Renaissance

The Renaissance has no set starting point or place. It happened gradually at different places at different times and there are no defined dates or places for when the Middle Ages ended. The starting place of the Renaissance is almost universally ascribed to Central Italy, especially the city of Florence. One early Renaissance figure is the poet Dante Alighieri (1265Ð'-1321), the first writer to embody the spirit of the Renaissance.

Petrarch (1304Ð'-1374) is another early Renaissance figure. As part of the humanist movement he concluded that the height of human accomplishment had been reached in the Roman Empire and the ages since have been a period of social rot which he labeled the Dark Ages. Petrarch saw history as social, art and literary advancement, and not as a series of set religious events. Re-birth meant the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek Latin heritage through ancient manuscripts and the humanist method of learning. These new ideas from the past (called the "new learning" at the time) triggered the coming advancements in art, science and other areas.

Another possible starting point is the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. It was a turning point in warfare as cannon and gunpowder became a central element. In addition, Byzantine-Greek scholars fled west to Rome bringing renewed energy and interest in the Greek and Roman heritage, and it perhaps represented the end of the old religious order in Europe.

The Italian Renaissance was intertwined with the intellectual movement known as Renaissance humanism and with the fiercely independent and combative urban societies of the city-states of central and northern Italy in the 13th to 16th centuries. Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance for several reasons.

The first two or three decades of the 15th century saw the emergence of a rare cultural efflorescence, particularly in Florence. This 'Florentine enlightenment' (Holmes) was a major achievement. It was a classical, classicising culture which sought to live up to the republican ideals of Athens and Rome. Sculptors used Roman models and classical themes. This society had a new relationship with its classical past. It felt it owned it and revived it. Florentines felt akin to 1st century BC republican Rome. Rucellai wrote that he belonged to a great age; Leonardo Bruni's Panegyric to the City of Florence expresses similar sentiments. There was a genuine appreciation of the plastic artsÐ'--pagan idols and statuaryÐ'--with nudity, expressions of human dignity, etc.

A similar parallel movement was also occurring in the arts in the early 15th century in FlorenceÐ'--an avant-garde, classicising movement. Many of the same people were involved; there was a close community of people involved in both movements. Valla said that, as they revived Latin, so was Latin architecture revived, for example Rucellai's Palazzo built by Leone Battista Alberti. Of Brunelleschi, he felt that he was the greatest architect since Roman times.

Sculpture was also revived, in many cases before the other arts. There was a very obvious naturalism about contemporary sculpture, and highly true to life figures were being sculpted. Often biblically-themed sculpture and paintings included recognizable Florentines.

This intense classicism was applied to literature and the arts. In most city-republics there was a small clique with a camaraderie and rivalry produced by a very small elite. Alberti felt that he had played a major part, as had Brunelleschi, Masaccio, etc. Even he admitted he had no explanation of why it happened.

There are several possible explanations for its occurrence in Florence:

1. The Medici did itÐ'--the portrait and solo sculpture emerged, especially under Lorenzo. This is the conventional response:

Renaissance Florence = The Medici = The genius of artisans = The Renaissance

Unfortunately, this fails to fit chronologically. 1410 and 1420 can be said to be the start of the Renaissance, but the Medici came to power later. They were certainly great patrons but much later. If anything, the Medici jumped on an already existing bandwagon.

2. The great man argument. Donatello, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo were just geniuses.

This is a circular argument with little explanatory power. Surely it would be better, more human and accessible to understand the circumstances which helped these geniuses to come to fruition.

3. A similar argument is the rise of individualism theory attributable to Burckhardt. This argues for a change from collective neutrality towards the lonely genius. Goldthwaite says it was part of the emergence of the family and the submersion of the clan system.

However, the Kents (F.W. and Dale) have argued that this was and remained a society of neighborhood, kin and family. Florentines were very constrained and tied into the system; it was still a very traditional society.

4. Frederick Antal has argued that the triumph of Masaccio et al. was the triumph of the middle class over the older, more old-fashioned feudal classes, so that the middle class wanted painters to do more bourgeois paintings.

This does not make sense. Palla Strozzi commissioned old fashioned paintings whereas Cosimo de' Medici went for new styles in art.

5. Hans Baron's argument is based on the new Florentine view of human nature, a greater value placed on human life and on the power of man, thus leading to civic humanism, which he says was born very quickly in the early 15th century. In 1401 and 1402, he says Visconti was narrowly defeated by republican Florence, which reasserted the importance of republican values. Florence experienced a dramatic crisis of independence which led to civic values and humanism.

Against this we can say that Baron is comparing unlike things. In a technical sense, Baron has to prove that all civic humanist work came after 1402, whereas many such works date from the 1380s. This was an ideological battle between a princely state and a republican city-state, even though they varied little in their general philosophy. Any such monocausal argument is very likely to be wrong.

Kent says there is plenty of evidence of preconditions for the Renaissance in Florence.

In 1300, Florence had a civic culture, with people like Latini who had a sense of classical values, though different from