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125-506: The Palazzo Chiericati is a Renaissance palace in Vicenza (northern Italy ), designed by Andrea Palladio . Palladio was asked to design and build the palazzo by Count Girolamo Chiericati . The architect started building the palace in 1550, and some further work was completed under the patronage of Chiericati's son, Valerio. However, the palazzo was not fully finished until about 1680, possibly by Carlo Borella . Palladio also designed

250-680: A Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde ( 馬称德 ) in Zhejiang, made 100,000 wooden movable types and printed the 43-volume Daxue Yanyi ( 《大學衍義》 ). Wooden movable types were used continually in China. Even as late as 1733, a 2300-volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition ( 《武英殿聚珍版叢書》 ) was printed with 253,500 wooden movable types on order of the Qianlong Emperor , and completed in one year. A number of books printed in Tangut script during

375-426: A Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County , Anhui Province , China, re-invented a method of making movable wooden types. He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County ( 《旌德縣志》 ), a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters . Soon afterwards, he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books . Although

500-535: A "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century. The traditional view focuses more on the Renaissance's early modern aspects and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the Middle Ages. The beginnings of the period—the early Renaissance of the 15th century and

625-464: A German bishop visiting north Italy during the 12th century, noticed a widespread new form of political and social organization, observing that Italy appeared to have exited from feudalism so that its society was based on merchants and commerce. Linked to this was anti-monarchical thinking, represented in the famous early Renaissance fresco cycle The Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (painted 1338–1340), whose strong message

750-436: A body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it may have been produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. A few authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early incidence of movable-type printing. Bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal tablets, stone tablets, silk, as well as other materials were previously used for writing. However, following

875-465: A citizen and official, as well as a theorist and philosopher and also Quintilian . Perhaps the most succinct expression of his perspective on humanism is in a 1465 poetic work La città di vita , but an earlier work, Della vita civile , is more wide-ranging. Composed as a series of dialogues set in a country house in the Mugello countryside outside Florence during the plague of 1430, Palmieri expounds on

1000-404: A combination of reasoning and empirical evidence . Humanist education was based on the programme of Studia Humanitatis , the study of five humanities: poetry , grammar , history , moral philosophy , and rhetoric . Although historians have sometimes struggled to define humanism precisely, most have settled on "a middle of the road definition... the movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate

1125-541: A country home, the Villa Chiericati , for the family. The palazzo was built in an area called "piazza dell'Isola" (island square, currently Piazza Matteotti), which housed the wood and cattle market. At that time, it was an islet surrounded by the Retrone and Bacchiglione streams, and to protect the structure from the frequent floods, Palladio designed it on an elevated position: the entrance could be accessed by

1250-518: A cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world. One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective

1375-597: A drawer about 2 inches high, a yard wide, and about two feet deep, with many small compartments for the various letters and ligatures. The most popular and accepted of the job case designs in America was the California Job Case , which took its name from the Pacific coast location of the foundries that made the case popular. Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer or case that

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1500-553: A faster propagation of more widely distributed ideas. In the first period of the Italian Renaissance , humanists favored the study of humanities over natural philosophy or applied mathematics , and their reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Writing around 1450, Nicholas of Cusa anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus , but in

1625-493: A love of books. In some cases, cultivated library builders were also committed to offering others the opportunity to use their collections. Prominent aristocrats and princes of the Church created great libraries for the use of their courts, called "court libraries", and were housed in lavishly designed monumental buildings decorated with ornate woodwork, and the walls adorned with frescoes (Murray, Stuart A.P.). Renaissance art marks

1750-481: A metal movable type system. Gutenberg, as a goldsmith , knew techniques of cutting punches for making coins from moulds. Between 1436 and 1450 he developed hardware and techniques for casting letters from matrices using a device called the hand mould . Gutenberg's key invention and contribution to movable-type printing in Europe, the hand mould, was the first practical means of making cheap copies of letterpunches in

1875-432: A perfect mind and body, which could be attained with education. The purpose of humanism was to create a universal man whose person combined intellectual and physical excellence and who was capable of functioning honorably in virtually any situation. This ideology was referred to as the uomo universale , an ancient Greco-Roman ideal. Education during the Renaissance was mainly composed of ancient literature and history as it

2000-403: A philosophical fashion. Science and art were intermingled in the early Renaissance, with polymath artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature. Leonardo set up controlled experiments in water flow, medical dissection, and systematic study of movement and aerodynamics, and he devised principles of research method that led Fritjof Capra to classify him as

2125-592: A single page, movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text. Furthermore, these new, more compact type fonts could be reused and stored. Wang Zhen used two rotating circular tables as trays for laying out his type. The first table was separated into 24 trays in which each movable type was categorized based on a number corresponding with a rhyming pattern. The second table contained miscellaneous characters. The set of wafer-like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages, inked, and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper. In 1322,

2250-544: A surface by rolling the seal on wet clay. Seals and stamps may have been precursors to movable type. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa , dating from the 2nd millennium BC , has been conjectured by some archaeologists as evidence that the stamps were made using movable type. The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc of c.  1800 –1600 BC has been considered by one scholar as an early example of

2375-402: A triple Classic-style staircase. The palazzo's principal façade is composed of three bays, the central bay projecting slightly. The two end bays have logge on the piano nobile level, while the central bay is closed. The façade has two superposed orders of columns, Doric on the lower level with Ionic above. The roof line is decorated by statuary . Since 1855 the building has housed

2500-472: A trough level with fine sandy [clay] of the reed-growing seashore. Wood-cut letters are pressed into the sand, then the impressions become negative and form letters [moulds]. At this step, placing one trough together with another, one pours the molten bronze down into an opening. The fluid flows in, filling these negative moulds, one by one becoming type. Lastly, one scrapes and files off the irregularities, and piles them up to be arranged. A potential solution to

2625-531: A wall in the form of pilasters. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Brunelleschi. Arches, semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style) segmental, are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use

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2750-459: A wide range of writers. Classical texts could be found alongside humanist writings. These informal associations of intellectuals profoundly influenced Renaissance culture. An essential tool of Renaissance librarianship was the catalog that listed, described, and classified a library's books. Some of the richest "bibliophiles" built libraries as temples to books and knowledge. A number of libraries appeared as manifestations of immense wealth joined with

2875-540: Is a printed "check" of the Jin dynasty with two square holes for embedding two bronze movable-type characters, each selected from 1,000 different characters, such that each printed paper note has a different combination of markers. A copper-block printed note dated between 1215 and 1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu 's Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties , 1914, shows two special characters—one called Ziliao ,

3000-581: Is about the virtues of fairness, justice, republicanism and good administration. Holding both Church and Empire at bay, these city republics were devoted to notions of liberty. Skinner reports that there were many defences of liberty such as the Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475) celebration of Florentine genius not only in art, sculpture and architecture, but "the remarkable efflorescence of moral, social and political philosophy that occurred in Florence at

3125-416: Is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain." However, Joseph P. McDermott claimed that "No text indicates the presence or knowledge of any kind of Asian movable type or movable type imprint in Europe before 1450. The material evidence is even more conclusive." Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz , Germany, invented the printing press , using

3250-546: Is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death , which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th century Italy. Italy was particularly badly hit by the plague, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife . It has also been argued that

3375-551: Is the measure of all things". Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe: the first traces appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century, in particular with the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto . As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of literary Latin and an explosion of vernacular literatures , beginning with

3500-509: Is to understand it rationally. A critical contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote De hominis dignitate ( Oration on the Dignity of Man , 1486), a series of theses on philosophy, natural thought, faith, and magic defended against any opponent on the grounds of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began increasingly to use vernacular languages; combined with

3625-536: The longue durée , have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras, which are linked, as Panofsky observed, "by a thousand ties". The word has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance (8th and 9th centuries), Ottonian Renaissance (10th and 11th century), and the Renaissance of the 12th century . The Renaissance

3750-911: The High Middle Ages in Western Europe and in the Islamic Golden Age (normally in translation), but Greek literary, oratorical and historical works (such as Homer , the Greek dramatists, Demosthenes and Thucydides ) were not studied in either the Latin or medieval Islamic worlds ; in the Middle Ages these sorts of texts were only studied by Byzantine scholars. Some argue that the Timurid Renaissance in Samarkand and Herat , whose magnificence toned with Florence as

3875-747: The Late Middle Ages have led some to theorize that its unusual social climate allowed the emergence of a rare cultural efflorescence. Italy did not exist as a political entity in the early modern period. Instead, it was divided into smaller city-states and territories: the Neapolitans controlled the south, the Florentines and the Romans at the center, the Milanese and the Genoese to

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4000-765: The Levant . Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Iberia and Sicily , which became important centers for this transmission of ideas. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, many schools dedicated to the translation of philosophical and scientific works from Classical Arabic to Medieval Latin were established in Iberia, most notably the Toledo School of Translators . This work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of

4125-654: The Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity . Associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including art , architecture , politics, literature , exploration and science , the Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence , then spread to the rest of Italy and later throughout Europe. The term rinascita ("rebirth") first appeared in Lives of

4250-499: The Pisa Baptistry , demonstrates that classical models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary movement. Applied innovation extended to commerce. At the end of the 15th century, Luca Pacioli published the first work on bookkeeping , making him the founder of accounting . The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of the printing press in about 1440 democratized learning and allowed

4375-542: The Renaissance Papacy , and Naples . From Italy, the Renaissance spread throughout Europe and also to American, African and Asian territories ruled by the European colonial powers of the time or where Christian missionaries were active. The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography , and in line with general skepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among historians reacting to

4500-577: The Western Xia (1038–1227) period are known, of which the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union , which was discovered in the ruins of Baisigou Square Pagoda in 1991 is believed to have been printed sometime during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (1139–1193). It is considered by many Chinese experts to be the earliest extant example of a book printed using wooden movable type. At least 13 material finds in China indicate

4625-813: The crisis of the Late Middle Ages and conventionally ends by the 1600s with the waning of humanism , and the advents of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation , and in art the Baroque period. It had a different period and characteristics in different regions, such as the Italian Renaissance, the Northern Renaissance , the Spanish Renaissance , etc. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of

4750-456: The printing press in Europe may have been influenced by various sporadic reports of movable type technology brought back to Europe by returning business people and missionaries to China. Some of these medieval European accounts are still preserved in the library archives of the Vatican and Oxford University among many others. Around 1450, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented

4875-592: The "father of modern science". Other examples of Da Vinci's contribution during this period include machines designed to saw marbles and lift monoliths, and new discoveries in acoustics, botany, geology, anatomy, and mechanics. A suitable environment had developed to question classical scientific doctrine. The discovery in 1492 of the New World by Christopher Columbus challenged the classical worldview. The works of Ptolemy (in geography) and Galen (in medicine) were found to not always match everyday observations. As

5000-418: The 12th century , who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences, philosophy, and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts. In the revival of neoplatonism , Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity ; on the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. But a subtle shift took place in

5125-404: The 14th century with a Latin phase, when Renaissance scholars such as Petrarch , Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364–1437), and Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) scoured the libraries of Europe in search of works by such Latin authors as Cicero , Lucretius , Livy , and Seneca . By the early 15th century, the bulk of the surviving such Latin literature had been recovered;

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5250-401: The 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch ; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform . It saw myriad artistic developments and contributions from such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo , who inspired

5375-435: The 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual cultural heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation. Some observers have questioned whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity , while social and economic historians, especially of

5500-535: The 1st-century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics, Brunelleschi formulated the Renaissance style that emulated and improved on classical forms. His major feat of engineering was building the dome of Florence Cathedral . Another building demonstrating this style is the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua , built by Alberti. The outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance

5625-471: The Artists ( c.  1550 ) by Giorgio Vasari , while the corresponding French word renaissance was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s. The Renaissance's intellectual basis was founded in its version of humanism , derived from the concept of Roman humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy , such as that of Protagoras , who said that "man

5750-468: The Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art. However, this does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred specifically in Italy in the 14th century. The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy. The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of

5875-730: The Convent of San Donato in Scopeto in Florence. The Renaissance was certainly underway before Lorenzo de' Medici came to power – indeed, before the Medici family itself achieved hegemony in Florentine society. In some ways, Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy but a method of learning. In contrast to the medieval scholastic mode, which focused on resolving contradictions between authors, Renaissance humanists would study ancient texts in their original languages and appraise them through

6000-455: The Dutch governmental Algemeene Landsdrukkerij , later: "State-printery" ( Staatsdrukkerij ) decided during a reorganisation to use a standard type-height of 63 points Didot. Staatsdrukkerij-hoogte , actually Belgium-height, but this fact was not widely known . Modern, factory-produced movable type was available in the late 19th century. It was held in the printing shop in a job case ,

6125-440: The Greek phase of Renaissance humanism was under way, as Western European scholars turned to recovering ancient Greek literary, historical, oratorical and theological texts. Unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. Ancient Greek works on science, mathematics, and philosophy had been studied since

6250-705: The Islamic steps of Ibn Khaldun . Pico della Mirandola wrote the "manifesto" of the Renaissance, the Oration on the Dignity of Man , a vibrant defence of thinking. Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475), another humanist, is most known for his work Della vita civile ("On Civic Life"; printed 1528), which advocated civic humanism , and for his influence in refining the Tuscan vernacular to the same level as Latin. Palmieri drew on Roman philosophers and theorists, especially Cicero , who, like Palmieri, lived an active public life as

6375-521: The Italian Proto-Renaissance from around 1250 or 1300—overlap considerably with the Late Middle Ages , conventionally dated to c.  1350–1500 , and the Middle Ages themselves were a long period filled with gradual changes, like the modern age; as a transitional period between both, the Renaissance has close similarities to both, especially the late and early sub-periods of either. The Renaissance began in Florence , one of

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6500-466: The Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of antiquity , while the fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek , many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West. It was in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of

6625-678: The Mongol language, some with Chinese words printed between the pages—strong evidence that the books were printed in China. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Hua Sui in 1490 used bronze type in printing books. In 1574 the massive 1000-volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era ( 《太平御覧》 ) was printed with bronze movable type. In 1725 the Qing dynasty government made 250,000 bronze movable-type characters and printed 64 sets of

6750-559: The Museo Civico ('City Museum') and, more recently, the city's art gallery. It has received international protection since 1994, along with the other Palladian buildings of Vicenza, as part of a World Heritage Site . (The site originally designated was "Vicenza, City of Palladio" which included the city of Vicenza and its immediate surroundings. In 1996, UNESCO expanded the World Heritage Site to include villas outside

6875-575: The Netherlands: Johan Enschedé & Zonen , at Haarlem , and Lettergieterij Amsterdam, voorheen Tetterode . They both had their own type-height: Enschedé: 65 23/24 points Didot, and Amsterdam: 66 1/24 points Didot—enough difference to prevent a combined use of fonts from the two typefoundries: Enschede would be too light, or otherwise the Amsterdam-font would print rather bold. This was a way of keeping clients. In 1905

7000-568: The New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus , helped pave the way for the Reformation . Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the sculpture of Nicola Pisano , Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray the human form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light more naturally. Political philosophers , most famously Niccolò Machiavelli , sought to describe political life as it really was, that

7125-474: The Reformation and Counter-Reformation clashed, the Northern Renaissance showed a decisive shift in focus from Aristotelean natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological sciences (botany, anatomy, and medicine). The willingness to question previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major scientific advancements. Some view this as a " scientific revolution ", heralding

7250-546: The Renaissance quite precisely; one proposed starting point is 1401, when the rival geniuses Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi competed for the contract to build the bronze doors for the Baptistery of the Florence Cathedral (Ghiberti won). Others see more general competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello , and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking

7375-632: The Song dynasty through the Qing dynasty. Bi Sheng (990–1051) of the Song dynasty also pioneered the use of wooden movable type around 1040 AD, as described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095). However, this technology was abandoned in favour of clay movable types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. In 1298, Wang Zhen ( 王禎 ),

7500-463: The West consists of three stages: The type-height varied in different countries. The Monotype Corporation Limited in London UK produced moulds in various heights: A Dutch printer's manual mentions a tiny difference between French and German Height: Tiny differences in type-height can cause quite bold images of characters. At the end of the 19th century there were only two typefoundries left in

7625-635: The Workings of the Human Body ) by Andreas Vesalius , gave a new confidence to the role of dissection , observation, and the mechanistic view of anatomy. Movable type#Metal movable type in Europe The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song dynasty by

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7750-458: The above factors. The plague was carried by fleas on sailing vessels returning from the ports of Asia, spreading quickly due to lack of proper sanitation: the population of England , then about 4.2 million, lost 1.4 million people to the bubonic plague . Florence's population was nearly halved in the year 1347. As a result of the decimation in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To answer

7875-532: The arch on a monumental. Renaissance vaults do not have ribs; they are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault, which is frequently rectangular. Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired antiquity and kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past. Nicola Pisano (c. 1220 – c. 1278) imitated classical forms by portraying scenes from the Bible. His Annunciation , from

8000-442: The beginning of the modern age, others as an acceleration of a continuous process stretching from the ancient world to the present day. Significant scientific advances were made during this time by Galileo Galilei , Tycho Brahe , and Johannes Kepler . Copernicus, in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ( On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres ), posited that the Earth moved around the Sun. De humani corporis fabrica ( On

8125-439: The blocks had a limited lifespan. Gutenberg and his associates developed oil-based inks ideally suited to printing with a press on paper, and the first Latin typefaces . His method of casting type may have differed from the hand-mould used in subsequent decades. Detailed analysis of the type used in his 42-line Bible has revealed irregularities in some of the characters that cannot be attributed to ink spread or type wear under

8250-452: The casting, causing variants and anomalies, and that the punch-matrix system came into use possibly around the 1470s. This raises the possibility that the development of movable type in the West may have been progressive rather than a single innovation. Gutenberg's movable-type printing system spread rapidly across Europe, from the single Mainz printing press in 1457 to 110 presses by 1480, with 50 of them in Italy . Venice quickly became

8375-469: The center of a cultural rebirth, were linked to the Ottoman Empire , whose conquests led to the migration of Greek scholars to Italian cities. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity. Muslim logicians, most notably Avicenna and Averroes , had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and

8500-416: The centre of typographic and printing activity. Significant contributions came from Nicolas Jenson , Francesco Griffo , Aldus Manutius , and other printers of late 15th-century Europe. Gutenberg's movable type printing system offered a number of advantages over previous movable type techniques. The lead-antimony-tin alloy used by Gutenberg had half the melting temperature of bronze, making it easier to cast

8625-464: The characters were cut in relief, completely differently from those cut intaglio. When printing, the bulging characters would have some ink spread on them and be covered by paper. With workers' hands moving on the back of paper gently, characters would be printed on the paper. By the Song dynasty , woodblock printing came to its heyday. Although woodblock printing played an influential role in spreading culture, there were some significant drawbacks. Carving

8750-409: The core area and renamed it " City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto "). Renaissance The Renaissance ( UK : / r ɪ ˈ n eɪ s ən s / rin- AY -sənss , US : / ˈ r ɛ n ə s ɑː n s / REN -ə-sahnss ) is a period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from

8875-687: The creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, and why it began when it did. Accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. Peter Rietbergen posits that various influential Proto-Renaissance movements started from roughly 1300 onwards across many regions of Europe . In stark contrast to the High Middle Ages , when Latin scholars focused almost entirely on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural science, philosophy and mathematics, Renaissance scholars were most interested in recovering and studying Latin and Greek literary, historical, and oratorical texts. Broadly speaking, this began in

9000-477: The encyclopedic Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China ( 《古今圖書集成》 ). Each set consisted of 5,040 volumes, making a total of 322,560 volumes printed using movable type. In 1234 the first books known to have been printed in metallic type set were published in Goryeo dynasty Korea. They form a set of ritual books, Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun , compiled by Ch'oe Yun-ŭi . While these books have not survived,

9125-429: The focus was on reprinting Chinese classics lost in 1126 when Korea's libraries and palaces had perished in a conflict between dynasties. Scholarly debate and speculation has occurred as to whether Eastern movable type spread to Europe between the late 14th century and early 15th centuries. For example, authoritative historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that "The Asian priority of invention movable type

9250-572: The globe . The 19th-century invention of hot metal typesetting and its successors caused movable type to decline in the 20th century. The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer . These metal punch types can be seen as precursors of the letter punches adapted in later millennia to printing with movable metal type. Cylinder seals were used in Mesopotamia to create an impression on

9375-470: The great European states (France and Spain) were absolute monarchies , and others were under direct Church control, the independent city-republics of Italy took over the principles of capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast unprecedented Commercial Revolution that preceded and financed the Renaissance. Historian Leon Poliakov offers a critical view in his seminal study of European racist thought: The Aryan Myth . According to Poliakov,

9500-658: The greatest transmissions of ideas in history. The movement to reintegrate the regular study of Greek literary, historical, oratorical, and theological texts back into the Western European curriculum is usually dated to the 1396 invitation from Coluccio Salutati to the Byzantine diplomat and scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415) to teach Greek in Florence. This legacy was continued by a number of expatriate Greek scholars, from Basilios Bessarion to Leo Allatius . The unique political structures of Italy during

9625-438: The height of the epidemic due to the chaotic conditions in the city, but a small group of officials was appointed to conduct the affairs of the city, which ensured continuity of government. It has long been a matter of debate why the Renaissance began in Florence , and not elsewhere in Italy. Scholars have noted several features unique to Florentine cultural life that may have caused such a cultural movement. Many have emphasized

9750-406: The idea of losing hanja , the badge of their elitism", stifled the adoption of the new alphabet. A " Confucian prohibition on the commercialization of printing" also obstructed the proliferation of movable type, restricting the distribution of books produced using the new method to the government. The technique was restricted to use by the royal foundry for official state publications only, where

9875-493: The immune system, leaving young children without a fighting chance. Children in city dwellings were more affected by the spread of disease than the children of the wealthy. The Black Death caused greater upheaval to Florence's social and political structure than later epidemics. Despite a significant number of deaths among members of the ruling classes, the government of Florence continued to function during this period. Formal meetings of elected representatives were suspended during

10000-413: The increased need for labor, workers traveled in search of the most favorable position economically. The demographic decline due to the plague had economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30–40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400. Landholders faced a great loss, but for ordinary men and women it was a windfall. The survivors of the plague found not only that

10125-511: The introduction of the printing press , this allowed many more people access to books, especially the Bible. In all, the Renaissance can be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity and through novel approaches to thought. Political philosopher Hans Kohn describes it as an age where "Men looked for new foundations"; some like Erasmus and Thomas More envisioned new reformed spiritual foundations, others. in

10250-659: The invention of paper during the Chinese Han dynasty , writing materials became more portable and economical. Yet, copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era (172–178 AD), towards the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, did sealing print and monotype appear. These were used to print designs on fabrics and to print texts. By about the 8th century during the Tang dynasty , woodblock printing

10375-569: The invention of bronze movable type printing in China no later than the 12th century, with the country producing large-scale bronze-plate-printed paper money and formal official documents issued by the Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties with embedded bronze metal types for anti-counterfeit markers. Such paper-money printing might date back to the 11th-century jiaozi of Northern Song (960–1127). The typical example of this kind of bronze movable type embedded copper-block printing

10500-556: The inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051). The earliest printed paper money with movable metal type to print the identifying code of the money was made in 1161 during the Song dynasty. In 1193, a book in the Song dynasty documented how to use the copper movable type. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type , Jikji , was printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo dynasty. The spread of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The creation of

10625-483: The iron plate. In this he placed the types, set close together. When the frame was full, the whole made one solid block of type. He then placed it near the fire to warm it. When the paste [at the back] was slightly melted, he took a smooth board and pressed it over the surface, so that the block of type became as even as a whetstone. For each character there were several types, and for certain common characters there were twenty or more types each, in order to be prepared for

10750-464: The language, literature, learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome". Above all, humanists asserted "the genius of man ... the unique and extraordinary ability of the human mind". Humanist scholars shaped the intellectual landscape throughout the early modern period. Political philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers and applied them in critiques of contemporary government, following

10875-615: The linguistic and cultural bottleneck that held back movable type in Korea for 200 years appeared in the early 15th century—a generation before Gutenberg would begin working on his own movable-type invention in Europe—when Sejong the Great devised a simplified alphabet of 24 characters ( hangul ) for use by the common people, which could have made the typecasting and compositing process more feasible. But Korea's cultural elite, "appalled at

11000-518: The loss of the two copper movable types. Song dynasty bronze block embedded with bronze metal movable type printed paper money was issued on a large scale and remained in circulation for a long time. The 1298 book Zao Huozi Yinshufa ( 《造活字印書法》 ) by the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) official Wang Zhen mentions tin movable type, used probably since the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), but this

11125-601: The many states of Italy . Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors, including Florence's social and civic peculiarities at the time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici , and the migration of Greek scholars and their texts to Italy following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire . Other major centers were Venice , Genoa , Milan , Rome during

11250-468: The materials used for the type, punch, matrix, mould and in method of making an impression. The techniques for bronze casting, used at the time for making coins (as well as bells and statues) were adapted to making metal type. The Joseon dynasty scholar Seong Hyeon (성현, 成俔, 1439–1504) records the following description of the Korean font-casting process: At first, one cuts letters in beech wood. One fills

11375-425: The metal movable-type printing press, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould . The small number of alphabetic characters needed for European languages was an important factor. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead , tin , and antimony —and these materials remained standard for 550 years. For alphabetic scripts , movable-type page setting

11500-404: The method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays , and printed his book Notes of The Jade Hall ( 《玉堂雜記》 ). The ceramic movable type was also mentioned by Kublai Khan 's counsellor Yao Shu , who convinced his pupil Yang Gu to print language primers using this method. The claim that Bi Sheng's clay types were "fragile" and "not practical for large-scale printing" and "short lived"

11625-608: The north and west respectively, and the Venetians to the north east. 15th-century Italy was one of the most urbanized areas in Europe. Many of its cities stood among the ruins of ancient Roman buildings; it seems likely that the classical nature of the Renaissance was linked to its origin in the Roman Empire's heartland. Historian and political philosopher Quentin Skinner points out that Otto of Freising (c. 1114–1158),

11750-566: The oldest book existing in the world printed in metallic movable types is Jikji , printed in Korea in 1377. The Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., displays examples of this metal type. Commenting on the invention of metallic types by Koreans, French scholar Henri-Jean Martin described this as "[extremely similar] to Gutenberg's". However, Korean movable metal type printing differed from European printing in

11875-597: The other called Zihao —for the purpose of preventing counterfeiting; over the Ziliao there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the Zihao there is an empty square hole—apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of the Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above Ziliao as well as Zihou , due to

12000-400: The pressure of the press. Scholars conjecture that the type pieces may have been cast from a series of matrices made with a series of individual stroke punches, producing many different versions of the same glyph. It has also been suggested that the method used by Gutenberg involved using a single punch to make a mould, but the mould was such that the process of taking the type out disturbed

12125-419: The prevailing cultural conditions at the time. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) was the catalyst for an enormous amount of arts patronage, encouraging his countrymen to commission works from the leading artists of Florence, including Leonardo da Vinci , Sandro Botticelli , and Michelangelo Buonarroti . Works by Neri di Bicci , Botticelli, Leonardo, and Filippino Lippi had been commissioned additionally by

12250-459: The prices of food were cheaper but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives. The spread of disease was significantly more rampant in areas of poverty. Epidemics ravaged cities, particularly children. Plagues were easily spread by lice, unsanitary drinking water, armies, or by poor sanitation. Children were hit the hardest because many diseases, such as typhus and congenital syphilis , target

12375-468: The printing plate required considerable time, labour, and materials. It also was not convenient to store these plates and was difficult to correct mistakes. Bi Sheng ( 畢昇 ) (990–1051) developed the first known movable-type system for printing in China around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty, using ceramic materials. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (沈括) (1031–1095): When he wished to print, he took an iron frame and set it on

12500-412: The qualities of the ideal citizen. The dialogues include ideas about how children develop mentally and physically, how citizens can conduct themselves morally, how citizens and states can ensure probity in public life, and an important debate on the difference between that which is pragmatically useful and that which is honest. The humanists believed that it is important to transcend to the afterlife with

12625-413: The repetition of characters on the same page. When the characters were not in use he had them arranged with paper labels, one label for each rhyme-group, and kept them in wooden cases. If one were to print only two or three copies, this method would be neither simple nor easy. But for printing hundreds or thousands of copies, it was marvelously quick. As a rule he kept two forms going. While the impression

12750-549: The role played by the Medici , a banking family and later ducal ruling house , in patronizing and stimulating the arts. Some historians have postulated that Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance as a result of luck, i.e., because " Great Men " were born there by chance: Leonardo, Botticelli and Michelangelo were all born in Tuscany . Arguing that such chance seems improbable, other historians have contended that these "Great Men" were only able to rise to prominence because of

12875-527: The same time". Even cities and states beyond central Italy, such as the Republic of Florence at this time, were also notable for their merchant republics , especially the Republic of Venice. Although in practice these were oligarchical , and bore little resemblance to a modern democracy , they did have democratic features and were responsive states, with forms of participation in governance and belief in liberty. The relative political freedom they afforded

13000-420: The term "Renaissance man". In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning . The period also saw revolutions in other intellectual and social scientific pursuits, as well as the introduction of modern banking and the field of accounting. The Renaissance period started during

13125-460: The type and aided the use of reusable metal matrix moulds instead of the expendable sand and clay moulds. The use of antimony alloy increased hardness of the type compared to lead and tin for improved durability of the type. The reusable metal matrix allowed a single experienced worker to produce 4,000 to 5,000 individual types a day, while Wang Chen had artisans working 2 years to make 60,000 wooden types. Type-founding as practised in Europe and

13250-421: The use of ethnic origin myths are first used by Renaissance humanists "in the service of a new born chauvinism". Many argue that the ideas characterizing the Renaissance had their origin in Florence at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, in particular with the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–1374), as well as the paintings of Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337). Some writers date

13375-407: The vast quantities needed to print complete books, making the movable-type printing process a viable enterprise. Before Gutenberg, scribes copied books by hand on scrolls and paper, or print-makers printed texts from hand-carved wooden blocks. Either process took a long time; even a small book could take months to complete. Because carved letters or blocks were flimsy and the wood susceptible to ink,

13500-456: The water-based Chinese calligraphic ink well, and had an added disadvantage of uneven matching of the type which could sometimes result from the uneven changes in size of the type during the baking process. There has been an ongoing debate regarding the success of ceramic printing technology as there have been no printed materials found with ceramic movable types. However, it is historically recorded to have been used as late as 1844 in China from

13625-476: The way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity. This new engagement with Greek Christian works, and particularly the return to the original Greek of

13750-456: The wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore down the character faces, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper, bronze, iron or tin. This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing. Rather than manually carving an individual block to print

13875-506: The words of Machiavelli , una lunga sperienza delle cose moderne ed una continua lezione delle antiche (a long experience with modern life and a continuous learning from antiquity). Sociologist Rodney Stark , plays down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages , which married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism . This analysis argues that, whereas

14000-526: The works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that were much imitated by other artists. Other notable artists include Sandro Botticelli , working for the Medici in Florence, Donatello , another Florentine, and Titian in Venice, among others. In the Low Countries , a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed. The work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck

14125-565: Was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period . Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in art , architecture , philosophy , literature , music , science , technology , politics, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art. Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries

14250-488: Was being made from the one form, the type was being put in place on the other. When the printing of the one form was finished, the other was then ready. In this way the two forms alternated and the printing was done with great rapidity. After his death, the ceramic movable-type passed onto his descendants. In 1193, Zhou Bida , an officer of the Southern Song dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type method according to

14375-638: Was conducive to academic and artistic advancement. Likewise, the position of Italian cities such as Venice as great trading centres made them intellectual crossroads. Merchants brought with them ideas from far corners of the globe, particularly the Levant . Venice was Europe's gateway to trade with the East, and a producer of fine glass , while Florence was a capital of textiles. The wealth such business brought to Italy meant large public and private artistic projects could be commissioned and individuals had more leisure time for study. One theory that has been advanced

14500-405: Was formalized as an artistic technique. The development of perspective was part of a wider trend toward realism in the arts. Painters developed other techniques, studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci , human anatomy . Underlying these changes in artistic method was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature and to unravel the axioms of aesthetics , with

14625-400: Was invented and worked as follows. First, the neat hand-copied script was stuck on a relatively thick and smooth board, with the front of the paper sticking to the board, the paper being so thin it was transparent, the characters showing in reverse distinctly so that every stroke could be easily recognized. Then, carvers cut away the parts of the board that were not part of the character, so that

14750-464: Was largely experimental. It was unsatisfactory due to its incompatibility with the inking process. But by the late 15th century these concerns were resolved and bronze type was widely used in Chinese printing. During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from China to Central Asia. The Uyghurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from

14875-454: Was located above the case that held the other letters; this is why capital letters are called "upper case" characters while the non-capitals are "lower case". Compartments also held spacers, which are blocks of blank type used to separate words and fill out a line of type, such as em and en quads ( quadrats , or spaces. A quadrat is a block of type whose face is lower than the printing letters so that it does not itself print.). An em space

15000-494: Was particularly influential on the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the introduction of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism in representation. Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life. In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains of ancient classical buildings. With rediscovered knowledge from

15125-535: Was quicker than woodblock printing . The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts . The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type in Europe and the use of printing presses spread rapidly. The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance and, due to its effectiveness, its use spread around

15250-477: Was refuted by later experiments. Bao Shicheng (1775–1885) wrote that baked clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that clay type, after being baked in an oven, becomes hard and difficult to break, such that it remains intact after being dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor. The length of clay movable types in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2 mm, thus hard as horn. But similar to metal type, ceramic type did not hold

15375-418: Was the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica , combining the skills of Bramante , Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno . During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters , and entablatures as an integrated system. The Roman orders types of columns are used: Tuscan and Composite . These can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against

15500-422: Was the width of a capital letter "M"—as wide as it was high—while an en space referred to a space half the width of its height (usually the dimensions for a capital "N"). Individual letters are assembled into words and lines of text with the aid of a composing stick , and the whole assembly is tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme , where all letter faces are exactly the same height to form

15625-427: Was thought that the classics provided moral instruction and an intensive understanding of human behavior. A unique characteristic of some Renaissance libraries is that they were open to the public. These libraries were places where ideas were exchanged and where scholarship and reading were considered both pleasurable and beneficial to the mind and soul. As freethinking was a hallmark of the age, many libraries contained

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