The Renaissance (0)

The Renaissance
Between 14th and 16th century in Europe
From French word rebirth
It was an age of  growth  in Europe. New, powerful  city states  emerged. A new middle class had more and more money to spend. Great artists , writers and thinkers lived during this time. During the Middle Ages many people who lived in the countryside worked on the land that they got from the noblemen. In return, they were  protected  by them
Between the middle and the end of the 14th century, the  plague , also called “Black Death ” killed almost half of Europe’s population. It spread  most rapidly in the larger cities where many people lived. This led to economic depression.
When the plague slowly decreased in the 15th century, the population in Europe began to grow. A new middle class emerged —bankers, merchants and trades people had a new market for their services. People became  wealthier and had more than enough money to spend. They began to build larger houses, buy more expensive clothes and get interested in art and literature . The middle class population also had more free time, which they spent learning  foreign  languages , reading , playing musical instruments and studying other things of interest. The Renaissance was especially strong in Italian cities. They became centres of trade,  wealth  and education. Many cities, like Venice, Genoa and Florence had famous  citizens who were very rich and gave the city a lot of money.
The printing of books led to a new way of thinking . Scholars of the Renaissance returned to the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers. These writings are called the “classics”. More and more scholars learned to read Greek and Latin and studied old manuscripts on topics like  science , art and life.During the Middle Ages people were guided by the church , which was against wealth, trading goods and other worldly interests. Humanists, however , did not believe that much in religion. They thought that money and trade were important in life and that citizens needed a good  general education.
During the Renaissance a churchman named Martin Luther changed Christianity. In 1517 he wrote a list of things that he didn’t like about the church and  posted  them on the door of his church in Wittenberg, Germany . Luther also wanted the church to hold  masses in German instead of Latin so that people could understand them better. Many other Christians  agreed that the church was in need of change. Luther and others  founded new religions and  split   away from the  Roman Catholic church.
Although changes took place everywhere in Europe, Florence was the centre of the Renaissance. Fifteenth century Florence was an exciting place to be. At that time the city was independent and had a population of about 60,000 .
Leonardo da Vinci ( 1452 —1519) was one of the most famous people of the Renaissance period . He was not only a famous painter but also studied science, designed  machines and drew plans for new  inventions .
Young Leonardo grew up near Florence and studied painting with the great painters of the city. After a few years in Milan, where he painted for a famous duke ,he came back to Florence and painted a new hall for the city council.
In his paintings da Vinci experimented with many techniques that artists hadn’t used before . For example, he started to use perspective in his paintings. He put small objects in the background to make them appear far away. He also experimented with light , shade and colours . Da Vinci finished painting The Last Supper in 1497 . The painting shows the last meal of Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles. In the picture Jesus has just announced that one of them will betray him. He created this famous scene on a wall of a dining room in a monastery.
Mona Lisa is probably the most famous painting ever painted. It is a portrait of the young wife of a Florentine silk merchant . It shows a young woman with her famous smile sitting on a balcony high above a landscape .
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The Renaissance was a cultural movement that started in Italy and spread all over Europe.
It is considered to be the division between the Middle Ages and the Modern era
The thinkers of this period, also called humanists, believe that the man should be the subject of study , and not God, as the Church had taught during the medieval period.
Based on that, they began to investigate fields such as astronomy, anatomy , science and many others which had never been given much attention .
English Renaissance
Like most of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. The beginning of the English Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485, when the  Battle of Bosworth Field  ended the  Wars of the Roses  and inaugurated the  Tudor Dynasty. Renaissance style and ideas , however, were slow in invading England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.
If you're looking for what is sometimes referred to as the English Renaissance then it would cover the reigns of both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, with Edward VI and Mary I coming in between; although the more famous elements came during the Elizabethan period (1558 - 1603).
Arguably, however, there was no Renaissance in England as it differed considerably to everywhere else. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were literature and music. Visual arts in the English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian version and had no real tie with the artistic achievements and aims of the northern Italian artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo , Donatello) who are closely identified with the Renaissance; and these art forms never went away during the medieval period and needed to be "reborn", they just took a step back during the Hundred Years War and the dynastic conflict of the Wars of the Roses.
Music
Music was an essential part of civic, religious , and courtly life in the Renaissance. The rich interchange of ideas in Europe, as well as political, economic, and religious events in the period 1400–1600 led to major changes in styles of composing, methods of disseminating music, new musical genres, and the development of musical instruments. The most important music of the early Renaissance was composed for use by the church—polyphonic (made up of several simultaneous melodies) masses and motets in Latin for important churches and court chapels. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, patronage was split among many areas: the Catholic Church, Protestant churches and courts, wealthy amateurs, and music printing—all were sources of income for composers.
Literature
Printing press: William Caxton was the person who introduced printing in England. Before that, the books were written out in longhand, what meant a very slow jog. With the printing , it was possible to produce books in large numbers and in a short amoun of time. That way, more people could learn to read and write. The oral tradition began to loose power both in literature and in the Church affairs.
Thomas More( 1480 -1535) – One of the gratest of all English humanists mainly for the book Utopia, written in Latin, in which were about an imaginary island where everything was perfect . Utopia means “nowhere” in Greek. Thomas new clearly that such an island could never exist . This dream of a place where happiness reigns and sorrow is banished is the most persistent of human fantasies and became a recurrent theme in many other british literature works . He was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to support his king ’s (henry viii) decision to break away from the catholic church.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is considered the greatest of all English authors; his texts and plays are known worldwide and are updated constantly. Though few is known about his life , he was born is the town of Stratford- upon -Avon and went to London when still young. In 1611 at the age of 47 his plays already made success on the stages, so he retired to his native town. Between many plays and poems he wrote are a midsummer night’s dream , hamlet and etc.
Queen Elizabeth I portrait "The Ermine Portrait". Painted in 1585 by Nicholas Hilliard. In the collection of the Marquess of Salisbury; On Display at Hatfield House.
Nicholas Hilliard (um 1547 - 1619)The Armada (1588)280 x 118 cm (110,0 x 46,2 inches)Technique oil on canvas London, Society of Apothecaries
This woodcut from 1568 shows the left printer removing a page from the press while the one at right inks the text-blocks. Such a duo could reach 14,000 hand movements per working day, printing around 3,600 pages in the process .
In this painting, done in London in 1533, Hans Holbein freeze-frames the Renaissance world. Two young men stand next to an array of objects that signify discovery , knowledge and the arts. A globe of the world, showing America, shares space with a lute , an astronomical globe, a Turkish rug used as a tablecloth, and a selection of mathematical instruments. These things speak of a widening world, in which Britain during the reign of Henry VIII was starting to play a bigger part. But something smears across the lower part of the painting, grisly and absurd : looked at from the correct angle, this distorted image reveals itself as a skull . Death haunts the age of discovery.
Sir John Gilberts 1849 painting The plays of Shakespeare containgin scenes and characters from several of w.s plays-