Overview of key Renaissance concepts

1. Why does the Renaissance begin in Italy?
Economic Concepts:
Letters of Credit =
expand money supply
& expedite trade
Economic Concepts:
New accounting &
bookkeeping practices
(use of Arabic Numerals)
Florence, Venice & Genoa
Had access to trade routes
connecting Europe with
Middle Eastern markets
Florence, Venice & Genoa
Served as trade centers for
distribution of goods to
Northern Europe
Florence, Venice & Genoa
Were initially independent
city-states governed as
republics
What is the connection between the
increased wealth and emergence of the
Renaissance in Italy?
What event/events (couple centuries
before) helped contribute to the
advantageous financial position of
Florence, Venice, Genoa? How?
Renaissance: “Rebirth of
classical knowledge; “birth” of
the modern world.
Renaissance spread from Italy to
northern Europe.

2. Effects of the Crusades
Foremost among the effects of the Crusades was the final fatal weakening of the Byzantine Empire. The Crusades failed to recover Anatolia from the Turks, and the sack of Constantinople in
1204 destroyed Byzantium as a first rate power. Henceforth, it would exist only as a convenience to the Turks. Initially it served as a buffer state against the Turks. By the late 1300's the
Byzantines were encouraging the Turks to invade the Balkans to create a buffer to protect the Byzantines from rival Europeans. For a while longer Byzantium was useful to the Turks as a point of
contact with the West; when it had outlived its usefulness, they took it in 1453.
Perhaps the most significant effect of the Crusades was a vast increase in cultural horizons for many Europeans. For every European who went on a Crusade (let alone the minuscule fraction
who returned) there were hundreds who knew someone who had gone, or who had seen the Crusaders march by. Palestine was no longer a quasi-mythical place that people knew only from Bible
readings in church; it was a real place where real people went. Once Crusader kingdoms, however fragile, were set up in Palestine, they traded with their kin in Europe, sending finished goods to
Europe and importing raw materials. The result was a stimulus to Mediterranean trade. The need to transfer large sums of money for troops and supplies led to development of banking and
accounting techniques. If the combatants in the Crusades came mostly from France, Germany and England, the middlemen tended to be merchants from northern Italy. The Crusades launched the
economic dominance of cities like Genoa and Venice. The financial burdens of the Crusades, coupled with the need to borrow money to finance them, weakened the power of the nobility and
strengthened the merchant classes and the independence of cities.
A number of cultural institutions we think of as characteristically medieval came into being during the Crusades. Crusader knights, almost all of them illiterate, soon began using emblems
and geometric designs to identify themselves. This practice later evolved into a complex code of heraldic emblems and coats of arms. Romantic and imaginative literature also blossomed during
the Crusades. Although we typically picture the Middle Ages in terms of stone castles, a great deal of Europe's knowledge of heavy stone masonry, and construction of castles and stone churches
was returned from the Middle East. So were improved techniques of siege technology, tunneling, and sapping. Although tunneling technology would later be of great use in mining, its purpose in
warfare was to undermine or sap enemy fortifications. (Engineers, often called "sappers", have been considered a completely different branch of the military from the Army itself in many
countries.) European churches also began to include spires or steeples at about the time of the Crusades, possibly inspired by minarets.
The cultural and technological enrichment was primarily from East to West; Europe was underdeveloped by Middle Eastern standards and had little to give in return. The principal effects of
the Crusades on the Moslem world were negative. Europe lost prestige and military status in the eyes of Moslems, perhaps encouraging the later Turkish incursions into the Balkans. The Moslem
world was already becoming more intellectually and theologically conservative; the Crusades accelerated the process and further undermined the long tradition of tolerance in the Moslem world.
However, while the Crusaders were making minor nuisances of themselves pecking away at the Moslem world from the West, the Moslem world was about to receive a sledgehammer blow from
the East: the Mongol Invasion.
1. Create an organizational web/chart summarizing the “Effects of the Crusades”.
2. Write a DBQ-style thesis addressing the “Effects of the Crusades”.

3. Italian Renaissance
Northern RenaissanceNorthern Renaissance
Johann Gutenberg Sir Thomas MoreErasmus
Merging artistic styles
The Medici Family
Machiavelli
Humanism
•The focus on human potential and
achievements
•Humanists sought to understand
classical values
•Influenced artists to carry on classical
traditions
Michelangelo
New artistic techniques
Realism
vernacular
Perspective
Petrarch – 1304 - 1375
Leonardo da Vinci – 1452 - 1519
- wrote The Prince
Supported absolute power of ruler
End justifies means
Do good if possible; evil if
necessary
It better to be feared than loved
•Powerful family in Florence Italy
•Patrons of the arts
•Intent on creating centers of
commerce, education, & arts
“Renaissance Man”
Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer,
scientist, writer
Painted Mona Lisa & Last Supper
Painted ceiling of Sistine Chapel
Sculptor of David
“Father of Humanism”
Wrote many Italian & Latin sonnets
Writing in native language as
opposed to Latin
•Showing 3 dimensions
•Depth of field
Depiction of subjects as they appear
in everyday life; not idealistic
1440 – he creates movable type
Then invents the Printing Press
1455 – Gutenberg Bible = 1st
full-
sized book printed
-Literacy & access to books increased
Christian humanist writer
Famous work = The Praise of Folly
Christianity of the heart not ceremony
Christian humanist writer
Famous work = Utopia
An example of the ideal world
Free from society’s flaws
Mergence of humanist ideas
and Christianity
Portrayed religious and
secular subjects

4. The Medici family were patrons of the arts. Their patronage
(support) of the arts helped start the Renaissance.

5. Niccolo Machiavelli
Author of The Prince
How to be an effective ruler:
“It is better to be feared than loved”

6. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel

7. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel

8. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel

9. Michelangelo’s
sculpture of David

10. Petrarch – “Father of Humanism”
Perfected the art of
writing sonnets in
Latin and Italian.

11. Leonardo da Vinci – “Renaissance Man”

12. da Vinci’s Last Supper

13. da Vinci’s Mona Lisa

14. Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de'
Benci, c. 1474/1478, oil on panel,
National Gallery of Art

15. Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci

16. Sir Thomas More
Utopia
Christian humanist
writer
Famous work = Utopia
-An example of the ideal
world
- Free from society’s
flaws
1

17. Erasmus
The Praise of Folly
Christian humanist writer
Famous work =
The Praise of Folly
**Christianity of the heart,
not ceremony

18. Gutenberg Printing Press

20. Medieval art = 2 dimensional, no depth of field, less vivid color

21. Medieval art = 2 dimensional, no depth of field;
often religious themes

22. Medieval Art = 2 dimensional, no depth of field

23. Renaissance Art – vivid color,
3 dimensions = perspective

24. Renaissance art- showing perspective (depth of field)

25. Raphael’s School of Athens

26. Raphael’s School of Athens
1: Zeno of Citium 2: Epicurus 3: (Federico II of Mantua?) 4: Boethius or Anaximander or Empedocles? 5:
Averroes 6: Pythagoras 7: Alcibiades or Alexander the Great? 8: Antisthenes or Xenophon? 9: Hypatia (
Francesco Maria della Rovere?) 10: Aeschines or Xenophon? 11: Parmenides? 12: Socrates 13: Heraclitus (
Michelangelo) 14: Plato (Leonardo da Vinci) 15: Aristotle 16: Diogenes 17: Plotinus (Donatello?) 18: Euclid
or Archimedes with students (Bramante)? 19: Zoroaster 20: Ptolemy? R: Apelles (Raphael) 21: Protogenes (Il
Sodoma, Perugino, or Timoteo Viti)[12]

27. Focal point of
Raphael’s School of
Athens
Plato and Aristotle

28. Renaissance
Crash Course
Renaissance Man
Video