Renaissance

Εργασία Αγγλικών Β’ Τετραμήνου

Β2 2023-2024

Υπεύθυνη καθηγήτρια: Γρηγορία Μέντη

Μπρισίλντα Ουράι

Introduction

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• Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to European commerce. The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization.

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• The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art.

• Others see more general competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance.

• Many argue that the ideas characterizing the Renaissance had their origin in Florence at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, in particular with the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–1374), as well as the paintings of Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337).

Origins

• Some writers date the Renaissance quite precisely one proposed starting point is 1401, when the rival geniuses Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi competed for the contract to build the bronze doors for the Baptistery of the Florence Cathedral (Ghiberti then won).

Humanism

• In some ways, Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy but a method of learning. In contrast to the medieval scholastic mode, which focused on resolving contradictions between authors, Renaissance humanists would study ancient texts in the original and appraise them through a combination of reasoning and empirical evidence.

• Humanist education was based on the programme of Studia Humanitatis, the study of five humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy, and rhetoric.

• Applied innovation extended to commerce. At the end of the 15th century, Luca Pacioli published the first work on bookkeeping, making him the founder of accounting.

• The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of the printing press in about 1440 democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of more widely distributed ideas. In the first period of the Italian Renaissance, humanists favored the study of humanities over natural philosophy or applied mathematics, and their reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe.

Science

• Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center.

• Luca Pacioli

was an Italian mathematician Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting.

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Music

• From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school. The development of printing made distribution of music possible on a wide scale. Demand for music as entertainment and as an activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style that culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria, and William Byrd.

Religion

• The new ideals of humanism, although more secular in some aspects, developed against a Christian backdrop, especially in the Northern Renaissance. Much, if not most, of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the Church.However, the Renaissance had a profound effect on contemporary theology, particularly in the way people perceived the relationship between man and God.Many of the period's foremost theologians were followers of the humanist method, including Erasmus, Huldrych Zwingli, Thomas More, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

Art

• Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world. One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalized as an artistic technique.

Leonardo da Vinci

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He was born on April 15, 1452 in Italy and died on May 2, 1519 in France.

• Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.

Artists

Some of his artworks

• Vitruvian Man

• Mona lisa

• Virgin of the rocks

Michelangelo

• Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art.

He was born on March 6, 1475 and died on February 18, 1564 in Italy.

Some of his artworks

• The creation of Adam

• David of Michelangelo

Raphael

• He was born on March 28, 1483 and died on April 6,1520 in Italy.

• Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, now generally known in English as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.

Some of his artworks

• The school of Athens

• Sistine Madonna

Sandro Botticelli

• He was born in Italy and died on May 17, 1510 in Italy.

• Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or simply Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites who stimulated a reappraisal of his work.

Some of his artworks

• Primavera

• The birth of Venus

Bibliography

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance

• https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/renaissance