The northern Renaissance began in the prosperous cities of Flounders, a region that included parts of present-day northern France, Belgium, and Netherlands. Spain, France, Germany, and England enjoyed their great culture rebirth 100 years later, in the 1500s.

Albrecht Durer traveled to Italy in 1494 to study the techniques of the Italian masters. Returning home, he employed these methods in painting and, especially, in engravings. In this form of art an artist etches a design on a metal plate with acid. The artist then uses the plate to make prints.

Many of Durer’s engravings portray the religious upheaval of his age. Through his art as well as through essays, Durer helped to spread Italian Renaissance ideas in his homeland. Because of his wide-ranging interests, which extended far beyond art, he sometimes called the “German Leonardo.”

Among the many artists of Flanders in the 1400s, Jan and Hubert Van Eyck stand out. Their portrayals of townspeople as well as religious scenes abound in rich, realistic details. The Van Eycks also developed oil paint.

Northern artists used this new medium to produce strong colors and a hard surface that could survive the centuries. In the 1500s, Pieter Bruegel used vibrant colors to portray lively scenes of peasant life. Bruegel’s work influenced later Flemish artists, who painted scenes of daily life rather than religious or classical themes.

In the 1600s, Peter Paul Rubens blended he realistic tradition of Flemish painters like Bruegel with the classical themes and artistic freedom of the Italian Renaissance. Many of his enormous paintings portray pagan figures from the classical past.

Like Italian humanists, northern European humanist scholars stressed education and classical learning. At the same time, they emphasized religious themes. They believed that the revival of ancient learning should be used to bring about religious and moral reform

Dutch priest and humanist Desiderius Erasmus used his knowledge of classical languages to produce a new Greek edition of the New Testament. He also called for a translation of the Bible into the vernacular, or everyday language of ordinary people.

As a priest he was disturbed by corruption in the Church and called for reform In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus used humor to expose the ignorant and immortal behavior of many people of his day including the clergy.

Erasmus’s friend, the English humanist Thomas More, also pressed for social reform. In Utopia, More describes an ideal society in which men and women live in peace and harmony. No one is idle, all are educated, and justice is used to end crime rather than to eliminate the criminal.

Scholars like More and Erasmus wrote mostly in Latin. In northern towns and cities, the growing middle class demanded new works in the vernacular. The audience particularly enjoyed dramatic tales and earthy comedies

The French humanist Francois Rabelais had a varied career as a monk, physician, Greek scholar, and author. In Gargantua and Pantagruel, he chronicle the adventure of two gentle giants. On the surface, the novel is a comic tale on travel and war. But Rabelais uses his characters to offer opinion on religion, education, and other serious subjects.

Between 1590 and 1613 William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays. Shakespeare’s comedies, such as Twelfth Night laugh at the follies of young people in love. His history plays, such as Richard III, depict the powerful struggles of English kings. His tragedies show people crushed by powerful forces or their own weaknesses. Wrote 154 sonnets on the subjects of love, beauty & mortality

Shakespeare’s love of words vastly enriched the English language. More than 1,700 words appeared for the first time in his works, including bedroom, lonely, gloomy, heartsick, hurry and sneak.

In 1456, Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, printed the first complete edition of the Bible using the first printing press and printing inks in the West. Within 20 years, the development of movable type made book production even easier.

A printing revolution would transform Europe. By 1500, more than 20 million volumes had been printed. Printed books were cheaper and easier to produce than hand- copied work. With books more readily available, more people learned how to read. Printed books exposed educated Europeans to new ideas, greatly expanding their horizons