WThe Renaissance was a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It occurred after the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with great social change. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the Middle Ages.
WThe Northern Renaissance was the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps. From the last years of the 15th century, its Renaissance spread around Europe. Called the Northern Renaissance because it occurred north of the Italian Renaissance, this period became the German, French, English, Low Countries, Polish Renaissances and in turn other national and localized movements, each with different attributes.
WRenaissance art is the painting, sculpture and decorative arts of the period of European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music, science and technology. Renaissance art took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, perceived as the noblest of ancient traditions, but transformed that tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of Northern Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Along with Renaissance humanist philosophy, it spread throughout Europe, affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic sensibilities. For art historians, Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval period to the Early Modern age.
WThe "culture of popular laughter is a cultural-historical term coined by the literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his book Rabelais and His World (1965). This studied popular culture in Renaissance Europe through the themes of François Rabelais' book Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–64). The idea of the culture of popular laughter combines two literary ideas developed by Bakhtin in the same work: "grotesque realism" and "carnivalesque" which examined, respectively, the celebration of primary needs and the idea of carnival in which social norms were subverted.
WRenaissance dances belong to the broad group of historical dances. During the Renaissance period, there was a distinction between country dances and court dances. Court dances required the dancers to be trained and were often for display and entertainment, whereas country dances could be attempted by anyone. At Court, the formal entertainment would often be followed by many hours of country dances which all present could join in. Dances described as country dances such as Chiarantana or Chiaranzana remained popular over a long period – over two centuries in the case of this dance. A Renaissance dance can be likened to a ball.
WThe English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. As in most of the rest of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. However, many scholars see its beginnings in the early 1500s during the reign of Henry VIII.
WEvolutionary ideas during the periods of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment developed over a time when natural history became more sophisticated during the 17th and 18th centuries, and as the scientific revolution and the rise of mechanical philosophy encouraged viewing the natural world as a machine with workings capable of analysis. But the evolutionary ideas of the early 18th century were of a religious and spiritural nature. In the second half of the 18th century more materialistic and explicit ideas about biological evolution began to emerge, adding further strands in the history of evolutionary thought.
WThe French Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in France between the 15th and early 17th centuries. The period is associated with the pan-European Renaissance, a word first used by the French historian Jules Michelet to define the artistic and cultural "rebirth" of Europe.
WThe migration waves of Byzantine scholars and émigrés in the period following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Early Middle Ages in the West. The Encyclopædia Britannica claims: "Many modern scholars also agree that the exodus of Greeks to Italy as a result of this event marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance", although few scholars date the start of the Italian Renaissance this late.
WRenaissance humanism was a revival in the study of classical antiquity, at first in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term humanist referred to teachers and students of the studia humanitatis—meaning the humanities including grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. It was not until the 19th century that this began to be called humanism instead of the original humanities, and later by the retronym Renaissance humanism to distinguish it from later humanist developments. During the Renaissance period most humanists were religious, so their concern was to "purify and renew Christianity", not to do away with it. Their vision was to return ad fontes to the simplicity of the New Testament, bypassing the complexities of medieval theology. Today, by contrast, the term humanism has come to signify "a worldview which denies the existence or relevance of God, or which is committed to a purely secular outlook".
WThe Italian Renaissance, a period in Italian history that covered the 15th and 16th centuries, developed a culture that spread across Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it began around 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields a Proto-Renaissance beginning around 1250 is typically accepted. The French word renaissance means "rebirth" and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries which Renaissance humanists labeled the "Dark Ages". The Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari used the term "Rebirth" in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550, but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the work of scholars such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt.
WThe personal life of Leonardo da Vinci has been a subject of interest, inquiry, and speculation since the years immediately following his death. Leonardo has long been regarded as the archetypal Renaissance man, described by the Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari as having qualities that "transcended nature" and being "marvellously endowed with beauty, grace and talent in abundance". Interest in and curiosity about Leonardo has continued unabated for five hundred years. Modern descriptions and analysis of Leonardo's character, personal desires and intimate behavior have been based upon various sources: records concerning him, his biographies, his own written journals, his paintings, his drawings, his associates, and commentaries that were made concerning him by contemporaries.
WRenaissance humanism saw a resurgence in hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of ceremonial magic.
WThe Medical Renaissance, from 1400 to 1700, is the period of progress in European medical knowledge, and a renewed interest in the ideas of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, along with Arabic-Persian medicine, after the Latin translation movement. Such medical discoveries during the Medical Renaissance are credited with paving the way for modern medicine.
WThe Renaissance in Poland lasted from the late 15th to the late 16th century and is widely considered to have been the Golden Age of Polish culture. Ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland actively participated in the broad European Renaissance. The multinational Polish state experienced a period of cultural growth thanks in part to a century without major wars, aside from conflicts in the sparsely-populated eastern and southern borderlands. The Reformation spread peacefully throughout the country, and living conditions improved, cities grew, and exports of agricultural products enriched the population, especially the nobility (szlachta), who gained dominance in the new political system of Golden Liberty.
WA polymath is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. The earliest recorded use of the term in English is from 1624, in the second edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton; the form polymathist is slightly older, first appearing in the Diatribae upon the first part of the late History of Tithes of Richard Montagu in 1621. Use in English of the similar term polyhistor dates from the late sixteenth century.
WThe Portuguese Renaissance refers to the cultural and artistic movement in Portugal during the 15th and 16th centuries. Though the movement coincided with the Spanish and Italian Renaissances, the Portuguese Renaissance was largely separate from other European Renaissances and instead was incredibly important in opening Europe to the unknown and bringing a more worldly view to those European Renaissances, as at the time the Portuguese Empire spanned the globe.
WThe Renaissance of the 12th century was a period of many changes at the outset of the High Middle Ages. It included social, political and economic transformations, and an intellectual revitalization of Western Europe with strong philosophical and scientific roots. These changes paved the way for later achievements such as the literary and artistic movement of the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century and the scientific developments of the 17th century.
WRenaissance technology was the set of European artifacts and inventions which spread through the Renaissance period, roughly the 14th century through the 16th century. The era is marked by profound technical advancements such as the printing press, linear perspective in drawing, patent law, double shell domes and bastion fortresses. Sketchbooks from artisans of the period give a deep insight into the mechanical technology then known and applied.
WThe Sack of Rome, then part of the Papal States, on 6 May 1527 was carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor during the War of the League of Cognac. The largely Protestant German Landsknechts, mutinying over unpaid wages, as well as Spanish soldiers and Italian mercenaries, entered the city of Rome, defeated the vastly outnumbered defenders, and looted the city. The sack debilitated the League of Cognac, an alliance formed by France, Milan, Venice, Florence and the Papacy against Charles V. Pope Clement VII took refuge in Castel Sant' Angelo after the Swiss Guard were annihilated in a delaying rearguard action, where he remained until a ransom was paid to the pillagers. Benvenuto Cellini, eyewitness to the events, described the sack in his works.
WDuring the Renaissance, great advances occurred in geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, manufacturing, anatomy and engineering. The rediscovery of ancient scientific texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. But, at least in its initial period, some see the Renaissance as one of scientific backwardness. Historians like George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have criticized how the Renaissance affected science, arguing that progress was slowed for some amount of time. Humanists favoured human-centered subjects like politics and history over study of natural philosophy or applied mathematics. Others have focused on the positive influence of the Renaissance, pointing to factors like the rediscovery of lost or obscure texts and the increased emphasis on the study of language and the correct reading of texts.
WSine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, Latin for Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes, or Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus, is a quotation from the Roman comedian Terence that became a proverb in the Early Modern period. Its simplest level of meaning is that love needs food and wine to thrive. It was sometimes shown in art, especially in the period 1550–1630, in Northern Mannerism in Prague and the Low Countries, as well as by Rubens.
WThe Toplerhaus was an important Renaissance town house in the German city of Nuremberg. It was named after the patrician family Topler and was among the most elaborate of the late Renaissance residencies in the city. It was destroyed in a bombing raid in World War II.