Italian Renaissance [repost]

When you think of the Italian Renaissance, chances are you think of what it gave us. The extraordinary sculptures of Michelangelo. The incomparable paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. The immortal written works of Petrarch and Machiavelli. But have you ever wondered why there was such an artistic, cultural and intellectual explosion in Italy at the start of the 14th century?

Why did it occur in Italy and not another part of Europe, and why did it happen in certain Italian city-states, such as Florence?

Why did it ultimately fail in the middle of the 16th century?

Professor Kenneth Bartlett offers you the opportunity to appreciate the results of the Italian Renaissance and to probe its origins. You will gain an understanding of the underlying social, political, and economic forces that made such exceptional art and culture possible.

In this course, you will learn from two masters: Professor Bartlett himself, and the eminent 19th-century art historian Jacob Burckhardt, who created the scholarly model—cultural history—through which the Renaissance is still widely studied today. Burckhardt believed that the Renaissance was best understood by examining the culture from which it arose: its social relations, economic structures, political systems, and religious beliefs.

Dr. Bartlett believes that this approach is akin to creating a mosaic using tesserae, pieces that consist of questions about social, economic, and political history, and about the day-to-day lives of individuals and families of the time.

How did the city-states of Italy amass such enormous wealth, and why did states such as Florence invest so much of their capital in art and learning?

How people lived, worked, and learned

What was the relationship of parents to children, husbands to wives, and citizens to their community?

Who could hold political power, and why? How is it that the Renaissance manifested itself so differently in different political environments: in a republic like Florence, a despotism like Milan, or a principality like Urbino?

Even the geography and topography of Italy become surprisingly crucial pieces of the picture. How did the country's unique shape—a peninsula with a mountain range running up its center—help to spark the Renaissance? Would the Renaissance have happened had Italy's geography been different?

This course will teach you that the Italian Renaissance mosaic is incomplete without the large and small pieces, such as the sack of Rome or the French invasions of 1494, and the dowry that a woman's family had to provide so she could be married. In addition, you will learn that some pieces you may have associated with another genre of history—the Protestant Reformation or the Council of Trent, for example—are a part of an accurate Renaissance depiction.

You will gain a sense of how the Renaissance really looked through the eyes of the men and women who lived it. In addition, you will appreciate the Italian Renaissance as the moment in history when culture reached a point that is still with us in the way we view the world and structure our lives, and in the Renaissance cities of present-day Italy.

The Mind-set of the Renaissance: Man as the Measure of all Things

If you could learn only one thing from this course, it would be this: The Italian Renaissance was essentially a mind-set, a collection of powerful attitudes and beliefs.

Renaissance thinking enabled Italy to emerge from the feudal, Aristotelian, God-centered society of medieval Europe. The Renaissance mind—informed by the new philosophy of Humanism and the rediscovery of Plato—was far more secular and focused on the activities of human beings. The great invention of the time was the creation of the individual, the notion that human experiences and abilities should not be trivialized but celebrated—that man was "the measure of all things."

You will witness the creation of Renaissance attitudes and beliefs against a backdrop of the cultural circumstances that gave birth to it. You will see the origins of Humanism as largely rooted in the work of Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, who grew up in a family that had been exiled from Florence. Humanism's emphasis on the individual grew out of the fact that Petrarch was forced to seek his own identity, to literally "construct" himself, because he was separated from the homeland that otherwise would have shaped his identity.

You will understand Petrarch as an example of the theory that "geniuses do not drive history." Even the most powerful ideas cannot take hold unless they can connect with social, political, and economic realities—unless they are beneficial to a given culture's day-to-day needs.

The Life of Latin

For example, Petrarch's belief that the classical Latin of Cicero was superior to medieval Latin received support because it proved true in real life. Traveling notaries, who wrote contracts and letters in Latin for merchants, found that switching to the classical version made them more marketable. Similarly, Humanism became the philosophy of the Republic of Florence largely because it was seen as economically advantageous. Florence's rising business class saw Humanism as a useful rationale for charging interest, a practice forbidden by the Bible.

What is perhaps most striking is the way Renaissance Italians came to see their beliefs as not simply abstract but tangible. Florence transformed Humanism into civic Humanism—the belief that citizens should contribute their wealth and talent to the city's betterment—which it further transformed into an actual "built community": its architecture and landscaping, its immortal churches, sculptures, paintings, and frescoes.

Finally, you will examine how Renaissance ideals were embodied in the work of writers such as Baldassare Castiglione, Francesco Guicciardini, and Niccolo Machiavelli. They considered their era's values to be sacred, vital handholds to which civilization literally clung. Their works can largely be seen as an effort to adjust and protect these values, to preserve them against the assault of anti-Italian, anti-Renaissance barbarians of their time.

Renaissances of Florence, Venice, Urbino, Milan, and Rome

The city-states of the Italian peninsula were home to the money, intellect, and talent that were needed for the growth of Renaissance culture, especially in Florence.

In the Republic of Florence, you will find an enlightened society that reached its peak under Cosimo de'Medici the elder (il Vecchio) and his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and that considered itself "the enemy of kings and tyrants." Fully 3 percent of its citizens were eligible to hold political office (a remarkable percentage for the time).

On the other hand, Florence's Renaissance history was one of political instability, of factionalism and political experiment that eventually descended into disarray and decline. At the end of the 15th century, under the overzealous Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, Florence was a repressive theocracy that ruled through torture. Heretics risked having their tongues cut out, and specially trained groups of boys, called Bands of Hope, roamed the streets to enforce public piety.
This course will also show you how the Renaissance progressed in other Italian city-states that, due to circumstances of geography and history, had political and social structures that were very different from Florence's. In fact, most Italian Renaissance cities were principalities or despotisms, governed by princes or leaders of ruling families who could be either benign or cruel.

In Venice, you will see how this Republic's change from a maritime to a more land-oriented city more amenable to Renaissance Humanism, which affected the look of the city. Venetian visual arts and architecture changed from Byzantine to Classical, and a Venetian school of painting arose that gave us such giants as Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto.

Montefeltro, a Consummate Civic Leader

The tiny principality of Urbino and the powerful despotic monarchy of Milan produced several exceptional leaders. Sir Kenneth Clark described Urbino under Federigo da Montefeltro as the most civilized place on Earth at the time. Montefeltro, known as the Light of Italy, walked the streets of Urbino each morning to inquire about his subjects' well-being. His sense of fairness was so strong that he once insisted that a merchant sue him for nonpayment of a debt.

The Milanese despotic monarch Giangaleazzo Visconti built Milan's renowned cathedral, instituted postal and public health systems, and initiated an attempt to unite Italy that, had it succeeded, would have rewritten Italian and European history. His successors, Francesco and Lodovico Sforza (called il Moro, the Moor, for his dark skin) accomplished the Peace of Lodi, which sheltered the Renaissance in relative tranquility for 40 years. Sforza presided over a court—where Leonardo da Vinci resided—that made Milan a rival to Lorenzo de'Medici's Florence as a center of art patronage.

Rome, in an eerie reprise of the Roman Empire, rose and fell during the Renaissance. The Middle Ages had made Rome a deserted city, overrun by weeds and animals. But after the embarrassments of the Babylonian Captivity (1305–77), when the papacy moved to France, and the Great Schism (1378–1417), when as many as three popes ruled simultaneously, a succession of popes embarked on a rebuilding program designed to restore the papacy's dignity.

Martin V, Nicholas V, Sixtus IV, and Julius II made Rome a Renaissance city by instituting large-scale public works, and church buildings such as St. Peter's Basilica, the largest construction project in Rome since antiquity. Unfortunately, Rome's rebirth as a magnet for tourists and pilgrims ended in an orgy of violence during the sack of Rome in 1527. An army comprised largely of mercenary Protestant Germans committed wanton rape, slaughtered priests and nuns, and pried open the tombs of popes and cardinals to steal vestments and rings.

In the end, no more than 15,000 inhabitants remained in the city, and Italians lost significant faith in their Renaissance ideals of Humanism and the dignity of man.

Lectures:

1 The Study of the Italian Renaissance
2 The Renaissance—Changing Interpretations
3 Italy—The Cradle of the Renaissance
4 The Age of Dante—Guelfs and Ghibellines
5 Petrarch and the Foundations of Humanism
6 The Recovery of Antiquity
7 Florence—The Creation of the Republic
8 Florence and Civic Humanism
9 Florentine Culture and Society
10 Renaissance Education
11 The Medici Hegemony
12 The Florence of Lorenzo de’Medici
13 Venice—The Most Serene Republic
14 Renaissance Venice
15 The Signori—Renaissance Princes
16 Urbino
17 Castiglione and The Book of the Courtier
18 Women in Renaissance Italy
19 Neoplatonism
20 Milan Under the Visconti
21 Milan Under the Sforza
22 The Eternal City—Rome
23 The Rebuilding of Rome
24 The Renaissance Papacy
25 The Crisis—The French Invasion of 1494
26 Florence in Turmoil
27 Savonarola and the Republic
28 The Medici Restored
29 The Sack of Rome, 1527
30 Niccolo Machiavelli
31 Alessandro de’Medici
32 The Monarchy of Cosimo I
33 Guicciardini and The History of Italy
34 The Counter-Reformation
35 The End of the Renaissance in Italy
36 Echoes of the Renaissance