In your own words, what were the core intellectual, political, and artistic characteristics of the Italian Renaissance (c. 1350-1550 CE)? Describe two figures that seem to represent especially important Renaissance characteristics. Explain your reasoning. 250 words Solution The Renaissance is the reentrance into the world of that secular, inquiring, self- reliant spirit which characterized the life and culture of classical antiquity. This is simply to say that under the influence of the intellectual revival the men of Western Europe came to think and feel, to look upon life and the outer world, as did the men of ancient Greece and Rome; and this again is merely to say that they ceased to think and feel as mediaeval men and began to think and feel as modern men. Just as the Reformation went forth from Germany and the Political Revolution from France, so did the Renaissance go forth from Italy. And this was not an accident. The Renaissance had its real beginnings in Italy for the reason that all those agencies which were slowly transforming the mediaeval into the modern world were here more active and effective in their workings than elsewhere. City life was more perfectly developed in Italy than in the other countries of Western Europe. In the air of the great Italian city-republics there was nourished a strong, self-reliant, secular, myriad-sided life. It was a political, intellectual, and artistic life like that of the cities of ancient Greece. Florence, for example, became a second Athens. The cities themselves were, in a very exact sense, fragments of the old Empire.The influence which these reminders of a glorious past exerted upon sensitive souls is well illustrated by the biographies of such men as Boccaccio and Petrarch. Petrarch is best known to most as the writer of Italian sonnets, but his significance for general history is due almost wholly to his relation to the revival of classic learning in Italy. Petrarch was the first and greatest representative of the humanistic phase of the Italian Renaissance. He was the first scholar of the mediaeval time who fully realized and appreciated the supreme excellence and beauty of the classical literature and its value as a means of culture. Boccaccio did much to spread and to deepen the enthusiasm for antiquity that Petrarch had awakened. He industriously collected and copied ancient manuscripts and thus greatly promoted classical scholarship in Italy..

1. In your own words, what were the core intellectual, political, and artistic characteristics of the
Italian Renaissance (c. 1350-1550 CE)? Describe two figures that seem to represent especially
important Renaissance characteristics. Explain your reasoning. 250 words
Solution
The Renaissance is the reentrance into the world of that secular, inquiring, self-
reliant spirit which characterized the life and culture of classical antiquity. This is simply to say
that under the influence of the intellectual revival the men of Western Europe came to think and
feel, to look upon life and the outer world, as did the men of ancient Greece and Rome; and this
again is merely to say that they ceased to think and feel as mediaeval men and began to think and
feel as modern men. Just as the Reformation went forth from Germany and the Political
Revolution from France, so did the Renaissance go forth from Italy. And this was not an
accident. The Renaissance had its real beginnings in Italy for the reason that all those agencies
which were slowly transforming the mediaeval into the modern world were here more active and
effective in their workings than elsewhere. City life was more perfectly developed in Italy than in
the other countries of Western Europe. In the air of the great Italian city-republics there was
nourished a strong, self-reliant, secular, myriad-sided life. It was a political, intellectual, and
artistic life like that of the cities of ancient Greece. Florence, for example, became a second
Athens. The cities themselves were, in a very exact sense, fragments of the old Empire.The
influence which these reminders of a glorious past exerted upon sensitive souls is well illustrated
by the biographies of such men as Boccaccio and Petrarch. Petrarch is best known to most as the
writer of Italian sonnets, but his significance for general history is due almost wholly to his
relation to the revival of classic learning in Italy. Petrarch was the first and greatest
representative of the humanistic phase of the Italian Renaissance. He was the first scholar of the
mediaeval time who fully realized and appreciated the supreme excellence and beauty of the
classical literature and its value as a means of culture. Boccaccio did much to spread and to
deepen the enthusiasm for antiquity that Petrarch had awakened. He industriously collected and
copied ancient manuscripts and thus greatly promoted classical scholarship in Italy.