The Renaissance in Italy and Beyond

This is Unit Thirteen of Western Civilization One, part two of two: the writers and artists of the Renaissance, its crossing of the Alps, the five procedures the exam tests on it, and the chain from money to marble. Part one ended with Dante choosing Tuscan over Latin. Carry the same chain through this part, because this is where money became marble. Petrarch rediscovered Cicero and coined the phrase the anchor rejects. Brunelleschi raised the dome and reinvented perspective, Botticelli painted the Medici as Magi and Venus from the sea, Leonardo drew what he dissected, and Michelangelo became a genius instead of an artisan. Erasmus corrected the Bible, Machiavelli wrote down what power had become, and humanist education crossed the Alps in the baggage of bureaucrats and wars. The classics were the currency of all of it, and print carried it. By the end you will be able to describe the writers. To describe the artists and the idea of genius. To describe the North and the two languages. To sequence, read a painting, classify a thinker, compare three cities, and read The Prince. And to state the chain.

Four entries on writers: Petrarch and Cicero, Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies, Erasmus against the Vulgate, and Machiavelli beside Castiglione.

Founding father, and the phrase the anchor rejects.

WC1 1219 Petrarch: Cicero's Letters and the Dark Ages

Petrarch, thirteen oh four to thirteen seventy-four, the anchor's founding father, rediscovered Cicero's letters, wrote flawless classical Latin, and coined the Dark Ages, giving the idea of rebirth its cultural force, with imitation of the ancients as the first step. The phrase he coined is the one the anchor rejects.

A catalogue of capable women, and the cause of their condition.

WC1 1220 Christine de Pizan and the City of Ladies

Christine de Pizan, thirteen sixty-four to fourteen thirty, educated like elite men at the French court, wrote The Book of the City of Ladies: a catalogue of moral, capable women and an argument that men's pride and denial of education caused women's condition, the first truly feminist work, the anchor says. Elite men read her; the argument was heard, not adopted.

Greek against the Vulgate.

WC1 1221 Erasmus Corrects the New Testament

Erasmus, fourteen sixty-six to fifteen thirty-six, a philologist in Latin, Greek and some Hebrew, retranslated the New Testament against the Vulgate and urged vernacular Bibles. In Praise of Folly satirized corruption, and the Handbook of the Christian Soldier de-emphasized the sacraments, a personal piety at odds with Church structures. His claim about witches as a mistranslation is the anchor's report, attributed.

Feared rather than hated, and the subtle courtier.

WC1 1222 Machiavelli's Prince and Castiglione's Courtier

Machiavelli, exiled by the Medici, wrote The Prince: train for war, be feared rather than hated, study Alexander and Caesar, never let morality cost power, and dedicated it to the Medici, arguably the first political science, the anchor says, and a scandal for ignoring God. Castiglione's Courtier of fifteen twenty-eight praised the educated, subtle courtier over the warrior. The procedures read The Prince later in this lecture.

Four entries on artists: Brunelleschi's dome and perspective, Botticelli's Venus and Savonarola's bonfires, Leonardo's vanishing point and dissections, and Michelangelo as genius.

Europe's largest freestanding dome, and depth on a flat surface.

WC1 1223 Brunelleschi: The Dome and Linear Perspective

Brunelleschi, thirteen seventy-seven to fourteen forty-six, raised Florence cathedral's dome, Europe's largest freestanding, finished in fourteen thirty-six on the witness and the primary record, with the anchor's fourteen thirteen recorded, and reinvented linear perspective, depth on a flat surface, from Ibn al-Haytham's optics. The anchor calls Gothic bulky, a Renaissance judgment; unit eleven taught Gothic itself.

Venus from the sea, and a friar's bonfires.

WC1 1224 Botticelli, Savonarola, and the Bonfire Question

Botticelli, fourteen forty-five to fifteen ten, painted the Medici as the Magi in fourteen seventy-five and the Birth of Venus in fourteen eighty-five, sensuality against ascetic piety. Savonarola denounced vanities from fourteen ninety and was executed in fourteen ninety-eight, where the anchor says fourteen ninety-three. The story of burned paintings is unsupported, the anchor says.

Known to his own age as a painter.

WC1 1225 Leonardo: Vanishing Point and Dissection

Leonardo, fourteen fifty-two to fifteen nineteen, painter and engineer, built The Last Supper around a vanishing point and drew dissected criminals precisely, ending as chief painter and engineer to the French king. His machines and anatomy stayed unpublished, so his own age knew him as a painter. Inventor and anatomist are later titles; attribute the fame.

The artist as genius, not artisan.

WC1 1226 Michelangelo: David, the Sistine Ceiling, and the Idea of Genius

Michelangelo, fourteen seventy-five to fifteen sixty-four, carved David in fifteen oh four after Greek models and Donatello, painted the Sistine ceiling in four years quarreling with Julius the Second, and became the artist as genius rather than artisan, the most celebrated artist of his own lifetime. Genius is a Renaissance invention; before it, artists were craftsmen.

Four entries on the North and the languages: Christian humanism with More and Dürer, how education crossed the Alps, Giotto before and Raphael after, and Latin beside the vernacular.

Reform through learning.

WC1 1227 The Northern Renaissance: More, Dürer, Christian Humanism

North of the Alps humanism turned Christian: Erasmus's scholarship, Thomas More's Utopia of fifteen sixteen, an ideal commonwealth read on the primary layer, and Albrecht Dürer's engravings carrying Italian technique into Germany, with Van Eyck and the Low Countries' painters by mid-century. Christian humanism, the witness's term, sought reform through learning. Witness and primary layer; the anchor gives Erasmus alone.

The definitive end of the Middle Ages.

WC1 1228 How Humanist Education Crossed the Alps

By the sixteenth century the classics were entrenched in elite education across Europe, joining or displacing scholasticism, with bureaucrats trained in rhetoric for royal governments, and Renaissance styles surpassed Gothic. With gunpowder and politics, unit fourteen's subjects, the anchor calls this the definitive end of the Middle Ages. The spread came through wars and offices.

Weight before perspective, balance after.

WC1 1229 Giotto Before and Raphael After

Giotto, about thirteen hundred, painted figures with weight and feeling before perspective existed, the witness's forerunner. Raphael, fourteen eighty-three to fifteen twenty, painted the School of Athens for Julius the Second, Plato and Aristotle among the ancients, the High Renaissance's balance. Three generations: Giotto, Brunelleschi's circle, Raphael. Both names rest on the witness texts; the anchor omits them.

Latin for the ancients, the vernacular for Dante.

WC1 1230 Vernacular and Latin: Two Languages of the Renaissance

Dante wrote Tuscan and Petrarch classical Latin, and the Renaissance ran on both: Latin for scholarship and the recovered ancients, the vernacular for Dante, Boccaccio's Decameron and, north of the Alps later, Cervantes and Shakespeare, the witness's names. Print standardized the vernaculars, and the vernacular writers of units twelve and seventeen sit on this line.

Five procedures: the Renaissance on a spine of politics, a painting read by three marks, a thinker classified by the authority he leans on, three cities on three features, and The Prince by three questions.

A spine of politics, and everything hung on it.

WC1 1231 Sequencing the Renaissance, 1300 to 1527

Writers, technology and politics run in parallel, so build a spine of politics: the Medici's takeover in fourteen thirty-four, Lodi in fourteen fifty-four, the French invasion in fourteen ninety-four, the sack of Rome in fifteen twenty-seven. Dante's death in thirteen twenty-one and Petrarch's in thirteen seventy-four come before everything. The dome in fourteen thirty-six is two years after the Medici, Cosimo's Council in fourteen thirty-nine after the dome, Gutenberg's Bible one year after Lodi, Botticelli's Venus in fourteen eighty-five within the peace, Savonarola's death in fourteen ninety-eight after the invasion, David in fifteen oh four and the ceiling in fifteen twelve after him, The Prince in fifteen thirteen and the Courtier in fifteen twenty-eight at the end. Two traps: Gutenberg's press is a northern event inside the Italian spine, and Erasmus and Christine de Pizan straddle the sequence.

Vanishing point, patron, subject.

WC1 1232 Reading a Renaissance Painting: Perspective, Patron, Classical Subject

For a painting, ask three questions: is there a vanishing point, who paid, and what is the subject. Perspective marks the technique after Brunelleschi; a patron's face or emblem marks the politics; a classical or contemporary subject marks humanism. A nativity where the kneeling kings wear a banking family's faces and a young painter looks out is perspective, patron as Magi, scripture with contemporaries inside, the Botticelli pattern. A nude goddess rising from the sea for a private villa is classical subject, private patron, sensuality against piety. A supper where every line runs to the central figure's head is the vanishing point as theology, the Leonardo pattern. A gold-ground altarpiece with figures at several scales and no depth is medieval. Perspective is a technique, not a doctrine, and a religious subject is not un-Renaissance; read the three marks together.

What authority, and what goal.

WC1 1233 Classifying a Thinker: Scholastic, Humanist, Political Theorist, Reformer-Scholar

Ask what authority the thinker uses and what the goal is. Scholastic: Aristotle's logic on scripture, to defend doctrine. Humanist: the classics for eloquence and virtue, to educate the whole person. Political theorist: history and observation, to hold power. Reformer-scholar: philology on the Bible, to purify faith. A treatise reconciling Aristotle with the Trinity by disputation is scholastic. A Ciceronian letter praising the well-rounded citizen is humanist. A handbook advising a ruler to be feared rather than loved is Machiavelli. A corrected Greek New Testament urging plowboys to read it is Erasmus. A catalogue of virtuous women arguing that education makes the difference is Christine de Pizan, humanist. Erasmus was humanist and reformer-scholar at once, so classify by the authority the passage leans on, and expect humanist against scholastic most.

Who rules, what the wealth is, what the city is known for.

WC1 1234 Milan, Venice, Florence Compared: Despot, Oligarchy, Republic

Compare the three cities on three features. Who rules: Milan a despot, the Visconti; Venice a merchant council under an elected Doge; Florence a republic with elected offices dominated by the Medici. The wealth: Milan northern trade and arms; Venice spices, banking and the ducat; Florence wool, banking and papal finance. Known for: Milan the despot archetype; Venice the first banks and resident ambassadors; Florence patronage, the dome, the schools. A lifelong elected head of a merchant oligarchy is Venice; a family ruling a republic without holding its offices is Florence; a dynasty of tyrants is Milan; a coin that never changed weight is Venice. All three were oligarchies of the fat people in practice, and the poor majority voted nowhere; the exam wants the constitutional form, and the common ground is part one's point.

What the ruler wants, what people are, what advice is rejected.

WC1 1235 Reading The Prince: Three Claims and Their Break With Christian Advice

For a passage from The Prince, read in translation from Fordham's Modern History Sourcebook, ask what the ruler wants, what the author takes human nature to be, and what older advice is being rejected. Feared rather than loved if not both: the ruler wants security, people are fickle and self-interested, and the rejected advice is the medieval mirror for princes that told rulers to be loved for virtue. Learn how not to be good and use it as necessity requires: power kept, others not good, and the idea that private virtue guarantees public success rejected. Study war above all: survival among rivals, force decides, and the peaceful Christian king rejected. What the passage assumes is that politics is judged by results, not conformity to Christian morality. Machiavelli does not say morality is worthless, only that it must not cost power; a distractor makes him an atheist or a monster.

One capstone entry: the chain from trade to banking to patronage to art to print, and the classics as its currency.

Trade, banking, patronage, art, print.

WC1 1236 Money Into Marble: How Trade, Patronage, and the Classics Made the Renaissance

The exam gives the Renaissance one band with the Reformation, and the anchor's chapter explains the first half as a chain from money to marble. Why Italy: no Hundred Years' War, popes away at Avignon, twenty-three cities over twenty thousand people, and the center of trade between Europe and the Middle East. The method: Italians learned double-entry bookkeeping, partnerships, bills of exchange and Arabic numerals from the Arab world, defied the usury ban, and turned wool into cloth and cloth into gold. The politics: weak feudalism let cities rule themselves under the fat people, honor and vendetta gave way to competition by commission, and Lodi in fourteen fifty-four gave forty years of quiet, with Milan a despotism, Venice a merchant oligarchy, and Florence a republic run by the Medici. Now the conversion. Banking wealth became patronage, patronage became public art, and art meant the classics reborn: Petrarch's Cicero, Dante's Virgil, humanist schools teaching rhetoric and history for civic life, the Renaissance man's virtues beside his piety. Brunelleschi raised the dome in fourteen thirty-six and reinvented perspective; Botticelli painted the Medici as Magi and Venus from the sea; Leonardo drew what he dissected; Michelangelo carved David, painted a pope's ceiling, and became a genius instead of an artisan. Print, from Mainz in fourteen fifty-five, carried it all and made censorship necessary. Then the chain crossed the Alps: Erasmus corrected the Bible, More imagined Utopia, Dürer engraved, and humanist education, carried by bureaucrats and wars, entrenched itself in every court by the sixteenth century. Machiavelli, watching the French invade in fourteen ninety-four, wrote down what power had become. The exam does not ask whether the Renaissance was a break or a continuation; the anchor calls the Dark Ages conceit off-base and the achievement real, and the course holds both. It asks what humanism was, who the Medici were, what Lodi did, what Brunelleschi invented, what Gutenberg printed, what The Prince advised, what Erasmus corrected. The anchor's figures and judgments are attributed, its dates for the dome, Savonarola and the Index are corrected on the witness, and the North, More, Dürer, Raphael and Giotto come from the witness and the primary layer.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe Petrarch coining the phrase the anchor rejects, Christine de Pizan's argument heard and not adopted, Erasmus's Greek against the Vulgate, and Machiavelli's prince beside Castiglione's courtier. You can describe Brunelleschi's dome of fourteen thirty-six and his perspective, Botticelli's Venus and Savonarola's execution in fourteen ninety-eight, Leonardo known to his age as a painter, and Michelangelo as the first genius. You can describe Christian humanism in More and Dürer, education crossing the Alps by wars and offices, Giotto before and Raphael after, and Latin beside the vernacular. You can sequence on a political spine, read a painting by vanishing point, patron and subject, classify a thinker by authority, compare Milan, Venice and Florence, and read The Prince as results over morality. And you can state the chain, trade to banking to patronage to art to print, with the classics as currency, which is this unit's one idea. Unit fourteen opens on the gunpowder and politics the anchor calls the definitive end of the Middle Ages: the new monarchies, and the French invasion that ended Lodi's peace.