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The Italian Renaissance: Part One, The Background Book: Ancient Times Author: Robert A. Guisepi Date: 2004
Renaissance Thought And Art, 1300-1600
Introduction
In Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries thinkers and artists began to view the thousand years that had elapsed since the fall of Rome as the "Dark Ages" - a time of stagnation and ignorance - in contrast to their own age which appeared to them wise and beautiful. They exuberantly proclaimed that they were participating in an intellectual and aesthetic revolution sparked by the "rebirth" (renaissance) of the values and forms of classical antiquity. Modern historians have accepted the term Renaissance as a convenient label for this exciting age of intellectual and artistic revival, which continued through the sixteenth century. But since the Renaissance had deep roots in the Middle Ages, which also made rich contributions to civilization, in what ways can the Renaissance be said to signify a "rebirth"?
First of all, there was an intensification of interest in the literature of classical Greece and Rome. This Classical Revival, as it is called, was the product of a more wordly focus of interest - a focus on human beings and on this life as an end in itself rather than a temporary halting place on the way to eternity. Renaissance scholars searched the monasteries for old Latin manuscripts that had been unappreciated and largely ignored by medieval scholars, and they translated hitherto unknown works from Greek into Latin, the common language of scholarly discourse. Thus the humanists, as these scholars were called, greatly added to the quantity of classical literature that had been entering the mainstream of Western thought since the Middle Ages. Second, while Renaissance scholars found a new significance in classical literature, artists in Italy were stimulated and inspired by their study and imitation of classical sculpture and architecture.
But the spirit of the Renaissance was not characterized by a mere cult of antiquity, a looking backward into the past. The humanists of the Renaissance were - except for a lack of interest in science - the harbingers of the modern world, enthusiastically engaged in widening the horizon of human interests. Renaissance culture strikingly exhibits belief in the worth of the individual and the desire to think and act as a free agent. The Renaissance spirit was admirably summed up by the Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti, when he declared, "Men can do all things if they will."
In some respects every age is an age of transition, but it may be fair to state that the Renaissance marks one of the major turning points in Western civilization. The dominant institutions and thought systems of the Middle Ages were in decline; scholasticism, church authority, and conformity were on the wane. A more modern culture that depended on individualism, skepticism, and ultimately on science was taking its place.
The Renaissance originated in the cities of central and northern Italy. We shall begin with a description of the new secular interests and values that rose in these urban centers, then note the relationship between these urban interests and the Classical Revival and flowering of art, and conclude with a discussion of the spread of the Renaissance as it crossed the Alps to France, Germany, and England. It was in England that the underlying optimism and dynamism of the entire Renaissance period was epitomized by Shakespeare:
O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't! ^1
[Footnote 1: The Tempest, act 5, sc. 1, lines 182-185.]
The Italian Renaissance: The Background
The culture of the Italian Renaissance did not arise in a vacuum. Historians today find a clue to the intellectual and esthetic changes of the age in economic, social, and political change.
The "Brave New World" Of The Italian City-States
We have seen in chapter 10 that during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the High Middle Ages a new economy and a new society emerged in western Europe. Commerce and a money economy revived, towns arose and became self-governing communes, and townspeople constituted a new middle class, the bourgeoisie. While Italy had been one of the leaders in these twelfth- and thirteenth-century developments, during the next two centuries it moved dramatically ahead of the rest of Europe.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the city-states of northern and central Italy experienced a tremendous growth of population and expanded to become small teritorial states. These included the Papal States, where the restored authority of the popes extinguished the independence of many little city-states in central Italy. Feudalism had died out in Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Unlike the French nobility, who spent their time participating in the vigorous court life of their fellow nobles, the Italian nobles moved to the cities and joined with the rich merchants to form a patrician ruling class. Together they successfully fought off the German emperors Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II. By 1300 nearly all the land of northern and central Italy was owned by profit-seeking urban capitalists who produced for city markets. In the large export industries, such as woolen cloth, a capitalistic system of production was emerging - the "putting out" system in which the merchant-capitalist retained ownership of the raw material and paid others to work it into the finished product. Additional great wealth was gained from commerce, particularly the import-export trade in luxury goods from the East. So much wealth was accumulated by these merchant-capitalists that they turned to money-lending and banking. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, Italians monopolized European banking. It is no wonder that in this prosperous, worldly Italian society, money transformed values and became a new virtue, celebrated in poetry:
Money makes the man, Money makes the stupid pass for bright, ... Money buys the pleasure-giving women, Money keeps the soul in bliss, ... The world and fortune being ruled by it, Which even opens, if you want, the doors of paradise. So wise he seems to me who piles up What more than any other virtue Conquers gloom and leavens the whole spirit. ^2
[Footnote 2: Quoted in Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 83.]
These economic and political successes made the Italian upper-class groups strongly assertive, self-confident, and passionately attached to their city-states. Literature and art reflected their self-confidence. Poets described them riding "self-assuredly through the streets"; every major sculptor and painter produced their portraits, sometimes tucked away in corners of religious paintings; and architects affirmed their importance by constructing their imposing palaces - the palazzi of the Medici, Rucellai, Pitti, and Pazzi families, for example, still standing in Florence.
Furthermore, the humanists provided them with an ideology. The humanists' focus on individuals and society, and their insistent theme of "the dignity of man," were entirely in keeping with the outlook, manners, and accomplishments of the dominant urban groups. These groups patronized the new more secular art and the new secular values, both largely alien to the church-dominated culture of the Middle Ages.
Renaissance Patrons
The despots and the wealthy merchants, bankers, and maufacturers conspicuously displayed their wealth and bolstered their own importance and that of their cities by patronizing artists and humanists. Most of the latter were provided with governmental, academic, and tutorial posts.
Renaissance artists had the benefit of the security and protection offered by their patrons and enjoyed the definite advantage of working exclusively on commission. Artists knew where their finished work would repose, in cathedral, villa, or city square. This situation contrasts with some later periods, when artists painted as they wished and then attempted to sell the work to anyone who would buy it.
Among the most famous patrons were members of the Medici family who, by acting as champions of the lower classes, ruled Florence for sixty years (1434-1494) behind a facade of republican forms. Lorenzo de' Medici, who was first citizen of Florence from 1469 until his death in 1492, carried on his family's proud traditions and added so much luster to Florence that he became known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. When he added up the principal expenditures made by his family between 1434 and 1471 for commissions to artists and architects, as well as for charities and taxes, and it came to the astounding total of 663,755 gold florins, he remarked: "I think it casts a brilliant light on our estate and it seems to me that the monies were well spent and I am very well pleased with this." ^3
[Footnote 3: Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 243.]
The Renaissance popes, with few expections as worldly as their fellow citizens, were lavish patrons who made Rome the foremost center of art and learning by 1500. What Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) said of himself applies to most of the Renaissance popes through the pontificate of Clement VII (1523-1534), who was a member of the Medici family: "In all things I have been liberal: in building, in the purchase of books [the Vatican Library is still one of the world's greatest], in the constant transcription of Greek and Latin manuscripts, and in the rewarding of learned men."
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