The Northern Renaissance

By about 1450, the Renaissance is finally starting to move outside of Italy.

• The plague has passed.

• The Hundred Years War is over.

• More money to be had for other goods.

The tone of the Northern Renaissance, however, is different from what was seen in Italy.

• While wealthy merchants and rich, independent city-states led the way in Italy, this was not the case in the north.

• Due in part to the plague and the Hundred Years War, northern Europe had strong centralized power structures in the form of monarchies. They didn’t have uppity city-states.

• Thus, it was mainly the kings and some nobles who were responsible for the Renaissance’s spread there, not wealthy patron families.

• It’s also more religious there.

• While the Italian Renaissance was not strictly secular, it was more so than the Northern flavor.

A big mover and shaker was France’s King Francis I, who reigned from 1515-1547.

• Francis became known as the Father and Restorer of Letters. He was quite the humanist.

• The two previous French kings had warred with (and therefore interacted with) Italy, but Francis was the first one to really embrace the new ideas.

• He sponsored a lot of art, and even lured Leonardo de Vinci to France.

• It was near the end of de Vinci’s life and he wasn’t that productive, but he brought his stuff with him –including such pieces as the Mona Lisa, which is France has it and not Italy.

• He was a great reader, a good poet, and greatly expanded the royal library. He even opened it up to all scholars.

• He did a lot with architecture.

The Chateau de Chambord

Chateau de St. Germain-en-Laye

Château de Fontainebleau

Rebuilt the Louvre

Art

• Art followed the Italian techniques and used a lot of perspective and realism.

• Some of the bigger names:

• Albrecht Durer

• Hans Holbein (the Younger)

Look at

the detail:

• Jan van Eyck

Literature

• Writing also goes humanist, but, like with the rest, with a Christian bent, giving rise to Christian Humanism.

• Human freedom and individualism are compatible with Christianity.

• Human existence isn’t valued merely in itself.

• You see this a lot with Erasmus.

Guttenberg and the printing press

• The printing press is one of the greatest inventions in history.

• It was invented by Johann Gutenberg.

• Previously, literary works had to be transcribed by hand, usually by monks.

• It was tedious, time-consuming work and made books very expensive.

• The printing press allowed works to be cheaply mass-produced. Suddenly the written word could be accessible to the masses.

• In three years, a monk could produce one Bible… Gutenberg, 180

• The press actually derived from a modified olive press.

• It’s big thing was the durable types used and the ability to easily move around the letters.

• One of the first projects Gutenberg undertook was printing 200 copies of the Bible with 42 lines per page. Some were on vellum.

• There are currently 11 complete copies on vellum and 48 relatively intact copies on paper. They can be sold for millions (but aren’t sold that often).