 By 1450, populations were recovering from the Bubonic Plague.  First merchants became wealthy enough to sponsor artists. First taking place in Flanders.

 Southern Italy launched an invasion on northern Italy. Artist left for a safer life.  Albrecht Durer did this. He left Germany for Italy. His paintings display religious subjects, landscapes, and portraits.  Flanders was the artistic center of northern Europe. Oil paint was developed and popular in Italy.  Flemish paintings reached its peak after 1550.

 Renaissance ideas influenced the writers and philosophers of northern Europe.

 the Desiderius Erasmus of Holland and Thomas More of England were the best known.  Erasmus wrote his most famous work, The Praise of Folly in 1509  Thomas More wrote the book Utopia in 1516

 Wrote in Renaissance England.  He was born in 1564, by the age of 28 he was living in London writing poems and plays  Most famous plays were Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night’s dream.

 It was another name for the Renaissance in England.  As queen, she patronized artists and writers.

 Chinese inventing block printing  It was a printer carved a word or letter on a wooden block, inked the block, and then used it to print on paper.

 European printers began to use block printing to create whole pages to bind into books.  Johann Gutenberg, a craftsman from Mainz, Germany reinvented movable type around 1440  Printing press- is a machine that presses paper against a tray full of inked movable type.

 The printing press enabled a printer to produce hundreds of copies, all exactly alike.  By 1500, 250 cities had printed between 9 to 10 million books.