CHAPTER 10. Renaissance and Discovery Big Questions: What were the characteristics of the politics,...

Renaissance and Discovery

CHAPTER 10

Renaissance and DiscoveryBig Questions:

• What were the characteristics of the politics, culture, and art of the Italian Renaissance?

• What was the political struggle within Italy and how was it affected by foreign intervention?

• Who were the powerful new monarchies of northern Europe?

• What was the thought and culture of the northern Renaissance? How was it different than the Italian Renaissance?

The Northern Renaissance

Focus Question

What were some defining characteristics of the Northern Renaissance? How did it differ

from the Italian Renaissance?

Renaissance Ideas Spread to Northern EuropeWhat factors led to the beginning of the Renaissance in northern Europe?

• The northern population began to recover from the plague.

• Hundred Years’ War finally ended.

•Cities were growing rapidly

• City merchants were becoming wealthy enough to become “patrons” as well as educated in Humanist pursuits.

Renaissance Ideas Spread to Northern Europe

PP Design of T. Loessin; Akins High School

Monarchs in England and in France (such as Francis I who hired Italian architects to build his palace at Fontainebleau) supported the arts and introduced Renaissance styles to northern Europe.


Francis I of France became one of the most important patrons of Northern Renaissance

• Actively encouraged humanistic learning.

• Invited da Vinci and Andrea del Sartoto to France.

• He collected paintings by the great Italian masters like Titian, Raphael, and Michelangelo

Since antiquity it had been scribes and later, monks in the Medieval period, who copied all manuscripts by hand untill…

Johann Gutenberg invented a “printing press” – or, the technique of printing from movable blocks of type letters.

Gutenberg was a 15th-century German craftsman, inventor, and printer. He used hand-set type cast in molds to print multiple copies of manuscripts.

Copying now became mechanized and much faster. The invention of movable-type printing facilitated an easier exchange of ideas throughout Europe and helped spread the ideas of the Renaissance.PP Design of T. Loessin; Akins High School


Cultural Effects of Printing Press

• For the first time, books were cheap enough that people could buy them

• By 1500, presses in about 250 cities had printed between 9 and 10 million books

• At first, just religious books were printed, then travel books and medical manuals were printed

• Availability of books encouraged people to read causing a spike in literacy

Desiderius Erasmus – a Christian humanist, wrote “The Praise of Folly” which poked fun at people’s human flaws such as greedy merchants, arrogant priests, etc. He believed mankind could improve society by reading the Bible and that Christianity was about “the heart” and not a bunch of “rules and ceremonies” done in Church.

Erasmus was from the Dutch region of Holland and received many honors in his lifetime. He was often critical of the “mindless” rituals Christians performed during church services and their ignorance about the actual Bible itself. ***TRANSLATED BIBLE***

“It is the chief point of happiness when a man is willing to be what he is – not what others would have him be.” ~ Erasmus, 1527.


Northern Writers Try to Reform Society: CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

Thomas More – an English humanist concerned about society’s problems. He wrote “Utopia,” about an ideal model of society.

Statue of More in Chelsea, London

More served as Speaker in the House of Commons and Lord Chancellor during the reign of King Henry VIII of England. When Henry began his plan to separate the Church of England from the Catholic Pope, More defended Catholicism and the struggle with his king would lead eventually to his trial for treason and his beheading in 1535 at the Tower of London.

Utopia is Greek for “no place” – More’s sense of humor is shown since this perfect society he gives this name to clearly did not exist.


Northern Writers Try to Reform Society: CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

William Shakespeare – English playwright whose plays examine human flaws but also express the Renaissance view of

humanity’s potential. Many of his plays focus on Greek orRoman subjects and classical plots.


The Globe TheaterShakespeare had this “theater in the round”

built on the banks of the Thames River in London,

1599 – 1614.

Northern Writers Try to Reform Society

Art in the Northern Renaissance

Features…• The continuation of late medieval attention to details

• Tendency toward realism & naturalism [less emphasis on the “classical ideal”]

• More emphasis on middle-class and peasant life

• Details of domestic interiors

• Great skill in portraiture


Quentin Massys, Moneylender and his Wife(1514)


Jan Van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait (1434)


Jan Van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait (1434)

DETAIL!!!!!!

The picture is in a tradition showing learned men with books and instruments. The objects on the upper shelf include a celestial globe, a portable sundial and various other instruments used for understanding the heavens and measuring time. Among the objects on the lower shelf is a lute, a case of flutes, a hymn book, a book of arithmetic and a terrestrial globe.

Certain details could be interpreted as references to contemporary religious divisions. The broken lute string, for example, may signify religious discord, while the Lutheran hymn book may be a plea for Christian harmony.

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-the-ambassadors


Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533)



Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)•A scholar as well as an artist

•His patron was the Emperor Maximilian I

•Also a scientist - Wrote books on geometry, fortifications, and human proportions.


Self portrait

Portrait of Maximilian I

Focus Question

What were some defining characteristics of the Northern Renaissance? How did it differ

from the Italian Renaissance?

CHAPTER 10. Renaissance and Discovery Big Questions: What were the characteristics of the politics,...

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