According to the standard periodization used in Western history, the Renaissance is synonymous with the early modern era, and roughly spans the years 1350 to 1650. This ‘rebirth’ began originally in the commercial towns of northern Italy in the 14th Century, particularly Florence, and then gradually expanded to the cities of northern and western Europe. Petrarch was one of the first early modern thinkers to classify his time as a break with the Middle Ages and feudalism, even if he did not use those exact terms, but to Renaissance men like these, the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts about art, philosophy, architecture and science was like a kind of awakening after a long period of ‘darkness’ or a Dark Age. In this way, the modern first characterized their age as distinctive and superior to the medieval world. There were a number of new ideas and discoveries in the Renaissance that do set it apart from the Middle Ages, including the new science of Copernicus and Galileo, the expansion of European trade and colonization to Asia and the Americas, literally redrawing the map of the world, the printing press, and the desire to reform the churches based on a more authentic reading and interpretation of the Bible. At the same time, art and architecture were revolutionized based on classical Greek and Roman models, which also appeared to be more realistic and naturalistic. Renaissance humanism also placed less emphasis on the soul and eternal life in the hereafter and far more on the “individual’s creative, reasoning, and aesthetic prowess”, and this type of individualism was its most modern feature of all (Gavin and Thomson 336).
Since northern Italy was literally closer in time and space to the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome, the ‘modernization’ of art, philosophy and architecture began there far earlier than any other part of Europe, particularly in the commercial towns. In Florence, Petrarch “first undertook to collection of ancient manuscripts” and created a modern library of a type that had never existed before, and Giovanni Boccaccio began to translate ancient Greek works into Latin, and also to write compellingly about history and current events in a more modern style (Gavin and Thomson 338). Artists like Giotto, Botticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci introduced more anatomically accurate depictions of human beings in art, as well as more realistic, three-dimensional scenes through the use of mathematics and perspective. Botticelli in the 15th Century was also the first to use “figures from classical mythology” like the Greek gods in contemporary paintings, instead of the more traditional Christian themes, while nude and erotic art also became far more common (Gavin and Thomason 350).
Traditional scholastic theology and philosophy began to decline in the universities, replaced by the new learning based on the classics, and the new private schools for the sons of merchants and nobles began to regard Pericles and Cicero as “models to inspire young men to lives of fruitful citizenship” (Gavin and Thomson 339). In Rotterdam, Erasmus thought that classic figures like Socrates, Plato and Cicero were virtuous enough to deserve “a place among the saints” (Gavin and Thomson 343). This was a particularly modern contrast to the Middle Ages, which had elevated knights, monks, saints and clergy as the ideal models for the young. Renaissance humanism was an urban movement rather than one based on rural castles and estates, and the manners, morals and education of the Renaissance gentlemen in the cities were considered to be greatly improved over their medieval predecessors. Renaissance writers like Erasmus also translated the Bible from the original Greek texts and wished to make it widely available to the literate public in the vernacular European languages. This had never been possible before the invention of the printing press, when books were extremely rare and expensive but when this finally happened it sparked the Protestant Reformation. One of the most distinctly modern aspects of the Renaissance, then, expressed in books like Thomas More’s Utopia, was the idea of progress, reform and improvement, and the very modern desire to “cleanse the Church and society of selfishness, cruelty, hypocrisy, pride, and ignorance” (Gavin and Thomson 343).
WORKS CITED
Gavin, Thomas H. and Lewis Thomson. A Brief History of the Western World, 9th Edition. Thomson Wadsworth, 2005.
