chapter 8

They were inspired by the knowledge of pagan Greece and Rome.

Most of the educated elite of Catholic and Protestant Europe came to share in this endeavor by 1600.

There was no way that the admirers of pagan Greece and Rome could separate themselves from the Christian European civilization of their own day and age.

The result was a lot of different cultures.
The classical ideal of the fully developed human being whose character was formed by literary study and education was rediscovered by scholars and grappled with the implications of this ideal for the Christian faith.
Plato wanted an ultimate truth that would reconcile pagan wisdom and Christian faith.
Christians wanted to bring Christianity back to its roots in the ancient world.

Sometimes the naked female body is depicted as an emblem of sensuality and other times as a symbol of beauty and truth.

Writers wrote in English, Spanish, French, and many other native languages of Europe even though they wanted to equal or surpass the ancients in their Greek and Latin style.

The life and characters of their own times-- the hypocrisy and corruption of monks, the foolishness of a would-be knight, or the tragic flaws of an all too thoughtful prince-- were what they wrote about.

The remaking of Christian Europe into the modern West was aided by the scholars, thinkers, writers, and artists of the Renaissance.

The Protestant Reformation and the reform and reaffirmation of Catholicism were brought about by their efforts to renew Christianity.

The Western revolutions in science and warfare were made possible by the rediscovery of ancient mathematical knowledge.

Belief in education, literature, and art on the human personality, respect for civilizations different from one's own, and distrust of received wisdom and preconceived ideas are some of the basic cultural values of today.
The best of Renaissance literature and art provides an understanding of the human condition and an ideal of beauty that will never cease to inspire, even though the writers and artists of the modern West have traveled far from the aims and methods of their Renaissance predecessors.

The view is similar to that of the Greeks and Romans.

Literature is the best way to nurture and express that quality.

The classics were still popular during the Middle Ages.

By the twelfth century, many scholars were familiar with works of antiquity, and many of them drew inspiration from Latin poets.
Renaissance scholars had little enthusiasm for classical writings before the 14th century.
They caught their new vision of humanity in those works.
They looked for ancient documents and developed a deep respect for the literary culture of antiquity.

The medieval intellect was mostly closed to the naturalistic, pagan spirit because it was steeped in a God-centered, otherworldly view of the uni verse.

The schoolmen used thick gloves to fingered classical manuscripts, but their religious training kept them from a truly sympathetic contact.
The ideals of asceticism and Christian poverty waned after the Middle Ages.

The educated elite of Europe were caught up in this trend.

The bourgeois found medieval ideals unattractive and were looking for standards closer to their hearts in the developing towns.
The classics of Greece and Rome were glimpsed by kings and nobles who wanted to imitate their achievements.
Popes and bishops from bourgeois and noble families often dropped their suspicion of the pagan ancients and became patrons of humanist learning.
To re-create classical standards in their own times, high churchmen hoped to imitate the best in ancient thought and behavior.
They failed to bring back the past, but their efforts to do so helped shape modern values.

The good life is the life that is pleasing to the senses, intellect, and aesthetic capacities.

Human desires are good, though they need to be cultivated and kept in balance.
Renaissance humanists believed that well-born and educated individuals should be free and proud.
They should strive for mastery of all the worthy arts, because their ultimate value as human beings would be measured not in humility, but in talent and accomplishments.
They don't have time to think about the next because they're so focused on this world.

Many Christian teachings were not compatible with the ideas of the humanists.

They didn't agree with the doctrine of original sin and natural human sin.
They suggested that individuals could do things on their own.
Christian humanism developed alongside secular humanism in northern Europe.
Some scholars shared their enthusiasm for the classics.
The powers of reason and creativity were shared.
They said that this life, though rewarding, fell short of the glory of heaven because all human powers were a gift of God.

The Renaissance came about in Italy.

The forces of social change were more advanced in Italy than in northern Europe.
Although this consciousness did not produce a unified state in Italy, it did cause Italians to embrace their past more warmly than ever before.
The Italians began to dream of restoring the grandeur of ancient Rome as they studied the Latin classics.
The land of Italians offered eloquent architectural reminders.
The road back to Rome was traveled by patriotic pilgrims.

The founder of Renaissance manism, Petrarch, was born in 1304 in an exiled Florentine family.

He came upon the works of Cicero while studying for his law degree.
When his father died, Petrarch gave up his study of law and turned to a life of scholarship.

The collection of ancient manuscripts was started by Petrarch.

He enlisted others to join him in his search for monastic and cathedral libraries that took him all over Italy and into France and Germany.
He found some lost orations and letters of Cicero.
He built up a collection of pagan documents and books with the help of copyists.
The first of its kind, his private library became a model for scholars and other intellectuals.
Many well-to-do people followed his example and built their own libraries.

The style was set as a scholar and a collector by Petrarch.

He was a busy man and spent a lot of his time in cities, but he still had a love for nature.
It was closer to the ancient Roman model than the ascetic ideal would have you believe.
He used to alternate writing with reading.

He disliked the ver nacular tongues and the corrupted Latin of the Middle Ages so he preferred to write in classical Latin.

The style of his writing was similar to that of Cicero and Virgil.
He is not remembered for that.
His love poems, which he wrote in Italian, were more successful.
Laura, a beautiful young married woman whom he loved and idealized, was the one he addressed most of them to.
These sonnets to Laura became a model for many generations of romantic poets because of their intimate thoughts upon seeing her.

The first Westerners to study the Greek language were led by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Boccaccio, the son of a Florentine banker, was bored with the monotony of credits and debits and set out to learn Greek.

Boccaccio was like Petrarch in his search for ancient manuscripts.

The historian Tacitus' work was found in the monastery library at Monte Cassino.
He cried when he saw the neglected condition of the archives.

Boccaccio's writings are pagan in spirit, even though he was a Christian.

The Virgin does not answer the question of whether to give herself to her lover, but Venus does.
Boccaccio's work is un-Christian in outlook and behavior.
The tales in this collection were borrowed from various countries of Europe and the Middle East.

Italian scholars began to study Greek.

The Greek au thors were recovered by the West and translated into Latin and Italian.
This was an important achievement.
The works of Homer, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Plato were restored by the humanists.

Religion was the focus of higher learning in medieval Europe.

The trivium and quadrivium were centered on the writings of the Church Fathers.
The majority of them were sons of the middle class or nobility.

It was easy to get rid of scholasticism from the Italian universities.

The new learning was introduced by professors of rhetoric and writing, who attracted students from all over Europe.
The humanists were not welcomed at most universities.
The faculties looked at the Greek studies with disdain in the strongholds of Paris, Cologne, and Heidelberg.
Greek and Latin literature was the foundation of liberal education in the north.

Humanism went into elementary and higher education.

The private schools that came to the towns to serve the sons of the well-to-do were secular and focused on Latin and Greek studies.
They aimed at more than that.
The schoolmasters saw the ancient statesmen as models to inspire young men to live fruitful citizenship.
The Greeks and Romans lived in cities and had a good social life, so they were the best example to follow.
Music and athletics were used to balance literature and moral instruction.
The Greek ideal of the well-rounded man, mentally and physically fit, was at the center of humanistic education.

The gentleman took over the place of the medieval knight.

The ideal gentleman was a man of self-control.
The warriors of the Middle Ages were tamed by chivalry.
The way of urbane living was taught by humanistic education.

The gentleman had a disciplined mind and good taste.

As Machiavelli advised rulers on the art of statecraft, Castiglione advised young people on education and manners.
The gentleman and the lady were admired in the West for four hundred years.

Plato was put in philosophy because of the recovery of Greek learning.

The medieval universities were ruled over by Aristotle because of his methods of logic.
His moderation appealed to men like Aquinas.
His writings were difficult and without literary appeal.
During the fifteenth century, the complete dialogues of his teacher, Plato, became available, the humanists were struck by their charming style as well as their ideas.
This was at the same time as literature and philosophy.
The new master was Plato.

The leading center for Platonic studies was Florence.

The Platonic Academy was founded by Cosimo de' Medici, a scholarly ruler who was interested in Plato.
The Academy was a center for the translation and discussion of Plato's philosophy.
A few scholars were subsidized by the Medici and their circle of friends.
The influence of the Academy was significant in art and literature.
Platonism influenced almost every artist of the later Renaissance, and some of them, like Michelangelo, became deeply absorbed in it.
The Platonic influence was passed on to such nineteenth century writers as Wordsworth and Goethe.

The light of the Academy was Marsilio Ficino.

He was installed in a villa in the hills near Florence after being Chosen by Cosimo at an early age.

He devoted himself to explaining Plato's teachings after his death.

He held seminars at the villa to show that Platonic teachings were compatible with Christianity.
He suggested that Plato could open another way for those who could not accept religion on the basis of repentance.

He studied Jewish, Babylonian, and Persian records and knew Arabic and Hebrew.

Pico was one of the members of Cosimo's circle who embraced the Platonic view of creation and existence, which held that humans had become separated from their divine home of pure spirit by some accident of prehistory.

The soul had fallen prisoner to the body and was trying to return to God.

The Christian doctrine of the Fall and the human longing for salvation are related to this view.

The arts had a profound effect on this idea.

Aesthetics and enjoyment took on a religious meaning.
The emotion of physical love was linked to the higher urge that leads people to their divine source.

The widespread acceptance of this idea helps to explain the Renaissance "cult of beauty" and the toleration by Christians.

The naturalistic thrust of humanism was reinforced.

The methods of scholarship that were introduced by the humanists were not fully understood at the time.

Their method led to a more critical attitude towards the written word and greater attention to observed facts, but their intention was simply to reassemble old learning.

Lorenzo Valla was a pioneer of modern criticism.

He was an expert on Latin style and was unafraid to attack even the Latin of the Vulgate.

The popular belief was that the Apostles' Creed had actually been written by the apostles.

The Donation of Constantine was a forgery.

The document was used as a basis for papal claims to secular supremacy over the West for hundreds of years.

As a careful scholar, he pointed out that the manuscript contained terms of a period later than the date when it was supposedly written.

The Donation states that the emperor assigns vast powers to Pope Constantine before leaving Rome to build a new capital at Byzantium.
Valla's criticism that the Donation was a fraud was conclusive.

The spirit of the age is that the popes did not punish Valla.

They asked for the scholar's services.
He exposed the forgery when he was secretary to King Alfonso V of Naples.
Pope Nicholas V hired him away and brought him back to Rome to translate the ancient Greek historian.
The Vatican Library was founded by Nicholas, a patron of humanism.

Valla was bold, critical, and independent, but he limited his attention to what could be learned from the literature of the past.

Machiavelli bases his view of government and the state on recorded history and personal experience.
Machiavelli was moving toward a new conception of knowledge and its verification even though he lacked the system, precision, and control of modern social scientists.

Leonardo da Vinci, a fellow citizen of Florence, was determined to see things for himself.

Leonardo is best known for his paintings.
His love of art was matched by his desire to discover the secrets of nature.
In order to improve his skills in drawing human and animal corpses, he had his sketches and comments set down in notebooks.
He insisted that observation was the only way to true knowledge despite finding dissection distasteful.
He drew plans for practical inventions.
Leonardo typified Italian humanism and foretold the age of empiricism.

We have only spoken about humanism in Italy.

The seeds of the new scholarship were carried home by a number of northern scholars during the fifteenth century.
The pagan flavor of Italy was missing from the soil of the northern countries.

Intellectual leaders in the north were eager to reform the Church because they were filled with Christian piety.

They found solace in the rediscovered classics of antiquity.
They were not looking for models of sophisticated secular life.

In Ger many and England, there were many vigorous and religious people.

Desiderius Erasmus was the greatest of them all.
He was a cosmopolitan scholar at home in many lands.

He had little knowledge of his family's background.

At the time of his birth, his father was a priest.
His mother is not known.
He lacked the comfortable bourgeois background characteristic of the Italians.
The school was supervised by an order of laymen.
The lives of individual people should be modeled on the example of Jesus according to the teachings of the Brethren.
They emphasized the ideals of service and love while subjecting themselves to strict spiritual discipline.
He adopted the "philosophy of Christ" as his lifetime ideal after being touched by this early influence.

After leaving school, he was persuaded to enter an Augustinian monastery, where he was free to read as he pleased, both Christian and pagan.

He was released from his monastic vows at the age of thirty.
He completed a course in theology at the University of Paris.
He spent his life researching and writing about learning.

He never worked for a parish.

He lived on the support of patrons and his books.

The models of behavior found in the classics could be followed by Christians.

He thought that Socrates, Plato, and Cicero were worthy of a place among the saints.
He was convinced that the ancient writings should serve to strengthen faith, not undermine it, because he read them as a firm believer.
He wanted to use the new linguistic and textual skills developed by the Italians as a means of establishing a "truer" Bible.
He wanted to cut away the false growths of medieval religious practice and restore Christianity.

A more accurate version of the New Testament was prepared by Erasmus.

He was certain that the Vulgate Bible contained errors.
He collected a number of the earliest New Testament manuscripts in the original Greek and created a new Greek version.
In 1516, he finished this work along with his own Latin translation and commentary, hoping that it would lead to a better understanding of the message of Christ.
He believed that the Bible should be read by the people.

The in fluence of his ideas, expressed in clear, polished Latin, was extraordinary.

He was welcomed everywhere despite being feared by conservatives in the clergy.
Unlike many of them, he was not content to bask in the adulation of an elite; he wanted to make his thoughts available to all literate people.

He tried to call attention to the need for reform in many of his works.

He wanted the Church and society to be replaced with tolerance, honesty, wisdom, service, and love.
He wondered if reform could be achieved peacefully.
The lovers of Folly, a character who personified for her creator the strongest forces in human nature, are paraded before the reader.
Folly says the world cannot exist without her.
The person who pulls off the masks in the comedy of life is rejected by society and the well-adjusted person mixes with others and encourages their delusions.

He spoke of the foolishness of war and warmakers and of the peculiar con ceits of individuals and nations, but he reserved most of his barbs for the clergy.

He thought that the Church had deviated far from the teachings of Christ and had grown fond of Folly.
The hair-splitting theologian, the vain and ignorant monks, and the power-loving bishops and popes were criticized by him.
He ridiculed the excesses of the cult of the saints and their relics.

The literate men and women who read his books were amused and impressed, but neither they nor the Church nor society at large were changed by his words.

It is true that his criticism of clerics helped to bring on the Reformation, but that religious revolt took a shape that he hated.
He didn't want a divided Church.

He was just as critical of the passions and violence aroused by Martin Luther as he was of the errors of the popes.

The renaissance: upsurge of humanism tant reformers, a moral and physical cowardice who would not stand up for his convictions was what Protes c hapter 8: the renaissance was about.
He stood fast on his convictions that Christian unity should be upheld.

The spirit of humanism burst forth in the visual arts as early as the 14th century.

Florence was the capital of humanism and the leading center of European art for over two hundred years.
The output of painting, sculpture, and architecture in that city is unparalleled.

At the same time as Dante, Giotto di Bondone was a medieval man.

His influence was felt by every artist of the Renaissance.
He became a model to follow, the artist as hero.
Giotto, in the new spirit of the times, signed his paintings and accepted popular praise, despite the fact that medieval painters and sculptors rarely put their names on their works.

He painted biblical scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary on the inside walls of the Arena Chapel in Padua.

Thirty-five separate scenes were called for.
When the paint dried, it became part of the wall surface.
Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel was a milestone in European painting because of its size and excellence.
Michelangelo's fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was the culmination of Giotto's grand example.

Giotto didn't like the look of the altar panels and the painted figures of manuscripts.

He wanted to make the viewer feel like they were in the scene.
He wanted to make the figures look real and to make the illusion of depth on a flat surface.

Giotto was hailed by the citizens of Florence for having achieved a revolution in artistic technique.

He was the official architect of Florence and designed the bell tower of the cathedral.

The painter has used revolutionary techniques of arranging figures in groups and creating a three-dimensional appearance so as to create an image of overwhelming sorrow.

It wasn't until a century later that a significant advance in this direction was made.

Filippo Brunelleschi was the one who pointed the way.
He shared his dislike for medieval forms with his fellow humanists.

The mathematical rules governing the reduction in size of pictured objects were laid down by him.

The ancient Romans and Giotto were skillful in suggesting depth and distance, but they did not have precise mathematical laws.
The "new tools" of Renaissance learning were formulated by Brunelleschi.

There is a harmonious and majestic group of buildings here.

The nave was designed by a late-thirteenth-century architect to echo the Romanesque baptistry.
Giotto's bell tower is Gothic.

The Christian purpose of the building's proportions is to reflect the harmony of the universe, but also to give a glimpse of the mind of the creator.

Brunelleschi's rules of perspective have also been followed by Masaccio.

He gives a "real-life" view of the donors kneeling outside the columns, the figures grouped around the crucified Christ just inside them, and the high vault fading into the background.

The illusion of height and distance was created by no Greek or Roman painter.

Brunelleschi was one of the first painters to use the laws of perspective.

He painted a fresco in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.
It was a new idea.
The illusion of a Roman tunnel vault reaching back through the church wall was striking.
Perspective drawing was unveiled in the fifteenth century and provoked amazement.
As viewers stood back from the wall, they must have seen a group of sculptured figures in a chapel.

Naturalism was being taken a different approach by artists in northern Europe.

The most influential was Jan van Eyck.

Flemish art set the style for northern Europe during most of the Renaissance period, and well-to-do patrons began to appear in prosperous commercial Flanders.

Van Eyck's realism was different from that of the Italians.

Giotto and Masaccio wanted their figures to be round and solid.
Most of the traditions of late Gothic painting were observed by Van Eyck, but he carried the recording of precise detail to an unprecedented degree.
He looked at objects in the background of his paintings the same way he looked at those in the foreground.
Many of the details raise questions.

The marriage chamber is holy ground where one must go barefoot, and it is surveyed by the all-seeing eye of Christ, represented by a candle.

There is a world of mysteries and symbols behind van Eyck's correctly rendered appearances.

Van Eyck tried various paint materials to achieve such effects.

The latter gave some good results, but they dried out quickly.
The special effects Van Eyck wanted could be achieved by mixing his pigments with linseed oil.
The quality and brilliance of his painting, as well as its accuracy, soon led most European artists to follow his lead.

Sculpture can be used for reproduction of nature.

The illusion of depth is not needed for sculptors to work in three dimensions.
Medieval sculptors were unable to realize their full potential because they had to fit their figures into the narrow spaces assigned to them by architects.
Donatello gave to his art the character of naturalism and humanism by restoring sculpture to an independent status.

Donatello studied the remains of a Roman sculpture.

Like the painting, it uses perspective to make the scene more realistic and has a background of Roman arches and columns.

Greeks did it from live models.

He was hired to work in one city after another after his fame spread from Florence.
King Herod is being presented with the head of John the Baptist.

Herod reluctantly ordered John's beheading because he had condemned the king's marriage to his mother.

Herod and his guests are recoiling in horror at the banquet table.

Donatello's panel is only two feet on each side, but it is rich in detail.

The partly three-dimensional human figures stand out vividly, but Donatello created a marvelous illusion of depth by learning the trick of perspective from his friend Brunelleschi.

One can see through the rounded arches to Herod's musicians and beyond, through other archways, into the far background.

Donatello spent ten years in Padua, which was part of the Venetian Republic.

The world has changed since Marcus's time.
Donatello shows a heavily armed and armored soldier as he rides a ponderous mount.

The image of peaceful rule over a vast empire has been replaced by warlike power in a land of competing city-states.

The statue was thought to be of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, but it has remained in Rome for more than a thousand years.

The painters and sculptors of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were challenged by a bigger task than their predecessors.

naturalistic representation was made possible by intensive study and technical innovation by Masaccio, van Eyck, and Donatello.
Naturalism's limitations were revealed once it had been established.
A "literal" presentation of subject matter did not always result in harmonious composition, and it did not always carry a message, mood, or emotion in the most effective way.

The Medici rulers were influenced by the Platonism of their Academy and much of their work was done by Sandro Botticelli.

He wanted to preserve the liveliness and realism typical of the work of the Renaissance pioneers, but he also wanted to create an art that would rise above nature.
Taking liberties with the appearance of things, subordinating realism to form and color, and even injecting elements of mystery was what this meant.

The work is beautiful.

The goddess of love stands in the center of the seashell.
The Florentine intellectuals associated love of beauty with man's desire for reunion with the divine, and so the picture is harmonious and unified.
The fountain of beauty and love was Venus.
A nymph starts to throw a garment about her when the god of the West Wind brings her to the land.
Her beauty is not an image of desire, but one of spiritual love that comes from the mind of God.

Eve, the mother of fallen humanity, was the most common subject for Medieval artists to depict female nudes.

They believed that an artist should be happy about the beauty of the female body.
Ancient Greek and Roman nudes were usually not erotic.
The idea of a depiction of a beautiful female body must excite desire, and now that Botticelli had made female nudes respectable, artists soon began painting them in ways that were frankly sexy.
Titian is a notable example.
This is not the spiritlike Venus of Botticelli; in fact she is probably not meant to be Venus at all-- the picture acquired its title long after it was painted, and must originally have celebrated the beauty of a mistress of the duke of Urbino, a minor Italian state She is an attractive woman who is aware of her naked loveliness and the eyes of the viewer.
Titian's technique can be seen in his flesh tones.
His works were to be used as models for nude painters.

Leonardo da Vinci was the leading experimenter in both art and nature.

His notebooks show the breadth of his curiosity.
Titian used his mastery of Renaissance artistic techniques to give this painting its sensuality.
The viewer feels close to the naked woman by seeing the depth of the room behind her.
The arrangement of the figures makes a contrast between the woman looking at the viewer and her servants who are not.
The female nude is depicted as an image of desire.

The standard methods of observing and sketching models and objects.

He studied the techniques of metalwork.
Leonardo started his education when he left the shop of his master.
He was less interested in the surface appearance of things than he was in what was underneath.

He didn't finish many of his projects.

Some of the major paint ings are in poor condition.
His genius is clear in those we have.
The difficulties of combining realistic representation with artistic form were solved by him.
Leonardo used light and shadow to give his face grace and softness.
He left something to the imagination of the viewer by blurting his mouth and eyes.

This sacred subject had been treated many times before.

Christ and his disciples were seated around the supper table in a variety of settings and dress.

The drama and excitement was introduced by Leonardo.

The Lord had said, "One of you will betray me" before he chose the precise moment.

Leonardo puts his advice into practice.

His refined oil painting technique gives the illusion of life to the sitter but also creates a veiled, misty effect.
His artistic perception probes her inner nature, including the element of mystery at the core of every human personality.
The portrait's enduring fascination and fame is due to its revealing yet mysterious quality.

In Judas' case, he made countless preliminary drawings, "rehearsing" individual disciples in expressions and gestures of protest, astonishment, and defiance.

The Milan monks commissioned this work to remind them of the most sacred of all meals.

The depiction of Michelangelo gives visual form to a version of Christian beliefs about the human race.

The mortal body stirs and reaches toward God, while the eternal soul passes from its divine originator to its human recipient.
In the crook of God's arm, Eve looks toward Adam, the mother of humankind.
The baby Christ, humankind's future redeemer, rests on God's finger.

Only Judas is not moving.

The painting forms a harmonious whole even with the recorded instant.

Michelangelo believed that the inmost urges and sensitivities of human beings could best be expressed through the human figure.

Michelangelo was required to do many works as a painter because he preferred to represent the body in three dimensions of sculpture.

Julius asked Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of his private chapel instead of making him a monumental tomb, as the pontiff wanted Michelangelo to make him a monumental tomb.
The chapel was built by Pope Sixtus IV and the walls were painted by an earlier generation of masters.
The ceiling vault was blank.

When his sculpting commission was put off, Michelangelo accepted the new task with reluctance.

He went into the work with his usual gusto after he decided to do it.
The fresco was finished four years later.
It covers about 10,000 square feet.
No other painting in history by a single individual has come close to it.

In the Sistine Chapel painting, Michelangelo expressed his deep religious concern about humankind.

He suffered from a feeling of personal frustration and unfulfilled ambitions because of a sense of sin.

The Florentine city-state prided itself on fighting off the "Goliaths" as the popes.

Statues usually showed David with his head at his feet, but Michelangelo carved him facing the giant.
A fighter poised to swing into ferocious combat is his balanced pose.

The human spirit wants to return to God but is held back by the sins of the flesh.

The Platonism of the Academy influenced Michelangelo.

In order to reconcile his Christian beliefs with the teachings of the Platon Alinari/ Art Resource, NY ists, he merged the two in his layout for the chapel vault.

There are nine panels showing the stories of the Creation and the Flood on the ceiling.

Adam will be brought to life by the touch of God's finger.

Michelangelo has the ability to inject light and movement.

Michelangelo turned to sculpture after finishing his backbreaking labor on the Sistine scaffolds.

He began to carve figures from marble blocks for the tomb of Julius II.
The special quality of his sculpture can be understood by his attitude towards the stone: before taking up his chisel, he always visualized the human form within each block.
He proceeded to liberate the form from the stone.

The spirit of athletic youth is expressed in one of his finest works.

The original copy is in a Florentine museum.

The figures for Julius's tomb show the influence of Platonism.

Michelangelo shows a mature, powerful body falling into place as death approaches, freeing the slave from life's futile struggle.

Michelangelo turned his attention to architecture after winning fame as a painter and a sculptor.

He was not peered at here.
The Renaissance style was started by Brunelleschi.
His greatest masterpiece was the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, and he did most of his work in Rome.

The new church of Saint Peter's was planned early in the 16th century by Julius II.

He wanted to build a structure that would surpass all others in Christendom.

Michelangelo was in charge of the design in 1547, despite several architects having a hand in it.

He spent most of his time planning the church.

A Greek cross was laid out in the floor plan.

The crowning feature was a central dome.

He died before Saint Peter's was completed, but the dome was finished with his designs.

The view of the dome from the front of the church is partially blocked.

The largest dome in the world has been copied many times.

It rises 300 feet higher than the Pantheon.
It is a fitting monument to Michelangelo.

While the visual arts of the Renaissance were reaching their climax in Italy, there were striking accomplishments in literature beyond the Alps.

The painting and sculpture of the south were better than the north's.
The impact was increased by the invention of printing with a moving type.

The basilica of the Roman emperor Constantine was torn down in 1503 to make way for a nicer building.

It was Michelangelo who carried out most of this daring Renaissance undertaking--not just to bring the "ancients" back to life, but to destroy one of their most revered works in order to outdo them.

Rabelais was the most popular author.

Rabelais was familiar with the universities and the Church from the inside.

He entered a Franciscan monastery to become a scholar from a middle-class family.
He was a rebel from the beginning and his absorption in the classics disturbed his superiors.
For a time, he wore the garb of a priest, studied at various universities, and later took up law and medicine.
His career was like his writing.
He was the epitome of a vigorous and spontaneously humanism, with a huge appetite for life and learning.

Rabelais loved the classics but his temperament was not classical.

All rules and regulations were detested by him.
He insisted that one should follow their own inclinations.

The Renaissance Humanism Wars began in 1538.

He believed that laughter is a distinctive human function and wrote the work for amusement.
In telling of the heroes' education and adventures, he voiced his opinions on the human qualities and institutions of his time.
He mingled serious ideas with jokes and jibes in a tumble of words.

Rabelais was a prime target for monasticism.

His stress on self-denial was inhumane.
He had Gargantua give money to a model institution that violates monastic practices.
Only handsome, high-spirited people are admitted to the abbey.

Rabelais was fond of the natural instincts and abilities of free persons.

He expressed humanism in its most optimistic form after rejecting the ascetic ideal.
He anticipated the modern appetite for unlimited experience and pleasure.

His temperament was very similar to that of Erasmus.

Both men were dedicated scholars, but Montaigne was more secular-minded and detached from the Roman Catholic Church.
Montaigne was the son of a landowning family.
His father held public office, traveled abroad, and believed in a humanistic upbringing for his children.
After his father's death,Michel was able to retire at the age of thirty-eight with a library of a thousand books.

Privacy and leisure gave Montaigne the chance to read and think.

He only read books that made him happy.
The Latin authors were considered superior in style and content by Montaigne.

Like Petrarch, he began to record his own thoughts and observations after reading.

These were models of clear French prose, unlike Rabelais's books.

Montaigne was encouraged to publish a third volume after they were popular.
He wrote more than a hundred essays on topics such as the emotions, superstition, customs, education, marriage, scholarship, and death.
His usual way was to start with the opinions of traditional authorities and then to explain his own views.
Sometimes he would present opposing answers to a question and then suggest a compromise solution.

Montaigne's essays were a new form of literature, and they owe a lot to the example of the Roman writer of the first century a.d. Montaigne did not try to change the minds of his readers, but he wrote for his own satisfaction.

During the Renaissance, the idea that every person of worth should have a record of his or her life and ideas became common.

He said that theology, classical wisdom, and science can't provide final answers to the "big questions" because all knowledge is subject to uncertainty and doubt.

The human mind is unpredictable and the senses are unreliable.
Beliefs can't be considered constant for they have their seasons, birth and death.
He challenged the self-assurance of both Christians and earlier humanists.

Montaigne didn't suggest that people shouldn't use their minds.

He thought that every person capable of reason should seek answers that are satisfactory to them.
The thinking person shouldn't embrace the ready-made views of others, no matter how impressive their authority; instead, they should consider various ideas and make a choice.
One should be in doubt if they feel unable to make a choice.

Montaigne made an eloquent plea for tolerance in the midst of religious fanatics that raged through France in the 16th century.

He could see that war and homicide are the result of thinking and belief.

Montaigne was a political conservative and opposed to violence; he felt that authority was indispensable to peace and order.

He did not rebel against established institutions because he hoped that those who held power would see the light.
He stuck to his personal philosophy, which was a blend of skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism.
And remained away from other people.

Rabelais and Montaigne were not disturbed by the religious upheavals of 1520.

The greatest author of Spain was Miguel de Cervantes.
The stories of chivalry were still being written in his native land.
The renaissance: upsurge of humanism squire, Sancho Panza, sees the world in simple, down-to-earth terms.
Through the Don's adventures, a panorama of the Spain of his day was revealed.
One of the things that Montaigne had noted in his essays was the fact that the values of Panza and Quixote were different.

It might have vanished in the religious turmoil that followed after it was established.

Sir Thomas More was one of the casualties.
He died for refusing to swear loyalty to the king as head of the Church of England.
Humanism attained its full expression around 1600.
William Shakespeare was the leading genius of this expression.

Shakespeare wasn't a classical scholar.

He was familiar with many of the ancient authors.
The spirit of humanism was what characterized the Elizabethan Age.
Shakespeare's plays have elements of classical and timeless, but they speak in the voice of the Renaissance.

The roots of Elizabethan drama go back to the Romans and the Greeks, for during the Middle Ages there were only religious plays.

A new form of secular drama, based on the Roman model, came into being and spread across Europe after the classical revival of the fifteenth century stimulated reenactment of Roman dramas at the courts of Italian rulers.

Although the Italian playwrights followed the classical tradition of lengthy recita tions, a chorus, and little action, the English introduced modifications to suit their national taste.

There were no permanent theaters for dramatic performances in medieval times.
The new way of designing theaters was approaching maturity when Shakespeare arrived in London.

The Globe Theater is an example of the Elizabethan playhouse.

Like the plays that were performed there, it drew inspiration from the Greeks and Romans but met the needs and tastes of its own time.
Instead of being a religious or public monument to which spectators were admitted free, it was an admission-charging private business, located in a theater and redlight district safely across the River Thames from London itself.
The stage, or platform, was built on one side of the inner circle and projected 20 feet into the yard, with three tiers of covered galleries or boxes ringing the yard.
Spectators who couldn't afford boxes stood or sat in the yard.

The stage lacked equipment and scenery.

A curtained area in the rear could be used as a chamber or an inner room, and it became the backdrop for a setting on the main stage when closed off.
The front of the platform was often used as a passageway.
The stage had to be cleared at the end of each scene because there was no main curtain.

witches and spirits could ascend and descend from the balcony directly above the stage, as well as the trapdoors in the floor and roof of the stage.

This was an open-air theater and there were performances in the afternoon.
The Elizabethan theater was flexible and enabled the actors to establish close contact with their audience, even though much of the setting was left to the viewer's imagination.
All the roles were played by men or boys.

Shakespeare's dramas were different from ancient ones.

Greek drama had been associated with religious festivals.
Their spirit was secular and they dealt with moral issues.
There are hints of religious doubts and fatalism in some of them.

Shakespeare's themes and locations are more varied than those of classical dramatists.

The values and concerns of humanism are reflected in many other features of his work.
The urge to power is the central theme of many of his plays, and the rising sense of patriotism fills his historical dramas.
The Renaissance concern with individualism is reflected in Shakespeare's interest in character and inner psychological conflict.
He shows his concern for realism displayed by the sculptors.

Shakespeare may have based his work on an English dramatic adaptation of the early sixteenth century.

Shakespeare gave his audience elements of conflict, suspense, violence, and poetic imagery.

He was able to bring moral and philosophical ideas into the dramatic action because the audience consisted of well-read individuals.

The ideal gentleman of the new Europe is typified by Hamlet.

The intellectuals of the age were fascinated by the conflict between meditation and action.

Hamlet knows that it is his duty to avenge his father, but he insists on using reason to guide his actions.
A series of miserable deaths occur when he delays acting.
Shakespeare leaves it to his audience to decide if reason should bow to custom or not.

We don't know much about Shakespeare's life except that he lived in London and retired to his hometown of Stratford-upon-Trent before his death in 1616.

The individual genius was admired by the Renaissance.

The following books are recommended for individual artists.

The World History Resources Center at http://history.wadsworth.com/west_civ/ offers a variety of tools to help you succeed in this course.