CULTURES OF EUROPE:THE RENAISSANCE

Florence, Italy:Cathedral (Brunelleschi),

Palazzo Vecchio

Henry VIII-Head of the Church

Johannes Gutenberg,Germany

• 1450, the printing press

• 240 prints per hour (↔ monks copying/writing one codex for several months)

• The Gutenberg Bible, 1455 – a handwritten Bible: for one scribe it took one year

Giotto (14th c. trecento): The Birth of Christ

Fra Angelico

Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa, The Vitruvian Man

Leonardo: The Last Supper

Leonardo: Virgin of the Rocks

Botticelli: The Birth of Venus

Botticelli: Primavera (Spring), c.1482

Mercury, Graces, Venus, Cupid, Flora, Chloris, Zephyr

SOURCES

• Ovid: Fasti

• Lucretius: De rerum Nature

• "Spring-time and Venus come,/ And Venus' boy, the winged harbinger, steps on before,/ And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora,/ Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all/ With colours and with odours excellent."

Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel

The Creation of Adam

Michelangelo: David

Michelangelo:

Moses

Raphael/Raffaello Sanzio

Raphael: The School of Athens

Tizian

Hans Holbein, the Younger: Henry VIII (the King), Erasmus

(the Scholar)

Hans Holbein, the Younger 1533:

`The Ambassadors'

Realism, beauty and allegorical meaning: the active and the

contemplative life, life and death• nobleman/ambassador vs scholar/bishop• ornate sheath of a dagger (29) vs book (25)• the culture of the age: `Turkey' carpet, celestial globe

and an array of astronomical and navigational instruments. The date: 11 April. A German text-book of Arithmetic for Merchants, propped open with a T-square. A lute and a case of recorders or flutes: Holbein's mastery of foreshortening and musical interests. A string of the lute: snapped, a traditional emblem of fragility. In the top left corner, at the edge of the magnificently patterned green hanging, is a crucifix. The hymnal in front of the lute is open at Martin Luther's hymn,'Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire‘

• Memento mori: medieval mosaic (Westminster Abbey) – distorted skull + reality, as perceived by the senses, must be viewed `correctly' to reveal its full meaning

Pieter Brueghel: The Battle of Carnival and Lent

Thomas More-Utopia

Shakespeare: Hamlet; Romeo and Juliet