The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement from the end of the 14th century to about 1600. Although its origins trace back to the earlier part of the 14th century, many aspects of Italian culture were largely Medieval and the Renaissance didn't come into full swing until the end of the century. The word renaissance (rinascimento in Italian) literally means "rebirth", and the era is best known for the renewed interest in the culture of classical antiquity after the period that Renaissance humanists labelled the Dark Ages. These changes, while significant, were concentrated in the elite, and for the vast majority of the population life was little changed from the Middle Ages.
The Italian Renaissance began in northern Italy, centred in the city of Florence. It then spread south, having an especially significant impact on Rome, which was largely rebuilt by the Renaissance popes. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the late 15th century as foreign invasions plunged the region into turmoil. However, the ideas and ideals of the Renaissance spread into the rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance and English Renaissance.
The Italian Renaissance is best known for the cultural achievements during the period. This includes works of literature by such figures as Petrarch, Castiglione, and Machiavelli, artists such as Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, and great works of architecture such as The Duomo in Florence and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. At the same time, present-day historians also see the era as one of economic regression and of little progress in science.
By the late Middle Ages, central and southern Italy, once the heartland of the Roman Empire, was far poorer than the north. Rome was a city largely in ruins, and the Papal States were a loosely administered region with little law and order. Partially because of this, the Papacy had relocated to Avignon, France. Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia had for some time been under foreign domination.
The north was far more prosperous, with the states of northern Italy among the wealthiest in Europe. The Crusades had built lasting trade links to the Levant, and the Fourth Crusade had done much to destroy the Byzantine Empire as a commercial rival to the Italians. The main trade routes running from the east passed through the Byzantine Empire or the Arab lands and onwards to the ports of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. Luxury goods bought in the Levant, such as spices, dyes, and silks were imported to Italy and then resold throughout Europe. Moreover, the inland city-states profited from the rich agricultural land of the Po River valley. From France, Germany, and the Low Countries, land and river trade routes brought goods such as wool, wheat, and precious metals into the region. The extensive trade that stretched from Egypt to the Baltic generated substantial surpluses that allowed significant investment in mining and agriculture. Thus, while northern Italy was not richer in resources than many other parts of Europe, the level of development, stimulated by trade, allowed it to prosper. Florence became one of the wealthiest cities of Northern Italy, due mainly to its textile production. Wool was imported from Northern Europe and Spain, and dyes from the east were used to make high quality clothing.
The Italian trade routes that covered the Mediterranean and beyond were also major conduits of culture and knowledge. From Constantinople, recently Christianized Spain, and the Arab lands came much of the preserved ancient learning of the classical era. The Crusades led to some European contact with classical learning, preserved by Arabs, but more important in this regard was the Spanish Reconquista of the fifteenth century and the resulting translations of Arabic-language works by the Arabists of the School of Salamanca. From Egypt and the Levant, the scientific, philosophical, and mathematical thinking of the Arabs entered Northern Italy. The region also was sitting just to the north of the remnants of the heart of the Roman civilization, and if one looked carefully, ancient manuscripts could be found, architectural principles observed, and artistic styles examined.
In the thirteenth century, Europe in general was experiencing an economic boom. The trade routes of the Italian states linked with those of the Hanseatic League to create a unified European economy. The city-states of Italy expanded greatly during this period and grew in power to become de facto fully independent of the Holy Roman Empire. During this period, the modern commercial infrastructure developed with joint stock companies, an international banking system, a systematized foreign exchange market, insurance, and government debt. Florence became the centre of this financial industry and the Florin became the main currency of international trade.
This produced a new class of aristocrats who won their positions through financial skill, overturning the feudal model that had dominated Europe in the Middle Ages. Northern Italy, with the exception of the region around Milan, had long been less feudal than the rest of Europe. In much of the region the landed nobility was consistently weaker than the urban patriarchs. The increase in trade during the early Renaissance enhanced this characteristic. The decline of feudalism and the rise of cities influenced each other; for example, the demand for luxury goods led to an increase in trade, which led to greater numbers of tradesmen becoming wealthy, who, in turn, demanded more luxury goods. This change also gave the merchants almost complete control of the governments of the Italian city-states, again enhancing trade. One of the most important effects of this political control was security. Those that grew extremely wealthy in a feudal state ran constant risk of running afoul of the monarchy and having their lands confiscated, as famously occurred to Jacques Coeur in France. The northern states also kept many medieval laws that severely hampered commerce, such as those against usury, and prohibitions on trading with non-Christians. In the city-states of Italy, these laws were repealed or rewritten.
The fourteenth century saw a series of catastrophes that caused the European economy to go into recession. The Medieval Warm Period was ending as the transition to the Little Ice Age began. This change in climate saw agricultural output decline significantly, leading to repeated famines, exacerbated by the rapid population growth of the earlier era. The Hundred Years War began between England and France, disrupting trade throughout northwest Europe, most notably when, in 1345, King Edward III of England repudiated his debts, leading to the collapse of the two largest Florentine banks, those of the Bardi and Peruzzi. In the east, war was also disrupting trade routes as the Ottoman Empire began to expand throughout the region. Most devastating, though, was the Black Death that decimated the populations of the densely populated cities of Northern Italy. The population of Florence, for instance, fell from 90,000 to 50,000 people. Widespread disorder followed, including a revolt of Florentine textile workers, the ciompi, in 1378.
It was during this period of instability that the first Renaissance figures, such as Dante and Petrarch lived, and the first stirrings of the Renaissance took place in the opening half of the 14th century. Paradoxically, some of these disasters would help establish the Renaissance. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire at the expense of Byzantium caused an influx of wealthy and educated Greek refugees from the east, who brought with them knowledge of classical Greek learning, leading to the rediscovery of many long-forgotten classical works. The Black Death wiped out a third of Europe's population, and the new smaller population was much wealthier, better fed, and, significantly, had more surplus money to spend on luxury goods like art and architecture. As incidences of the plague began to decline in the early 15th century, Europe's devastated population once again began to grow. This new demand for products and services, and the reduced number of people able to provide them (due to the deaths caused by the plague), put the lower classes in a more favourable position. Furthermore, this demand also helped create an increasing class of bankers, merchants, and skilled artisans. The horrors of the Black Death and the seeming inability of the Church to provide relief would contribute to a decline of church influence, another significant contributing factor to the Renaissance. Additionally, the collapse of the Bardi and Peruzzi banks would open the way for the Medici to rise to prominence in Florence. Robert Sabatino Lopez argues that the economic collapse was a crucial cause of the Renaissance. According to this view, in a more prosperous era, businessmen would have quickly reinvested their earnings in order to make more money in a climate favourable to investment. However, in the leaner years of the fourteenth century, the wealthy found few promising investment opportunities for their earnings and instead chose to spend more on culture and art.
Another popular explanation for the Italian Renaissance is the "Baron Thesis," first advanced by historian Hans Baron. It states that the primary impetus of the early Renaissance was the long running series of wars between Florence and Milan. By the late fourteenth century, Milan had become a centralized monarchy under the control of the Visconti family. Giangaleazzo Visconti, who ruled the city from 1378 to 1402, was renowned both for his cruelty and for his abilities, and set about building an empire in Northern Italy. He launched a long series of wars with Milan, steadily conquering neighbouring states and defeating the various coalitions led by Florence that sought in vain to halt the advance. This culminated in the 1402 siege of Florence, when it looked as though the city was doomed to fall, before Giangaleazzo suddenly died and his empire collapsed.
Baron's thesis was that during these long wars, the leading figures of Florence rallied the people by presenting the war as one between the free republic and the despotic monarchy, between the ideals of the Greek and Roman Republics and those of the Roman Empire and Medieval kingdoms. For Baron, the most important figure in crafting this ideology was Leonardo Bruni. Baron argues that this time of crisis in Florence was the period when most of the major early Renaissance figures were coming of age, such as Ghiberti, Donatello, Masolino, and Brunelleschi, and that they were inculcated with this republican ideology. These and other figures, according to Baron, later went on to advocate such republican ideas, ideas which were to have an enormous impact on the Renaissance.
Northern Italy was divided into a number of warring city-states, the most powerful being Milan, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Ferrara, and Venice. Northern Italy was further divided by the long running battle for supremacy between the forces of the Papacy and of the Holy Roman Empire. Each city aligned itself with one faction or the other, yet was divided internally between the two warring parties. Warfare between the states was common, invasion from outside Italy less so. In an age when armies were primarily composed of mercenaries, these city-states could field considerable forces, despite their low populations. Eventually, the most powerful city-states annexed their smaller neighbours. Florence took Pisa in 1406, Venice captured Padua and Verona, while the Duchy of Milan annexed a number of nearby areas including Pavia and Parma.
The first part of the Renaissance saw almost constant war on land and sea as the city-states vied for pre-eminence. On land, these wars were fought primarily by armies of mercenaries known as Condottieri, bands of soldiers drawn from around Europe, but especially Germany and Switzerland. The mercenaries were not willing to risk their lives unduly , and war became one largely of sieges and manoeuvring with few pitched battles. It was also in the interest of mercenaries on both sides to prolong any conflict, as this would continue their employment. Mercenaries were also a constant threat to their employers; if not paid, they often turned on their patron. If it became obvious that a state was entirely dependent on mercenaries, the temptation was great for the mercenaries to take over the running of it themselves -- this occurred on a number of occasions.
At sea, Italian city-states sent many fleets out to do battle. The main contenders were Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, but after a long conflict the Genoese succeeded in reducing Pisa. Venice proved to be a more powerful adversary, and while at first relatively equal, the Genoese fleet was destroyed in a Venetian assault in 1380; from then on, Venice was pre-eminent.
On land, decades of fighting saw Florence and Milan emerge as the dominant players, and these two powers finally set aside their differences and agreed to the Peace of Lodi in 1454, which saw relative calm brought to the region for the first time in centuries. This peace would hold for the next forty years, and Venice's unquestioned hegemony over the sea also led to unprecedented peace for much of the rest of the 15th century.
In the beginning of the 15th century, adventurer and traders such as Niccol?a Conti (1395?1469) travelled as far as Southeast Asia and back, bringing fresh knowledge on the state of the world, presaging further European voyages of exploration in the years to come.
From the late fourteenth century, Florence's leading family had been the Albizzi. Their main challengers were the Medicis, first under Giovanni de' Medici, then under his son Cosimo. The Medici controlled Europe's largest bank and a wide array of other enterprises in Florence and elsewhere. In 1433, the Albizzi managed to have Cosimo exiled. The next year, however, saw a-pro Medici Signoria elected and Cosimo returned. The Medici became the town's leading family, a position they would hold for the next three centuries. Florence remained a republic, but the instruments of government were firmly under the control of the Medici and their allies. Cosimo only rarely had an official post, but was the unquestioned leader of the town.
Cosimo de' Medici was highly popular among the citizenry, mainly for bringing an era of stability and prosperity to the town. One of his most important accomplishments was negotiating the Peace of Lodi with Francesco Sforza ending the decades of war with Milan and bringing stability to much of Northern Italy. Cosimo was also an important patron of the arts, though some modern historians have argued the extent of his patronage has long been exaggerated.
Cosimo was succeeded by his sickly son Piero de' Medici, who died after five years in charge of the city. In 1469 the reins of power passed to Cosimo's twenty-one-year-old grandson Lorenzo, who would become known as "Lorenzo the Magnificent." Lorenzo was the first of the family to be educated from an early age in the humanist tradition and is best known as one of the Renaissance's most important patrons of the arts. Under Lorenzo, the Medici rule was formalized with the creation of a new Council of Seventy, which Lorenzo headed. The republican institutions continued, but they lost all power. Lorenzo was less successful than his illustrious forebears in business, and the Medici commercial empire was slowly eroded. Lorenzo continued the alliance with Milan, but relations with the papacy soured, and in 1478, Papal agents allied with the Pazzi family in an attempt to assassinate Lorenzo. Although the plot failed, Lorenzo's young brother, Giuliano, was killed, and the failed assassination led to a war with the Papacy and was used as justification to further centralize power in Lorenzo's hands.
The Renaissance ideals first spread from Florence to the neighbouring states of Tuscany such as Siena and Lucca. The Tuscan culture soon became the model for all the states of Northern Italy, and the Tuscan variety of Italian came to predominate throughout the region, especially in literature. In 1447 Francesco Sforza came to power in Milan and rapidly transformed that still medieval city into a major centre of art and learning. Venice, one of the wealthiest cities due to its control of the Mediterranean Sea, also became a centre for Renaissance culture, especially architecture.
In 1378 the Papacy returned to Rome, but that once imperial city remained poor and largely in ruins through the first years of the Renaissance. The great transformation began under Pope Nicholas V who became pontiff in 1447. He launched a dramatic rebuilding effort that would see much of the city renewed. As the papacy fell under the control of the wealthy families from the north, such as the Medici and the Borgias the spirit of Renaissance art and philosophy came to dominate the Vatican. Pope Sixtus IV continued Nicholas' work, most famously ordering the construction of the Sistine Chapel. The popes also became increasingly secular rulers as the Papal States were forged into a centralized power by a series of warrior popes.
The nature of the Renaissance also changed in the late fifteenth century. The Renaissance ideal was fully adopted by the ruling classes and the aristocracy. In the early Renaissance artists were seen as craftsmen with little prestige or recognition. By the later Renaissance the top figures wielded great influence and could charge great fees. A flourishing trade in Renaissance art developed. While in the early Renaissance many of the leading artists were of lower- or middle-class origins, increasingly they became aristocrats.
As a cultural movement, the Italian Renaissance affected only a small part of the population. Northern Italy was the most urbanized region of Europe, but three quarters of the people were still rural peasants. For this section of the population life was essentially unchanged from the Middle Ages. Classic feudalism had never been prominent in Northern Italy, with the peasants mostly working private farms or as sharecroppers. Some scholars see a trend towards refeudalization in the later Renaissance as the urban elites turned themselves into landed aristocrats.
In the cities the situation was quite different. They were dominated by a commercial elite, which was just as exclusive as the aristocracy of any Medieval kingdom. It was this group that was the main patron of and audience for Renaissance culture. Below them there was a large class of artisans and guild members who lived comfortable lives and had significant power in the republican governments. This was in sharp contrast to the rest of Europe where artisans were firmly in the lower class. Literate and educated, this group did participate in the Renaissance culture. The largest section of the urban population was the urban poor of semi-skilled workers and the unemployed. Like the peasants the Renaissance had little effect on them. One debate among historians is on how easy it was to move between these groups during the Italian Renaissance. There are a number of examples of individuals who rose from humble beginnings to the elite, but Burke notes that there have been two major studies in this area and both have found that the data does not clearly demonstrate an increase in social mobility. Most historians feel that early in the Renaissance social mobility was quite high, but that it faded over the course of the fifteenth century. Inequality in society was very high. An upper class figure would earn hundreds of times more than a servant or labourer. Some historians feel that this unequal distribution of wealth was important to the Renaissance, as art patronage relies on the very wealthy.
The Renaissance was not a period of great social or economic change, only of cultural and ideological development. It only touched a small fraction of the population, and in modern times this has led many historians, such as any that follow historical materialism, to reduce the importance of the Renaissance in human history.
The end of the Renaissance is as imprecisely marked as its starting point. For many, the rise to power in Florence of Girolamo Savonarola in 1497 marks the end of the city's flourishing. This austere monk rode to power on a widespread backlash over the secularism and indulgence of the Renaissance ? his brief rule saw many works of art destroyed in the "Bonfire of the Vanities" in the centre of Florence. While Savonarola's rule quickly collapsed and the Medici returned to power, the counter movement in the church continued. In 1542 the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition was formed and a few years later the Index Librorum Prohibitorum banned a wide array of Renaissance works.
Just as important was the end of stability with a series of foreign invasions of Italy known as the Italian Wars that would continue for several decades. These began with the 1494 invasion by France that wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. Most damaging was the May 6, 1527, Spanish and German troops sacking Rome that all but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art and architecture.
Due to the instability and the contact with foreign rulers a number of Italy's greatest artists chose to emigrate. The most notable example was Leonardo da Vinci who left for France in 1516. This spread north was also representative of a larger trend. No longer was the Mediterranean the most important trade route. In 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India and from that date the primary route of goods from the Orient was through the Atlantic ports of Iberia, France and England. These areas quickly far surpassed Italy in wealth and power. However, while the Italian Renaissance was fading, the Northern Renaissance in these other lands adopted many of its ideals and styles.
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