Giants of the Renaissance

Thomas Aquinas Leonardo DaVinci Michelangelo The Medicis Columbus Henry VIII Queen Elizabeth Petrarch Boccaccio Giotto Donatello Brunelleschi Francis Bacon Shakespeare Thomas More Erasmus Martin Luther Copernicus Galileo Raphael

Thomas Aquinas

Leading Italian scholastic philosopher and theologian (1224-1274). Argued that man can understand through both the senses (or spiritual revelation—as St. Augustine claimed ALL truth came from) and experience or material things (such as Aristotle argued for—empirical knowledge). His ideas became the basis of the philosophy of the modern Roman Catholic church.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Leonardo DaVinci

Italian sculptor, painter, scientist and inventor (1452-1519). Hardly any aspect of the physical world was beyond his published expertise, he thought of himself as an artist and is best remembered for the Mona Lisa.

DaVinci

DaVinci

The Medici

Italian family vital in the political and cultural history of Florence and the Renaissance, ruling the city from 1434-1737.

Cosmo the Great, circa 1450, helped found the Florence Renaissance.

Lorenzo, circa 1475, was the prototype of the Renaissance prince.

Lorenzo Medici

Petrarch

Italian lyrical poet and scholar (1304-1374). A classic scholar, his literary perspective was far beyond that of the Medieval period. His conventions of love and love of a highly stylized form became the basis for the sonnet format.

Petrarch and Laura

Boccacio

Italian writer (1313-1375). Most famous for the Decameron, a human comedy.

Giotto

Italian painter (1266-1337). The official architect of early Renaissance Florence, he designed the Campanile or bell tower. He is best known for his surviving fresco murals and his conception of the human form in plastic form—in movement.

Giotto

Donatello

Italian sculpture (1382-1466). Vital artist and receiver of patronage of Cosmo Medici. He created a new naturalism of form others would follow.

Donatello

Brunelleschi

Italian architect (1377-1466). Credited with being the founder of Renaissance architecture, he designed the Duomo for the cathedral in Florence.

Brunelleschi

Sir Francis Bacon

A British philosopher, he attempted to write a comprehensive reform of human knowledge. Sometimes credited as the author of Shakespeare’s plays.

Erasmus

Netherlands’ leading humanist and scholar. A pioneer for reason in Christianity, he taught that study and enlightenment would lead to a more solid faith and purer religion; hence, he is often associated with the humanist movement.

Renaissance Humanism Renaissance Humanism (often designated simply as humanism) was a

European intellectual movement beginning in Florence in the last decades of the 14th century. Initially a humanist was simply a teacher of Latin literature. By the mid-fifteenth century humanism described a curriculum - the studia humanitatis - comprising grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry and history as studied via classical authors. It was only later in the twentieth-century that humanism was interpreted as a new philosophical outlook which encompassed human dignity and potential and the place of mankind in nature, since these were the kinds of themes on which humanists practiced their skills. The over-riding goal of humanists, who may be said to have valued the witnesses of reason and the evidence of the senses in reaching the truth over the Christian values of humility, introspection, and passivity, or "meekness" that had dominated European thought in the previous centuries, was to become eloquent in rhetoric. Beauty, a popular topic, was held to represent a deep inner virtue and value, and an essential element in the path towards God. The humanist movement developed from the rediscovery by European scholars of many Latin and Greek texts.

The crisis of Renaissance humanism came with the trial of Galileo which was centered on the choice between basing the authority of one's beliefs on one's observations, or upon religious teaching. The trial made the contradictions between humanism and traditional religion visibly apparent to all, and humanism was branded a "dangerous doctrine."

Renaissance Events

Beginning of the Modern World New artistic and intellectual

enterprise New insight in arts and science New explorations New trading partners and economic

systems An Age of Discovery

Renaissance Events

Protestant Reformation Elizabethan Age England emerges as a world leader Golden Age of satire, theatre and the

sonnet Shift to a secular government

Petrarchian Conventions

Courtly love Being in romantic service Lady is cool, indifferent and perfect Elaborate conceits comparing lovers’ desire to,

usually, a type of struggle (war, storm, grief, despair, hunt): the complaint—a lyric poem, frequent in the Renaissance, in which the poet (1) laments the unresponsiveness of his mistress (2) bemoans his unhappy lot and seeks to remedy it (3) regrets the sorry state of the world. He explains his sad mood, describes the causes of it, discusses possible remedies, or appeals to some lady or divinity for help from his distress

Petrarchian Conventions

Man is warm-hearted Beloved is admirable yet unattainable Lover suffers Circumstances of life fade beside the

(unattainable) affection of the beloved

The lover is a warrior of passion

Petrarchian Conventions

The beloved is reason controlling impetuous sensations and holding them in check: a universal theme

A constant but vain search after universal truth and beauty

Unrequited love or fame or mutability Use of symbols Artistry and complexity

http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1106258/a/All+At+Once+Well+Met+-+English+Madrigals+%2F+King's+Singers.htm

Art and Convention

Growth of English in art: 1066-1366 Renaissance 1485-1616 Courtier Convention in form and in theme Conceit Sonnet and sonnet cycle Petrarchian/Italian sonnet: meter, structure

and verse, rhyme scheme, and theme

Art and Convention

Elizabethan/English/Shakespearean sonnet: meter, structure and verse, rhyme scheme, and theme

Blank verse Pastoral poetry/rustic Metaphysical poetry Octave Sestet

Art and Convention

Quatrain Iambic pentameter Rhetorical devise Conventions: of style and structure

(sonnet format) and of theme (love—woman is unattainable and admirable, fickle and changeable, while the lover, the man, suffers)

Poems

Whoso List to Hunt: pg. 150 Divers Doth Use: pg. 151 A Lover’s Vow on-line Alas! So All Things Now Do Hold Their

Peace on-line

Poems

Sonnet 31: pg. 159 On His Having Arrived at the Age of

Twenty-Three: pg. 303 The Dead: pg. 337 in S & S If thou must love me: pg. 337, S & S Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the

Same: pg. 353, S & S