1. constitutional oligarchies despotisms
Map Link: Renaissance Italy:
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Map Link: Europe during the 15th Century:
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2. Signoria (Council of 9 Guildsmen), incl.
“Standard Bearer of Justice”
1283 Merchants of Florence exclude nobles
from public office
1402 Florentines defeat Duke of
Milan
Cosimo de’ Medici ( )
Albizzi

3. Fall 1434 Pro-Medici signoria elected.
Albizzi and supporters exiled
Building power
Patronage:
Marsilio Ficino ( )
Donatello (c )
Cicero ( BC)

4. Piero “the Gouty” ( )
Lorenzo the Magnificent ( )
Patronage, e.g.
Michelangelo ( )
Sandro Botticelli ( )

5. Pope Sixtus IV (p. 1471-84) Volterra
alum
26th April 1478 Pazzi attempt to kill Lorenzo
at Cathedral of Florence
excommunication interdict
Council of Seventy

6. Why was Italy (and particularly Florence) the
cradle of the Renaissance?

7. Humanism:
Attempt to understand world and human
condition through Classical tradition
Imitating example of the Classical past,
to learn art of civilised living
Rejecting medieval scholasticism.
Concern with applied wisdom

8. Dante Alighieri ( )
The Divine Comedy (1321)
Inferno
Purgatorio
Paradiso
1290s Involved in politics
1302 Exiled from Florence

9. Francesco Petrarch (1304-74)
Poet and promoter of Latin texts
Advocate of study original Classical Latin
Seeker of forgotten Latin texts

10. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75)
Writer and diplomat
Advocate of study of Classical Greek
Decameron (completed 1358)

11. Isotta Nogarola of Verona (1418-66)
“Why then was I born a woman, to be
scorned by men in words and deeds?”
Guarino da Verona: Set your gender
aside and create “a man within the
woman.”

12. 1450s Isotta corresponds with
Ludovico Foscarini, leading to…
Dialogue on Adam and Eve
Oration on the Life of St Jerome
Lauro Quirini praised her for overcoming her
“own nature. For that true virtue, which is
essentially male, you have sought with
singular zeal.”

13. Patronage:
Giving artists freedom to work
Church as major patron from 15th c.
Religious and Classical themes

14. Giotto di Bondone (c )
Scenes from the Life of Christ: 20.
Lamentation (1304-6)
Fresco Realism
Emotion Perspective

15. Masaccio (“Messy One”, a.k.a. Tommaso Guidi,
Lo Scheggia [“The Splinter”], 1401-c. 1428)
Trinity ( )
chiaroscuro (contrast of light and shade)

16. Sandro Botticelli (c. 1444-1510)
The Birth of Venus (c. 1485)
Classical themes

17. Leonardo da Vinci ( )
Self-Portrait (c. 1512)
Vitruvian Man (1492)
Virgin of the Rocks ( ) – sfumato
(“smoky”)
Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) (c )

18. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
The Creation of Adam (c. 1510)
Nudes
Sistine Chapel Julius II (p )

19. Raphael Sanzio ( )
Madonna della Seggiola (Madonna of the
Chair, 1516)
The School of Athens (1509)

20. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-c. 1652)
Judith Beheading Holofernes
( )

21. Neoplatonism
Michelangelo
The Pietà ( )
Donatello ( )
David (c. 1430)

22. Donato Bramante ( )
St Peter’s Basilica, Rome
Tempietto, Rome
Pythagoras (6th c. BC)
Giovanni Palestrina (c )
Super Flumina Babylonis

23. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94)
Kabbalah
Free will as means to great good or evil
Possibility of rising to angelic near-divinity

24. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Born in Florence. Humanist education
Politician and ambassador
1512 Machiavelli forced to retire
The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
History of Florence

25. The End of the Renaissance:
Economic decline: Ottomans, New World
trade, competing producers/merchants
Wars: Death, destruction, economic
damage
Results: reduction in patronage, lack
of stable environment for artistic activity