h e r o e s a s “ R e n a i s s a n c e m e n ”,
questioning the usefulness of Renaissance
as a term and as a historical
delineation.The art historian Erwin
Panofsky observed of this resistance to