Studied by 5 peopleBaldassare Castiglione
"The Courtier" outlines ideal traits for upper-class courtiers: men should be polite, charming, and skilled in arts and physicality, while women should be educated and charming but not seek fame like men.
Niccolo Machiavelli
"The Prince" advises rulers to be ruthless and pragmatic, as he portrays people as selfish and untrustworthy. He compares rulers to lions and foxes, advocating strength and cunning to navigate political challenges.
Filippo Brunelleschi
The Dome of Florence Cathedral - He utilized Roman engineering principles and innovative techniques to construct a 100-foot-high dome in Florence. The dome, seemingly unsupported, symbolized the city's piety, power, and ingenuity, becoming a celebrated landmark.
Michelangelo
David - David's contrapposto pose, inspired by classical statues, portrays him nude and defiantly facing Goliath with tension and power. Symbolically, David represents Florence's victory over Milan, with Florence embodied by David and Milan symbolized by the unseen Goliath.
Raphael
The School of Athens - The artwork depicts ancient philosophers in a dynamic space, with Plato and Aristotle at the center. He includes portraits of Renaissance artists, like Leonardo da Vinci as Plato, and even himself. This masterpiece embodies Renaissance ideals of order, unity, and symmetry, celebrating classical wisdom and artistic innovation.
Piero della Francesca
Federico de Montefeltro and Battista Sforza - The double portrait of Duke Federico de Montefeltro and his wife Battista Sforza celebrates their aristocratic power, with Federico depicted in regal red attire reminiscent of Roman emperors.
Michelangelo
Sistine Chapel Ceiling - The Sistine Chapel Ceiling merges Classical form with Christian themes through 300 figures. In the Creation of Adam, Adam's body resembles a Greek god's beauty, while his face reflects inner intensity due to his closeness to God.
Christine de Pizan
She was a prolific writer who became the first woman in European history to earn a living as an author. She wrote a history of famous women designed to refute "masculine myths" about women. She is now remembered as Europe's first feminist.
Isabella d'Este
The most famous Renaissance woman, was a prominent art patron known for her collection of masterpieces by leading Renaissance artists, highlighting the socially acceptable role for educated women of her time.
Desiderius Erasmus
Known as the "prince of the humanists," he was the most famous and influential humanist of the Northern Renaissance. The greatest scholar of his age, he edited the works of the church fathers and produced Greek and Latin editions of the New Testament.
Thomas More
A prominent humanist scholar and statesman in England, authored "Utopia," which describes an ideal society featuring religious tolerance, humanist education for both genders, and communal property ownership. This utopian vision is set in an imaginary location off the mainland of the New World.
Michel de Montaigne
He was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. He is best known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His writings feature numerous vivid anecdotes and a skeptical tone best illustrated by his famous question, Que sais-je?
Johannes Gutenberg
He is credited with inventing the first printing press with movable type. In 1456, the first full work ever printed by movable types, the Mazarin Bible, was published. Printing quickly spread across Europe. By 1500, presses in over 200 cities printed between 8 million and 20 million books.
Jan van Eyck
He was the most acclaimed Flemish artist of the fifteenth century. He was one of the pioneers in oil painting.
Albrecht Duer
He was the first Northern Renaissance artist to fully absorb the innovations of the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his woodcuts and self-portraits.
Hans Holbein the Younger
He blended the Northern Renaissance's love of precise realism with the Italian Renaissance's love of balanced proportion and perspective. His best-known works are his realistic portraits of Henry VIII and Thomas More.
Giovanni Boccaccio
The Decameron is one of the most famous surviving documents detailing the pervasive effects of the Black Plague. It marks a shift toward literature about everyday people. It focuses not on lords or wealthy royals, but a group of commoners.
Dante Alighieri
Divine Comedy - It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of Western literature. The poem’s imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century.
Pico della Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man - He proclaims the unlimited potentiality of human beings. The work is considered an important stepping stone in the philosophical study of humanity’s collective attempts to understand the meaning of life. He was interested in delineating how humans ought to become close to God and how a variety of philosophical traditions could all align with Christianity.
Lorenzo Valla
He proved the Donation of Constantine to be fake in 1440. He showed that the style of Latin used in the document was from the 8th century, not the 4th. He uses new philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy’s claims to temporal rule, in a brilliant analysis that is often seen as marking the beginning of modern textual criticism.
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