Renaissance The Plan: 1. The Renaissance Begins 1.1. Greek and Latin Revived 1.2.

Patrons Support the Renaissance 1.3. Michelangelo 1.4. Leonardo da Vinci 1.5. Botticelli, 1.6. Raphael 1.7. The Spread of the Renaissance 2. The Reformation 2.1. Martin Luther 2.2. The Thirty Years War 3. Elizabethan England 3.1. The Spanish Armada 3.2. Elizabeths London 3.3. The English Bill of Rights 3.4. The Legacy of Elizabethan England

1. The Renaissance Begins Italy in about 1350 was an exciting place. It was here that educated people began to develop new ideas about the world around them and rediscover the arts and learning of Ancient Greece and Rome. For a period of about 200 years that became known as the Renaissance, meaning rebirth, people made great advances in learning and thinking. Helped by the invention of printing, the Renaissance gradually spread from Italy to the rest of Europe. Although the Renaissance affected only the wealthy, it had an enormous impact on the way that everybody lived and thought about the world around them. The Renaissance produced great artists such as Michelangelo, and Raphael. It is also produced a new way of thinking called humanism, as scholars and thinkers such as Erasmus began to challenge the authority of Church. Humanism gave human beings more importance. It meant that artists such as Leonardo da Vinci began to produce more realistic images rather than symbolic scenes. Scientists, too, began to challenge old ideas about the nature of the universe and to conduct experiments. Lasting until about 1600, the Renaissance was a dazzling time. 1.1. Greek and Latin Revived Like Petrarch, a famous Italian poet and scholar, many people who lived in the 1300s hoped to bring back to life great culture of ancient civilizations. Renaissance thinkers believed that, since the fall of Rome in 476, the people of Europe had lived in darkness. Admiring only Greek and Roman art, Petrarch called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages. During the Renaissance there was a great wave of new interest in the classics, or literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Petrarch traveled from monastery to monastery in search of the classics. He searched through the piles of rotting books in order to find an ancient Greece or Roman text. 1.2. Patrons Support the Renaissance Many Italian artists were also influenced by the revival of Greek and Latin. They wanted to restore the rich culture of ancient Europe. To do this they began to copy the art ancient Greeks and Romans, also creating something new. Renaissance artists had the support of the families who ran the rich cities of northern Italy. Many of these families became patrons of the arts. Patron comes from the Latin word for father. A patron is a person who supports another person by the use of his or her money and influence. The most influential of all Renaissance patrons was a man named Lorenzo de Medici. He brought the most talented artists to his palace in Florence, Italy. Artists under his patronage made some of the worlds most beautiful art. Florence became known as the heart of the Renaissance. 1.3. Michelangelo Lorenzo de Medicis favorite artists was Michelangelo. But Michelangelo (1475-1564) was also the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance. Like the Greek sculptures that inspired him, Michelangelo created art that seemed to be living. About Michelangelos sculpture, de Medici wrote:

Each act, each limb, each bone is given life and, mans body is raised breathing, alive, in wax or clay or stone When he was only 23, Michelangelo made a statue called the Pieta. Pieta is an Italian word meaning pity. This statue shows Mary holding the body of Jesus after his death by crucifixion. One write, who saw it when it was shown for the first time in about 1540, wrote the following words: It would be impossible for any craftsman or sculptor, no matter how brilliant, ever to surpass the grace or design of this work or to try to cut and polish the marble with the skill that Michelangelo displayed. Looking at the work by Michelangelo, it is easy to wonder how a black of marble could be turned into a piece of art. 1.4. Leonardo da Vinci During Michelangelos time another great artist was at work. It was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). As a boy, Leonardo was apprenticed to a famous master painter in Florence. As an apprentice he quickly showed tremendous ability. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most important Renaissance painters. He was also a man of many new ideas. For example, he wrote in his notebook: Cut the bat open, study it carefully, and on this model built the flying machine. As his notebooks show, Leonardo was fascinated with science. He left behind more than 5.000 notebooks pages. In addition to unique inventions, he drew objects with lifelike details. To find out more about the human body, he made careful drawings of the structure of muscles and bones. Perhaps this explains why the Mona Liza, his painting of a young woman from Florence, looks so real. 1.5. Botticelli The paintings of Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510) show many of the features typical of Renaissance art: clear lines, even composition, and an emphasis on human activity. Renaissance artists painted realistic, mythological, and biblical subjects. Most tried to make their paintings as realistic as possible by using perspective to give scenes an appearance of depth. 1.6. Raphael Raphael was born on April 6, 1483, in Urbino, Italy. He became Perugino's apprentice in 1504. Living in Florence from 1504 to 1507, he began paiting a series of "Madonnas." In Rome from 1509 to 1511, he painted the Stanza della Segnatura ("Room of the Signatura") frescoes located in the Palace of the Vatican. He later painted another fresco cycle for the Vatican, in the Stanza d'Eliodoro ("Room of Heliodorus"). In 1514, Pope Julius II hired Raphael as his chief architect. Raphael completed his last work in his series of the "Madonnas," an oil painting called the Sistine Madonna. Raphael died in Rome on April 6, 1520. 1.7. The Spread of the Renaissance The Renaissance blossomed first in Italy, where rich patrons supported the arts. The Renaissance was a time of great artistic creativity. Its artists created some of the worlds most beautiful

works of art. Renaissance was spread all over the Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. England felt the effects of the Renaissance later than much of Europe because it was an island. In the early years of the 16 th century English thinkers became interested in the work of the Dutch philosopher Erasmus. One of them Thomas More, wrote a book in which he described an ideal nation. The book was called Utopia. It was very popular throughout Europe. The Renaissance also influenced religion, music and painting. In painting English masters developed their own special kind of painting, the portrait. In literature such names as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare were very popular. The plays which they wrote were staged in all theatres, and the public enjoyed them. Shakespeares popularity has not died down until our time.