1. European Renaissance
A Golden Age in the Arts

2. What was the Renaissance?
A rebirth in art and learning that took place in Western Europe between 1300 and 1600.

3. What caused the Renaissance in Western Europe?
The rise of trade
Demand for silk, sugar, and spices

4. What caused the rise of trade?
Crusades
Use of Hindu-Arabic numerals
Letters of credit and other banking practices.
Europe recovered from the Black Death
What were the economic effects of the Crusades? What factors increased trade?

5. Where did the Renaissance begin?
Northern Italian Cities
Florence
Genoa
Venice
Where did the Renaissance begin?
Florence, Italy

6. Why did the Renaissance begin in Northern Italy?
Florence, Genoa and Venice were centers of trade between Middle East and Northern Europe
They were city-states governed as republics.
Why did the Renaissance begin in these Northern Italian cities?

7. How did the Renaissance spread to Northern Europe?
With the rise of trade, travel, literacy, and wealth, the Renaissance spread to Northern Europe.
Which direction did the Renaissance spread? How did it spread?

8. What helped spread new ideas during the Renaissance?
The movable type printing press (Gutenberg Press)
the sale of books
The Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed with this new technology.
What helped spread ideas during the Renaissance? What was the first book published with movable type?

9. Printing Press: Secular works in the Vernacular
Secular – worldly.
Vernacular – the everyday language of people in a region or country.
The printing press helped to spread BOTH of these ideas.
Not writing just the bible anymore, books about worldly matters as well.
Both being printed in the vernacular – easier for people to understand.

10. How did Renaissance art differ from that of the Medieval period?
Medieval art focused on spiritual topics.
Renaissance art focused on individuals and secular (worldly) matters as well as Christianity
Medieval art
Renaissance art

11. Northern Renaissance Artists
Portrayed religious and secular subjects
What did Northern Renaissance artists portray?
Peter Paul Rubens

12. What was Humanism?
An intellectual movement that placed high value on human potential and achievements
It revived study of Greek and Roman literature and culture
It was supported by wealthy patrons
What is the name of the intellectual movement described? Who made this sculpture?
School of Athens by Raphael

13. Patrons Supporters of the arts Financed artists
Came from the wealthy merchant class
Lorenzo de Medici

14. Main difference between the Northern Renaissance and the Italian Renaissance was the role of Patrons!
Patrons supported the arts and literature in Italian city-states.
In Northern Europe, the ruling monarchs often hired/paid artists to decorate/rebuild castles.

15. Michelangelo Painted the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Sculpted David
Who painted this?

16. Michelangelo
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
The Creation of Adam

17. Michelangelo
David

18. He painted The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa
Leonardo daVinci
He painted The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa
He is considered to be the ultimate Renaissance man (one who becomes an expert at many fields of study).
Who painted this?

19. He was a painter, sculptor, scientist and inventor
da Vinci’s Mona Lisa

20. Wrote about a perfect society (Utopia)
Sir Thomas More
Humanist reformer
Wrote about a perfect society (Utopia)
Who is this writer? What did he write? Executed when he refused to support King Henry VIII – died for his beliefs.

21. Erasmus
Wrote The Praise of Folly which used humor to expose the ignorance and immoral behavior of many people, including the clergy
What was the name of the book which used humor to expose the ignorance and immoral behavior of many people, including the clergy? Who wrote it?

22. © Copyright 1999-2004 Peter Sadlon Updated March 8th 2004
Petrarch
~ Considered the father of Humanism
~ Wrote many books and poems
~ Assembled a library of Greek and
Roman works
~ Wrote poems "Sonnets to Laura"
Francesco Petrarch was born shortly after 1300 in a time and place where very few could read or write and those that did considered it a chore where as Petrarch saw a blessing. His passion to write his thoughts to paper was only overcome by the need to sleep or eat. So great was his desire to write his thoughts and feelings and so difficult was it to find anyone in Europe to match his desire he found himself writing to Cicero, one of the only people he believed really shared his passion. (Cicero was a Roman Poet/Politician that died over 1200 years before Petrarch was born).
His writings would go on to influence countless others such as Boccaccio to write his own great works. And centuries later others such as Shakespeare would study his works and copy his sonnets.
Petrarch lived through the harshest bouts of the plague and lost nearly everyone he knew to it. His mother and father had died in his early years but his son, his grandson, numerous friends and a woman named Laura for which his writings of her will live on forever, all died as victims of the disease.
So great were his writings that royalty treated him, the son of exiled nobles, like a king and in a letter to a friend he even goes as far as to say that he has caused his own plague to spread over Europe, one which has caused people to take up pen and paper and write and read.
And so ended the dark ages and the start of Humanism.
Laura was the love of Petrarch's life. For her he perfected the sonnet and wrote the Canzoniere.
Who Laura was and even if she really existed is a bit of a mystery. It has often been believed that the name "Laura" was a play on the name "laurel" the leaves which Petrarch was honoured with for being the poet laureate.
However, there is a lot of evidence to show that Laura really did exist and that she was Laure de Noves. Born 6 years after Petrarch in 1310 in Avignon she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves (a Knight) and wife to Hugues II de Sade (and possibly the ancestor of the infamous Marquis de Sade). She married at the age of 15 (January 16th, 1325) and Petrarch saw her for the first time two years later on April 6th (Good Friday) in 1327 at Easter mass in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon.
Falling in love at first sight, Petrarch would be haunted by her beauty for the rest of his life. Already being married she would turn down all advanced he made toward her.
She died at the age of 38 in the year 1348, on April 6th, Good Friday, exactly 21 years to the very hour that Petrarch first saw her (as Petrarch noted in his copy of a work by Virgil). There is no record to the cause of her death, but it was either due to the Black plague or possibly a pulmonary tuberculosis resulting from eleven childbirths.
Several years after her death, Maurice Sceve, a humanist, visiting Avignon had her tomb opened and discovered inside a lead box. Inside was a medal representing a woman ripping at her heart, and under that, a sonnet by Petrarch.
The question if Laure de Noves was Petrarch's Laura, or even if there was a Laura is a question which may never be answered. Although he wrote the Canzoniere, a series of poems mostly about Laura and his love for her, she is absent from even being mentioned in his letters except for a few very rare cases where he talks about a past love he once had (letter to Posterity) and once where he responds to an accusation that she is not real.
If she was real, it is unknown if they ever spoke, or if she ever knew of his feelings for her.
© Copyright Peter Sadlon Updated March 8th 2004
PETRARCHLAURAPICTURESWRITINGSBOOKSEVENTSPAPERSSETTING

23. Machiavelli ~ Wrote "The Prince"
~ A book about how best to run a country
~ "It is better to be feared than loved."
~ "The end justifies the means"
~ Rulers should have absolute power
Whose ideas about government are being described? What was the name of the book?