In my last lecture we discussed the catastrophes of the 1300s and 1400s and their impact. In this lecture, we're going to talk about something a little more positive, less depressing, the Renaissance. Now Renaissance means rebirth or revival, and we've already talked about a couple of small Renaissances, the Carolingian Renaissance in the 800s and the 12th century Renaissance. But these two Renaissances were nothing in comparison to the Renaissance that took place between 1350 and 1550. This Renaissance began in Italy, hence its official name, the Italian Renaissance. But this Renaissance was so important and so influential that most people know it simply as the Renaissance with a capital R. The Renaissance was not only important because of the widespread impact on the culture of Europe at the time, but also because many historians point to this period of time as the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. [SLIDE] So our questions for this lecture are what developments in literature and art took place during the Italian Renaissance, and how did government develop in the Italian city-states, and how did this development influence the Renaissance? So what exactly was the Renaissance? [SLIDE] In short, the Italian Renaissance was a rebirth of education, science, art, literature, and music following the catastrophes of the late Middle Ages. Much of this rebirth was connected to a desire to imitate and understand the ancient Greeks and Romans. But it was much more than that. It represented a desire to think in new ways and to express beauty and the richness of life. [SLIDE] Humanists were writers who studied ancient Latin and Greek texts during the Renaissance. They primarily did so because they wanted to find models for how people should behave in war, and families as rulers, and in many other roles. And they looked to the ancient Romans and Greeks because they thought that they were the perfect role models. And it makes sense. The people of Italy at this time still saw the ruins of ancient Roman buildings in their daily lives. The Colosseum of Rome, the ancient churches that Constantine built, the old statues of the Roman generals and emperors. Many of these were still standing during the Renaissance. Adding to this, as Europe began to recover from the Black Death, trade picked up again and people began to bring back ancient works of literature. It was during this time that Europeans were reintroduced to works by ancient Greeks like Sophocles, Euripides, and Thucydides. So during the 1400s and the 1500s, Humanists expressed a renewed interest in the old manuscripts and texts written by the Romans and Greeks. But the Humanists didn't just read these old manuscripts and texts. They analyzed them from every angle, looking for the key to success in life and ideal models to follow in order to obtain that success. [SLIDE] One of the most famous Humanists was Francesco Petrarca, better known as Petrar.

1. In my last lecture we discussed the catastrophes of the 1300s
and 1400s and their impact. In this
lecture, we're going to talk about something a little more
positive, less depressing, the
Renaissance. Now Renaissance means rebirth or revival, and
we've already talked about a couple
of small Renaissances, the Carolingian Renaissance in the 800s
and the 12th century
Renaissance. But these two Renaissances were nothing in
comparison to the Renaissance that
took place between 1350 and 1550. This Renaissance began in
Italy, hence its official name, the
Italian Renaissance. But this Renaissance was so important and
so influential that most people
know it simply as the Renaissance with a capital R. The
Renaissance was not only important
because of the widespread impact on the culture of Europe at
the time, but also because many
historians point to this period of time as the end of the Middle
Ages and the beginning of the
modern era.
[SLIDE] So our questions for this lecture are what
developments in literature and art took place
during the Italian Renaissance, and how did government
develop in the Italian city-states, and
how did this development influence the Renaissance? So what
exactly was the Renaissance?
[SLIDE] In short, the Italian Renaissance was a rebirth of
education, science, art, literature, and
music following the catastrophes of the late Middle Ages. Much
of this rebirth was connected to
a desire to imitate and understand the ancient Greeks and
Romans. But it was much more than
that. It represented a desire to think in new ways and to express

2. beauty and the richness of life.
[SLIDE] Humanists were writers who studied ancient Latin and
Greek texts during the
Renaissance. They primarily did so because they wanted to find
models for how people should
behave in war, and families as rulers, and in many other roles.
And they looked to the ancient
Romans and Greeks because they thought that they were the
perfect role models. And it makes
sense. The people of Italy at this time still saw the ruins of
ancient Roman buildings in their daily
lives. The Colosseum of Rome, the ancient churches that
Constantine built, the old statues of the
Roman generals and emperors. Many of these were still standing
during the Renaissance. Adding
to this, as Europe began to recover from the Black Death, trade
picked up again and people
began to bring back ancient works of literature. It was during
this time that Europeans were
reintroduced to works by ancient Greeks like Sophocles,
Euripides, and Thucydides. So during
the 1400s and the 1500s, Humanists expressed a renewed
interest in the old manuscripts and
texts written by the Romans and Greeks. But the Humanists
didn't just read these old
manuscripts and texts. They analyzed them from every angle,
looking for the key to success in
life and ideal models to follow in order to obtain that success.
[SLIDE] One of the most famous
Humanists was Francesco Petrarca, better known as Petrarch.
Petrarch spent a lot of time
searching through old books and archives to recover lost texts
written by the ancient Romans and
Greeks. And he was particularly interested in the rhetoric used
in these ancient texts. Rhetoric is
the art of persuasive speaking during which the speaker tries to

3. persuade the audience of
something. Petrarch thought that the ability to persuade people
was an important political tool,
and he wanted to know how the ancient Greeks and Romans did
it so that he could use their
strategies. [SLIDE] Lorenzo Valla was another important
humanist who followed in Petrarch’s
footsteps. Lorenzo Valla developed a method of studying
ancient texts called philology.
Philology is the study of how culture and events influence
developments in language. Valla
understood that ancient languages, like Latin, had evolved over
time and had been influenced by
various events and developments so that words and phrases
came to have different meanings
based on the time period they were used. This development in
language still exists today. We can
take the word “cool” as a good example of this. Today, someone
might use this word to say
something is awesome or neat. But, in the early 1900s or even
the 1950s, that word was only
connected to a temperature. So, Lorenzo Valla was looking back
at ancient texts to try to
understand the original meaning of words and how they had
changed over time. And this type of
study actually helped him identify some documents that were
claimed to be “authentically
ancient” as fraudulent. He could tell by the language in them
that they were actually written
much later than people claimed.
[SLIDE] Now I told you in my previous lectures that the kings
of Europe gained power in the
late Middle Ages. And in response to this, intellectuals also
began to consider what made a good
king and the most effective way for a king to rule his
government. This produced a new type of

4. political literature. Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince represents
the best example of this.
Machiavelli lived in Florence, Italy, and he worked as the
secretary for the government in
Florence, as the secretary, he went on numerous diplomatic
missions to France and Germany,
and he saw firsthand how the rulers and officials and these
kingdoms ran their governments and
how they were organized differently and similarly to the
government in Florence. This
experience encouraged Machiavelli to write down his theories
about the best way to acquire and
expand political power, and how to restore and maintain order
in a kingdom. Prior to
Machiavelli, in the Middle Ages, people thought that rulers
should rule entirely based on
Christian moral principles. Machiavelli did away with this sort
of thinking. He argued that our
rulers' actions should be geared towards gaining more power,
not constrained by morality. He
maintained that since other rulers were willing to do unethical,
unfair, and even evil things in
order to gain an advantage, then so should you. In short, he
thought that a ruler must be willing
to forget his conscience if he wanted to be the most powerful
ruler and have the most powerful
kingdom. What connects Machiavelli to the Renaissance was
not his approach for rulers to gain
power, but rather the end by which he hoped the means would
prove worthwhile. Machiavelli
hoped that a strong ruler would help to create a more stable
political environment from which a
more ideal government could emerge. And in Machiavelli’s
opinion the most ideal type of
government was a republic like the ancient Romans established
2 thousands years ago.

5. [SLIDE] Renaissance artists also looked to the ancient Romans
and Greeks. Like the Greeks and
Romans, Renaissance artists sought to depict ideal beauty for
both men and women. We're going
to look at a few examples of this, and as we do, you'll notice
that the subjects tend to be Christian
in nature, but the way Renaissance artists depict the human
body echoes the ancient Greek and
Roman depiction of ideal beauty. [SLIDE] The first artist I want
to discuss is Donatello, who
was from Florence. And Donatello is most famous for his statue
of The David. [SLIDE] You'll
notice that at the bottom of the statue, David is standing on
Goliath's head. But it appears that the
artist, Donatello, was more focused on depicting ideal male
beauty than he was on portraying the
subject matter itself. [SLIDE] Raphael was already known as
one of Italy's best painters at the
age of 25. Like Donatello, Raphael appears in his artwork to be
more focused on depicting ideal
beauty than he was on the actual subject matter. In addition to
ideal beauty, Raffaello is also
famous for using a new artistic technique called linear
perspective. This technique used geometry
to give the illusion of depth to make the image look three-
dimensional. [SLIDE] Two examples
of Raffaello's focus on ideal beauty and linear perspective are
his Madonna of the Baldacchino
and The Marriage of the Virgin. You can really see his use of
linear perspective in the image on
the right in the tiling on the ground in the background there.
[SLIDE] Michelangelo was another
artistic giant of the Renaissance. In 1508 Pope Julius II called
Michelangelo to Rome to paint the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which is a chapel in the Palace of
the Pope. [SLIDE] This took

6. about four years for Michelangelo to complete, and the images
represent stories from the Book
of Genesis. But like other Renaissance artists, Michelangelo
used the biblical stories to show
what he believed was the ideal human body. You can see this in
the way that Michelangelo
depicted Adam at the center. [SLIDE] Another example of this
is his statue of The David. This
statue is humongous. It is 14 feet tall, and it took Michelangelo
about three years to complete.
Now you may have noticed a trend at this point. We've talked
about Michelangelo, Donatello,
and Raffaello. If you've ever seen the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles, you may know that there is
only one left, and that is Leonardo. Of course, keep in mind that
The Ninja Turtles are named
after the artists, not the other way around. [SLIDE] So
Leonardo da Vinci is best known for his
Mona Lisa and [SLIDE] The Last Supper. [SLIDE] Like the
other artists of his time, Leonardo
da Vinci was interested in being able to depict the ideal human
body. And Leonardo
demonstrated that geometry wasn't just for painting buildings
and architecture. It was also useful
for depicting people. [SLIDE] And this is particularly evident in
his Vitruvian Man, which uses
geometry to proportionately depict the male body. In this work,
he determined that the ideal male
body was eight heads high. [SLIDE] But in addition to
portraying ideal beauty, Leonardo also
liked to depict nature as it appeared in real life. He made
careful studies of blades of grass, cloud
formations, and animals.
[SLIDE] So artists were creating all of these beautiful paintings
and sculptures, and humanists
and political theorists were writing texts based on ancient Greek

7. and Roman thought. But it's
common sense that you can only be a successful artist or author
if someone buys your work.
Even Renaissance artists and writers had to pay their bills. And
this is where the Renaissance
patron fits in. A patron is a person or a group of people who
commission a piece of art work or a
text. To commission something means to pay someone to create
something for you. The people
who have the disposable income necessary to commission art
and literature at this time were
those kings, lords, and of course, the people in charge of the
churches. When a patron wanted a
painting or a sculpture created, they often had a particular artist
in mind who they wanted to do
it. For example, I told you a few minutes ago that when Pope
Julius II wanted to paint the Sistine
Chapel, he called on Michelangelo specifically. And while the
elite commissioned art because
they wanted something pretty to look at, they also did so
because they got something out of it,
too. By commissioning art and literature, kings, lords, and even
popes demonstrated their power
to others. They demonstrated that they had the wealth necessary
to commission art or a piece of
literature. Hoping to appear the most powerful of all, the elite
of Italy often competed with each
other to bring in the best artists and the best intellectuals to
their court.
[SLIDE] So let's turn now to look at the actual elite of Italy and
why they wanted to show off
their power. So a couple lectures ago, we talked about the rise
of cities. And I explained to you
that in the 1100s and 1200s, people began giving nearby lords
money in exchange for their rights
as citizens of the city. Most lords accepted this exchange, but

8. sometimes lords were not as
willing to give up their claim to a nearby city, and the
townspeople had to go and take it by force.
And they did so by forming communes. And these communes
were particularly common in north
and central Italy. In the 1200s there were over 100 of these
independent communes in Italy, but
over time, they began to come together to form city-states in
which the largest city represented
the capital of the surrounding area. [SLIDE] So, unlike England
or France, Italy wasn’t one
unified kingdom. Instead, it was a diverse group of city-states
that had their own culture and
ways of doing things. The map on your screen shows the city-
states of Italy in 1494. So the most
powerful and wealthiest merchant families living in these
Renaissance city-states often took
charge and created different forms of government. The leaders
of these city-states helped to
bring about and expand the Renaissance because they competed
to bring in the best artists and
intellectuals. From their perspective, if they could turn their
city-state into the cultural center of
Italy, then this would demonstrate that they were the best
leaders in all of Italy and all of Europe.
[SLIDE] Your textbook mentions in passing that city-states like
Florence, Venice, and Milan
create different forms of government. But, the chapter doesn’t
go into enough detail about these
different types of government, so I want to give you a little
more detail about. So let's talk about
a few of these city-states and the people that were in charge of
them. Florence was a city-state
with a theoretical Republican government. But in 1434, the
wealthiest merchant in Florence,
Cosimo de Medici, took control of the government. He allowed

9. elections to continue and
consequently maintained an image of Florence as a Republican
government. But in reality, the
only choices people had in these elections were various
members of the Medici family. To
counteract this image of tyranny, Cosimo and the other Medicis
became big patrons of art and
literature. By commissioning lots of artwork and literature, the
Medicis shaped an image of
themselves as generous and good leaders. Cosimo also
commissioned art to justify his family's
power in the city. [SLIDE] For example, in the private chapel of
his palace, Cosimo had artists
paint him alongside the three wise men as they traveled to see
the newborn Jesus Christ. In doing
so, Cosimo portrayed himself as similar to the ancient kings
who first recognized the holiness of
Christ. The Medicis' reliance on artwork and literature to
maintain sole power in a Republican
government in turn encouraged the spread of the Renaissance in
Italy.
[SLIDE] Whereas Florence had a Republican government, this
wasn't the case for all Italian
city-states. Some, like the city-state of Urbino, were governed
by princes. They were a
monarchy. The term prince meant that the ruler of the state
possessed a formal title such as
Marquise, Duke, or King. So the prince of a city-state could be
of royal lineage, but not
necessarily. None of these princes, however, were elected
officials. In the mid-1400s, the Duke
of the city-state of Urbino was Federico da Montifeltro. The
state of Urbino wasn't a big money
maker for the Duke, so he made his money by training the
peasants of his state to be good
soldiers, and then he hired them out to the highest bidder. In

10. other words, the soldiers of Urbino
were mercenaries. The Duke's mercenary army became very
famous and he made a lot of money
off of them. He used this money to fund scholars, artists, and to
build beautiful buildings for
himself and his city-state. He collected Latin manuscripts,
which encouraged intellectuals to
come to Urbino to study them. The Duke's financing of
scholarship and art meant that the state
of Urbino was not only known for its military, but also its
cultural significance. The Duke of
Urbino wanted to have this many pretty things as the Medicis,
and this competition contributed
to the Renaissance in Italy.
[SLIDE] The territory ruled by the Pope was situated in central
Italy. And the Pope had
maintained control of territory in Italy beginning centuries
before when these popes began to
think of themselves as the kings of the Roman Catholic Church.
But when the popes moved to
Avignon in France in the 1300s, they lost authority in the Papal
States because they nearly
bankrupted them trying to finance their new palace in France.
But in the 1400s, the popes fought
to retake control of the Papal States. And to demonstrate their
power in the territory and
throughout Italy, they, too, focused on art and literature. The
popes did not want to be outdone
by the merchants and lords of Italy. They wanted to show that
they had the most beautiful
palaces and were able to bring in the best scholars and artists.
For the popes, this was about
regaining their power in Europe. If they could bring in the best
artists and intellectuals and
possess the best works, then they were better than the regular
leaders and kings. In this sense,

11. competition was a huge contributing element to the cultural
explosion of the Renaissance.
[SLIDE] Now in discussing these different states, whether they
had a Republican government or
not, I have mentioned the names of quite a few men. But we
need to note that even though the
men were recognized as the official leaders of their state, the
wives of these leaders often played
a large role in politics and in the advancement of the
Renaissance. Humanists like Leonardo
Bruni and Leon Battista Alberti emphasized traditional gender
roles in which men were
dedicated to bettering their kingdoms and states, while women
where focused on their
households and remained subservient to men. But, as we know,
reality doesn’t always follow
what people believe should happen. During the Renaissance,
young elite women were often
married off to older men who, because of their age, had
managed to accumulate a lot of wealth
and political clout. As a result, elite women were often
widowed at a young age. Furthermore,
the leaders of the Italian city-states were often gone for long
periods of the year due to their work
as merchants or military leaders. All of this gave elite women in
Renaissance Italy more
independence and opportunities to exercise power as political
and cultural leaders. [SLIDE] For
example, Isabella d'Este was the wife of Francesco Gonzaga. He
was the Prince of Mantua,
another Italian state. And like the Duke of Urbino, the Prince of
Mantua made money by hiring
out his trained army, for which he was the commander. While
he was away fighting battles, his
wife Isabella governed Mantua, and she earned a reputation as
an excellent negotiator and

12. diplomat. And like other political leaders, she was a great
collector of art and scholarship.
[SLIDE] We've been talking primarily about Italy, which is
where the Renaissance began. But
over time the Renaissance spread to other European nations.
European rulers who fought or
studied in Italy brought back a love of Renaissance art and
literature. Like Italian leaders, they
began to compete to bring in the best artists and intellectuals.
King Philip II of Spain, for
example, was notorious for offering Italian artists lots of money
to come live in his Spanish
court. In addition, Italian merchants helped to spread interest in
Renaissance culture as they
traveled throughout Europe. And as the Renaissance spread to
other kingdoms, more and more
people gained an interest in the ancient Romans and Greeks, in
the concept of ideal beauty, and
in the ideas of Italian scholars, those Humanists and political
thinkers we talked about. In turn,
this interest motivated a growing demand for books. But up to
this point, books were still
incredibly expensive because someone writing a book had to
write down each and every single
word to produce that book. But when the Renaissance hit
Germany, this changed.
In the mid-1400s, a man by the name of Johannes Gutenberg
began experimenting with movable
type. Gutenberg was the son of goldsmith and was thus familiar
with metal work. He started
creating small metal type that could be moved around. And he
realized that by arranging this
metal type into different words, you could then put ink and then
transfer all of those words onto a
piece of paper. You could do this over and over again,
producing multiple pages with the same

13. words. Then you could move the type around and create another
page of words. In doing so, you
could mass produce books without having to write any words by
hand. Gutenberg completed his
first Bible doing this in 1455. It was the first book produced by
movable type in the West. But
Gutenberg's printing press may have come to nothing if not for
another development, cheap
paper. A new technique of creating paper arrived from Asia in
the 1400s. Rather than parchment,
which was made from animal skins and was very expensive,
mills began to turn cloth rags into
pulp, which could then be turned into paper. This way of
making paper meant that it was a lot
less expensive and you could make a lot more of it. So the
combination of Gutenberg's printing
press and the development of cheaper, more plentiful paper
meant that more books could be
produced. They could be produced faster, and they were
cheaper. The invention of the printing
press and the introduction of this type of paper has an
interesting relationship with the
Renaissance. It was a product of the Renaissance spreading
throughout Europe, but it also further
encouraged the Renaissance. And this was because the mass
production of books helped to
spread the ideas of the Humanists and the political theorists
even further. Furthermore, it
encouraged an increase in literacy during the Renaissance, and
it also helped to standardize
national languages. As more books were printed and more
people read the, governments began to
promote one official printed dialect over others. For example, in
England, the government began
to promote the “king’s English”, which was a standard of
spelling and grammar that authors

14. began to use in their books. Following this, perhaps
unsurprisingly, the first dictionary was
printed in the early 1600s in order to demonstrate how words
should be spelled and what they
meant.
[SLIDE] So let's go back to our original questions. We asked
what developments in literature
and art took place during the Italian Renaissance. And what we
said was that Humanists used
ancient Greek and Roman models to think about all different
things, history, politics, and culture.
Intellectuals encouraged rulers to abandon morality and do what
was necessary in order to gain
more power and an advantage over other rulers. And artists use
ancient Greek and Roman
models to depict ideal beauty.
[SLIDE] Our second question was how did the Italian city-states
develop, and how did this
development influence the Renaissance? What I told you is that
communes merged to form those
city-states, and powerful merchants emerged as leaders of
different types of governments. We
have republics, we have monarchies, we have different types.
And in order to demonstrate their
legitimacy as rulers and their power, these leaders acted as
patrons for artists and intellectuals.
And they competed with each other to bring the best artists and
scholars to their courts to
demonstrate their superiority. This patronage and competition
encouraged the flourishing of art
and ideas in Italy.