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Europe's rebirth as the return of pagan antiquity: Greek scholars and manuscripts scattered west by the fall of Constantinople, Medici gold funding the recovery of Plato, Botticelli's Venus and Raphael's pagan philosophers on the pope's own walls...
Europe's rebirth as the return of pagan antiquity: Greek scholars and manuscripts scattered west by the fall of Constantinople, Medici gold funding the recovery of Plato, Botticelli's Venus and Raphael's pagan philosophers on the pope's own walls, and Leonardo's fusion of art and science.
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The poet Petrarch rediscovers lost letters of Cicero and champions the study of classical antiquity, becoming the father of Renaissance humanism. The movement sought to be reborn by reviving the learning of pagan Greece and Rome.
The Flemish master Jan van Eyck paints the Arnolfini Portrait, showing a command of oil paint that let light, texture, and detail glow as never before. His technique spread across Europe and marked the flowering of a distinct Northern Renaissance in the Low Countries.
Leon Battista Alberti writes On Painting, setting out the rules of linear perspective that let artists render depth on a flat surface. His treatises on painting and architecture turned Renaissance art into a discipline built on mathematics and the models of antiquity.
Filippo Brunelleschi completes the great dome of Florence's cathedral, the largest masonry dome ever raised and long thought impossible to build. Drawing on the study of ancient Roman engineering, it became the signature monument of the early Renaissance.
Donatello casts a bronze David, the first free-standing nude statue since antiquity, for a Medici courtyard. His return to the classical human form set the course for a century of Renaissance sculpture.
also in Hinges of history, How technology remade the world, Media, education, and information, Media, propaganda, and influence, Science and technology
Johannes Gutenberg develops printing with movable metal type around 1440. Cheap, fast reproduction of texts spreads literacy and new ideas, fueling the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.
When the Ottomans take Constantinople, Byzantine scholars flee to Italy carrying Greek manuscripts of Plato, Aristotle, and the ancients. The influx of long-lost texts helped ignite the Renaissance revival of classical knowledge.
The banker Cosimo de' Medici endows a Platonic Academy in Florence and sets Marsilio Ficino to translating the ancient philosophers. Medici gold turned the recovery of pagan antiquity into the beating heart of the Renaissance.
Lorenzo de' Medici takes charge of Florence and becomes the greatest patron of the age, funding Botticelli, the young Michelangelo, and a circle of humanist scholars. His rule marked the high point of Florentine wealth, art, and learning.
Botticelli paints the Birth of Venus, a nude pagan goddess rising from the sea, for a Medici patron. After a thousand years of Christian art, the old gods returned openly to the canvas, a rebirth of antiquity in the most literal sense.
The young scholar Pico della Mirandola writes his Oration on the Dignity of Man, arguing that human beings can shape their own nature and rise toward the divine. It became a manifesto of Renaissance humanism and its new confidence in human potential.
Leonardo da Vinci unites painting, anatomy, engineering, and natural science in a single restless mind, the model of the Renaissance universal man. His notebooks fused art and science in a way the modern world still idealizes.
The printer Aldus Manutius founds the Aldine Press and issues affordable pocket editions of Aristotle, Plato, and the Greek and Latin authors. His work put the recovered classics into the hands of scholars across Europe and helped standardize the printed book.
Albrecht Durer travels to Italy, absorbs its art and theory of proportion, and brings the Renaissance home to Germany through his paintings and printed engravings. His prints spread the new style far beyond what any single painting could reach.
Leonardo da Vinci begins the Mona Lisa, using soft gradations of light and shadow to give his sitter a lifelike presence and famously ambiguous smile. It became the most celebrated portrait in the world and a symbol of Renaissance painting itself.
Michelangelo unveils his marble David, a colossal nude of heroic calm that the Florentine republic set up as a civic symbol. Cut from a single flawed block, it stands among the supreme achievements of Renaissance sculpture.
Raphael's fresco The School of Athens gathers Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and the pagan sages on the walls of the pope's own palace. The Church itself enshrined the wisdom of pre-Christian antiquity at the height of the Renaissance.
Michelangelo completes the Sistine Chapel ceiling, blending biblical scenes with the muscular forms of classical sculpture. The High Renaissance fused Christian faith and pagan aesthetics into a new vision of the human.
Out of office and in exile, Niccolo Machiavelli writes The Prince, a cold study of how rulers actually win and hold power rather than how they ought to behave. It broke with medieval moral theory and helped found modern political thought.
The humanist Erasmus publishes a new Greek edition of the New Testament, applying classical scholarship to scripture itself. Renaissance humanism spread north of the Alps and helped set the stage for the Reformation.
The English humanist Thomas More publishes Utopia, describing an imaginary island commonwealth to hold a mirror up to the failings of his own society. Written in Latin and steeped in classical learning, it showed how Renaissance humanism reached into political and social criticism.
Mutinous imperial troops sack Rome, scattering its artists and shattering the confidence of the papal city. The catastrophe is often taken as the end of the High Renaissance in Italy.
Nicolaus Copernicus publishes On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, placing the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the cosmos. The book overturned the ancient model of the heavens and opened the scientific revolution that grew out of the Renaissance.
Andreas Vesalius publishes On the Fabric of the Human Body, based on his own dissections rather than ancient authority, and correcting long-accepted errors. Its accurate illustrations founded modern anatomy in the same year Copernicus reordered the heavens.
Giorgio Vasari publishes his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, telling the story of art from Giotto to Michelangelo as a rebirth of classical excellence. His word for that rebirth, rinascita, gave the whole age its name.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder paints sweeping scenes of peasant life and the changing seasons, turning ordinary people into the subject of great art. His work marks the late flowering of the Renaissance in the north as the movement spread and matured across Europe.