18 The Renaissance

It was not until the 19th century that cultural historians began to apply the term Renaissance—the French word for “rebirth”—to the revival of classical models in art and literature that took place in Europe from the 14th to the end of the 16th centuries. Alongside this revival they discerned a movement away from a God-centered view of the world toward a world in which humans took center stage.

In the Victorian era, historians often saw history as a story of progress, in which humanity steadily improved itself through the ages, moving from barbarism and superstition toward rationality, enlightenment and sober good manners. According to this narrative, Western civilization had suffered a setback with the fall of Rome, and had declined into the long “Dark Ages” of the medieval period, only to move toward the light again after the rediscovery of classical values—those of ancient Greece and Rome.

The visual arts The notion that humans had achieved something new and remarkable in the period we now call the Renaissance goes back further than the 19th century, and owes much to the Italian artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–74). In his Lives of the Painters (1550), Vasari describes how from the later 13th century Tuscan painters such as Giotto had reacted against the Gothic art of the Middle Ages and begun to “purge themselves of this crude style.” “Those who came after,” Vasari continues, “were able to distinguish the good from the bad, and abandoning the old style then began to copy the ancients with all ardor and industry.” Vasari’s version of the history of art culminates in the perfection achieved, or so he avers, by his friend, the painter and sculptor Michelangelo (1475–1564). “He surpasses not only those who have, as it were, surpassed Nature,” Vasari gushes, “but the most famous ancients also, who undoubtedly surpassed her. He has proceeded from conquest to conquest, never finding a difficulty which he cannot overcome by the force of his divine genius …” It was a brilliant piece of public relations, one that was to set the agenda not only of art history, but of cultural history more generally, for several centuries. The focus moved from the collective, often anonymous, efforts of medieval artists, such as the builders of the great cathedrals, to the individual genius, the human being in whose blood a divine flame burned.

“The Renaissance … stands for youth, and youth alone—for intellectual curiosity and energy grasping at the whole of life …”

Bernhard Berenson, The Venetian Painters, 1894

It is certainly true that in the visual arts there were a number of notable innovations and developments during the Renaissance, spreading from Italy to other parts of Europe. In architecture, the Gothic style was abandoned in favor of the revival and adaptation of Greek and Roman models. (The term “Gothic” was coined during the later Renaissance, suggesting the style of the High Middle Ages was as barbarous as the Goths who sacked Rome.) In painting, a new discovery was made—perspective, which gives the illusion of three-dimensional space. In both painting and sculpture there was an increasing secularism. The subject matter of medieval art had been predominantly religious, and was largely commissioned by or for the church. Although religious subject matter continued to be important during the Renaissance, secular patrons wanted to show off their wealth by adorning their palace walls with stories drawn from Greek myth—not least because such stories provided plenty of opportunities for depicting beautiful bodies without any clothes on. Where the church taught the doctrine of original sin and the shamefulness of nakedness, the artists of the Renaissance peddled the attractive notion of the perfectibility of the human being—especially as far as physical appearance was concerned.

Renaissance humanism The idea of the perfectibility of man was important in the movement known as “Renaissance humanism.” This originated in Italy in the 14th century when the poet Petrarch (1304–74)—who was the first to coin the term “Dark Ages”—encouraged a new interest in the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors. Many of these works had been rediscovered over the previous two centuries—notably, numerous Greek texts had been preserved by Arab scholars, and had subsequently been translated by Europeans into Latin (which was much more widely understood than Greek). The word “humanism” actually derives from the Latin term studia humanitatis, the name given to the new educational syllabus proposed by the followers of Petrarch. This syllabus, based on classical literature, covered five core subjects: rhetoric, poetry, grammar, history and moral philosophy.

“Renaissance Man”

The idea of human perfectibility was embodied in the concept of the all-round “Renaissance man,” eloquently articulated by Baldassare Castiglione in his book The Courtier (1528). “This courtier of ours should be nobly born,” he wrote, “endowed not only with talent and beauty of person and feature, but with a certain grace.” He should be an expert soldier, a fine horseman, be able to “speak and write well,” and demonstrate proficiency in music, drawing and painting. The book was immensely popular, but this was perhaps because it was re-articulating the ideal of the “parfit, gentil knight” that had been central to the medieval concept of chivalry for several centuries.

The Italian umanisti, as the classical scholars became known, sought not only to imitate the style of the ancient authors, but also to adopt their mode of intellectual inquiry, unshackled by the constraints imposed by Christian doctrine (although they did not go so far as to reject the teachings of the church). The study of what constitutes virtue was of particular importance—how should the virtuous man act in the political sphere, on the battlefield, and so on. Style was important though: by adopting the rhetoric of such figures as the Roman orator Cicero, the humanists believed they could instill virtue in others and in the state as a whole.

Printing

Printing with movable type had been in use in China since the 11th century, but was unknown in Europe until the technique was invented independently by the German printer Johannes Gutenberg around 1450. Prior to this, texts had been laboriously copied by hand, severely limiting the number of books—and thus the amount of knowledge and opinion—in circulation. Printing with movable type allowed for the mass production not only of books, but also of broadsheets, ballads and pamphlets. This allowed for the transmission to a wider international audience of the work not only of the Renaissance humanists but also of the religious reformers, contributing significantly to the spread of the Protestant Reformation.

The spirit of open inquiry espoused by the humanists spread in due course to northern Europe, where the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) became highly critical of the Roman Catholic Church. But he never endorsed the break with Rome initiated by Martin Luther, and the degree to which the spirit of the Renaissance influenced the Protestant reformers is debatable. Similarly debatable is the extent to which this spirit initiated the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, given that the great astronomers and anatomists of that period rejected the teachings of classical writers—and of the church—where they conflicted with the observed facts. And it was the Scientific Revolution, rather than Renaissance humanism, that ushered in the far-reaching intellectual, ethical and philosophical revolution of the 18th-century Enlightenment, in which so many of our modern Western values are rooted.

the condensed idea

A move away from the god-centered discourse of the Middle Ages, but not a revolution