Renaissance Flashcards
Holy Roman Empire:
- Controlled towns of northern Italy during the Middle Ages
- Residents decided their own fate, leading to vibrant/violent political existence
- Old nobility w/wealth based on land ownership, conflicted w/new merchant family class that got rich in economic boom in 12th/13th centuries
- Popolo compete with old nobility and new merchant class
Popolo:
- urban underclass in Italian City States who wanted own share of wealth and political power
- Florence 1378: Ciompi Revolt, poor briefly get weak control over gov’t
Ciompi Revolt:
- popolo express dissatisfaction w/political and economic order, stage violent struggle against gov’t in Florence 1378
- shakes Florence to the core, gets brief period where poor have tenuous control over gov’t
- struggle reverberates in other Italian city-states
- Social tensions in Milan lead to rise of signor tyrant with domination by Sforza mercenary family
- Florence and Venice stay republics post-revolt, few wealthy families dominant them (Medici)
Medici:
-Family that used wealth gained from banking to establish themselves first as behind-the-scenes rulers of Florence and later as hereditary dukes
Italian Breakdown in Mid-15th Century:
-Internal tensions w/external tensions from war among themselves lead to dominant states being Florence MIlan and Venice in north, papal states in central Italy, Naples Kingdom in Southern Italy
Causes of the Italian Renaissance:
- Internal/external tensions in city-states stirring creative energy
- Economic prosperity relative to Western Europe with merchants shipping Italian wool/silk everywhere on the continent and bankers giving loans to Europes monarchs, who became patrons of the arts and pushed for secular art forms (ex. portraiture) to represent them and their wealth
- Geographical placement in the Mediterranean facilitates link b/w East Greek and West Latin cultures along w/S. Italy’s history as being home to Greek colonies and center of Roman Empire (classical civilization had roots here)
Humanism:
-Study of classical world time rhetoric/literature
Francesco Petrarch:
- Father of humanism
- Former lawyer who studied literary classics and coined Dark Ages to describe the cultural decline post-Roman world collapse in 5th century
- Learned classical Latin, found primary source classical texts unknown in Middle Ages where they were read in secondary commentaries
- Engages w/Cicero works and tries to manifest Ciceronian style
- Accused of turning to ancient Greek/Rome pagan culture but didn’t actually reject Christianity
- Argued for universality of classical age ideas (thought that even though they were written by pagans, they had lessons applicable from a Christian lens)
- Inspires civic humanists in Florence
Civic Humanists:
- Group of young, wealthy Florentines who saw Cicero’s involvement in politics as justification for using classical education for public good
- Become diplomats/work in chancellery office in Florence
- Studied Classical Greek (almost lost in Western Europe)
Cicero:
- Roman Classical politician/philosopher who did writings giving accounts of Roman Republic collapse
- Latin style (“Ciceronian”) becomes goal of Petrach and later humanists
Renaissance Writings:
- Focused on a variety of topics such as describing ideal man of the age
- Saw rise of critical textual analysis
Lorenzo Valla:
- Key figure in critical textual analysis
- Proves Donation of Constantine that involved Christian Constantine giving control of western part of his empire to the papacy, based on the language used, could not have been written by Constantine because some of it used words that weren’t there until after he died
- Influences northern European humanists by finding that the Vulgate Bible (Middle Age Latin Bible) included mistranslations of critical passages from Greek sources
Castiglione’s The Courtier:
-Writes that an ideal man is one who is multilingual, familiar with classical literature, and skilled in the arts (a Renaissance man)
Renaissance Women:
- Those linked to nunneries learned to read/write in Middle Ages
- Wealthy, secular women in Renaissance also become literate
- Scholars foster education programs for women
- Important figure: Christine de Pisan
Leonardo Bruni:
-Humanist scholar who started education programs for women not including rhetoric/public speech that were seen as “male education” that women wouldn’t ever be able to use
Christine de Pisan:
- Daughter of physician to French King Charles V
- Got humanist education w/encourage of dad and husband
- Writes City of Ladies: counters idea of female inferiority and that they couldn’t make moral choices
- Makes the case that women need to carve out their own space/move to “City of Ladies” to reach their full potential
Renaissance Fine Arts:
- Made contributions to Western culture
- Individualistic shift: artists are considered important people while they were anonymous craftsmen in the Middle Ages
- Artists go for prestige/money, compete for secular patronage (ex. Merchants, bankers)
- Rich people interested in sponsoring art to glorify their own achievements instead of the spiritual message at heart of medieval art
- Patrons seek naturalistic technique aided by new art techniques
- Rejected hierarchical scaling
- Oil painting derived from northern Europe becomes dominant
- Chiarascuro used to make 3d images
- Single point perspective
- Architecture had classical influences such as simple symmetry and classical columns
Filippo Brunellschi:
-Builds dome over Florence Cathedral (first one to be done in Western Europe since Rome)
Chiarascuro:
-Use of contrasts b/w light and dark to form 3d images
Single point perspective:
-Art style where all elements in a painting coverage at one point in the distance, forms more real-looking settings for pieces
High Renaissance:
- Starts at end of 15th century
- Center moves from Florence to Rome
- Florence gets religious backlash against new art while Rome had popes interested in arts and wanted to beautify the city
- Lasts until 1520s when art moves in different direction
Late Renaissance Art:
-Starts to change from previous forms into mannerism, which included distorted figures and confusing themes reflecting the growing crisis in Italy due to religious/political problems
Hierarchical scaling:
-Art technique used before the Renaissance (ex. Dark Ages) where figures in composition were sized in proportion to their spiritual importance
Middle Age Art:
- Involved fresco on wet plaster/tempera on wood
- Hierarchical scaling in some parts (early?) such as the Dark Ages
