The Renaissance

By Bennett Sherry
Many people believe the Renaissance was purely European. Let’s evaluate these claims and look for global connections in Renaissance art.

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Two men of European descent dressed in extravagant clothing lean against a shelf full of instruments and globes. In the foreground at the bottom is a distorted human skull.

Renaissance narratives

The Renaissance was a cultural movement. Most historians agree that it started in the Italian city-state of Florence in the 1300s. Over time, ideas spread across Europe.

The Renaissance produced great changes in European art, architecture, and culture. Artists became interested in realism and individualism. Artistic styles moved away from a focus on religion. Humanist scholars combined ideas from Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Humanists believed that human achievements were as important as religious theory. Architects imitated the style of Roman and Greek ruins.

In an open-air building with many ornate archways there is a large gathering of philosophers who are engaging in various activities such as conversing, writing, reading and thinking.

The School of Athens, by Raphael adorns one of the walls in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. The painting features Greek philosophers including Plato and Aristotle. © Getty Images.

The term Renaissance comes from the French word for “rebirth.” It was first used by European historians in the 1800s. These historians saw the Renaissance as something uniquely European. They used the Renaissance in ways to justify the expansion of European empires. They claimed Europeans were a better culture and society than other people, such as Indigenous Americans.

But challenging narratives is central to the work of historians. To evaluate the narratives of the Renaissance, we need to answer some questions: Who participated in the Renaissance? Where did it take place? And why did it start?

A young woman of European descent is painting at her easel and her gaze is looking straight at the viewer.

Self-portrait at the Easel, by Sofonisba Anguissola. © Getty Images.

Renaissance “man”

The Renaissance was important—if you were a wealthy, educated man. For most people in Europe, the Renaissance was not something they experienced or noticed.

Yet, women were not silent in this period. They helped shape the Renaissance. Christine de Pisan, for example, wrote works of poetry and political theory, arguing for women’s education. Catherine de’ Medici, the queen of France, controlled political power. Other upper class women supported the arts and were artists themselves. Today, the phrase “Renaissance Man” is used to describe someone who has broad knowledge in many topics. Among the wealthy classes, at least, it seems there were plenty of “Renaissance Women.”

However, life did not change for the vast majority of the population. For most people, changes started by the Renaissance would not be felt for generations.

An economic rebirth

The Renaissance came at the end of a period of chaos. The Black Death had killed millions. Years of wars created instability and hurt trade. By the 1300s and 1400s, these settled down enough to allow trade networks to expand.

Mary sits with baby Jesus on her lap in the manger above a crowd of people (left). A long religious procession along a wall; some people are on foot while others are on horseback (right).

Adoration of the Magi, by Botticelli (left) and the East Wall of the Magi Chapel in the Palace of the Medici (right), painted by Benozzo Gozzoli. Both paintings depict a religious scene from the Christian Bible, but in each case, the artist has inserted members of the Medici family into the scene. Both images © Getty Images.

Patterns of wealth and labor changed. As more people could buy luxury goods, demand for trade increased. Italian merchants grew wealthy from trade, and Italian cities emerged as strong business cities. Powerful banking families had great control over local politics. The Medici family in Florence is one example.

Wealthy merchants, bankers, and rulers funded the Renaissance artists. The wealthy paid for elaborate portraits. Some had their family inserted into paintings of biblical or historical scenes.

Afro-Eurasian trade had great effects on the Renaissance. Trade brought new dyes from Central and South Asian plants and minerals for Renaissance painters. Bankers relied on mathematical concepts developed by Arabic and Indian scholars. Even the technologies behind the printing press were probably the result of Afro-Eurasian trade. Papermaking, for example, originated in China.

Renaissance sultans

Many historians argue the Renaissance was inspired by ancient Greece and Rome. But there was a large influence from the east, as well. In 1453, the Ottomans of Turkey took Constantinople and secured power over the east. As the Ottomans expanded their empire, they also supported the arts. The sultan hired Italian artists and architects to work in his court. These artists drew inspiration from the art and architecture of the great Islamic cities.

Muslim scholars preserved Greek and Roman texts. Renaissance poets and writers were inspired by Islamic poetry. Architecture of the Italian Renaissance was modeled on the great cities to the east. Some of these cities were Aleppo, Cairo, and Tabriz.

A large group of people dressed in various religious and cultural garb are gathered outside in a large courtyard listening to St. Mark preach from a slightly elevated small stage.

St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria, by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. © Getty Images.

The painting above shows the Christian Saint Mark. He is preaching in Alexandria, Egypt to a crowd of Muslim men. However, Islam was not founded until nearly 600 years after Saint Mark’s death. The Italian Renaissance was equally influenced by its exchange with Islamic culture.

Legacies of the Renaissance

Trade inspired some Europeans to explore Africa’s western coast. European merchants bought silks and spices from the Ottomans. Italian merchants sent Portuguese sailors to bring back gold from West Africa. These voyages also introduced Europe to West African art.

A bustling waterfront scene on a cloudy day depicting people engaging in various activities both on land and in small wooden boats on the water right off of the waterfront.

The King’s Fountain, a painting by an anonymous sixteenth-century Dutch painter, depicting the waterfront in Lisbon’s Alfama District. © The Berardo Collection, Lisbon, Portugal.

The painting above shows the waterfront of the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. Many of these people are enslaved Black people, but the painting also features several free Black people. It shows Black and white people dancing together. In the middle-right, a Black knight rides a horse. This painting and others show that European cities featured racial, ethnic, and religious diversity.

Systems of racism and enslavement were developing at the same time of the Renaissance. Portuguese voyages to West Africa returned with enslaved Africans. By the mid-1500s slavery was common in the Italian city-states and the Iberian Peninsula. It is important to remember the same economy that funded so much art eventually created the modern slave trade.

Sources

Brotton, Jerry. Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Brotton, Jerry. The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe, Luke Clossey, and Peter Burke. “The Global Renaissance.” Journal of World History 28, no. 1 (2017): 1-30.

Fletcher, Catherine. The Beauty and the Terror: The Italian Renaissance and the Rise of the West. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Spicer, Joaneath, ed. Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe. Baltimore, MD: The Walters Art Museum, 2012.

Bennett Sherry

Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world history, human rights, and the Middle East at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maine at Augusta. Additionally, he is a research associate at Pitt’s World History Center. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the twentieth century.

Image credits

Creative Commons This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:

Cover image: The Ambassadors. Jean de Dinteville, French Ambassador to the court of Henry VIII of England, and Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. The painting is famous for containing, in the foreground, at the bottom, a spectacular anamorphic, which, from an oblique point of view, is revealed to be a human skull. An Azerbaijanian vishapagorg rug is on the table. By Hans Holbein the Younger. © VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images.

The School of Athens, by Raphael adorns one of the walls in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. The painting features Greek philosophers including Plato and Aristotle. © Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images.

Self-portrait at the Easel by Sofonisba Anguissola. © Ali Meyer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images.

Adoration of the Magi, by Botticelli (left) and the East Wall of the Magi Chapel in the Palace of the Medici (right), painted by Benozzo Gozzoli. Both paintings depict a religious scene from the Christian Bible, but in each case, the artist has inserted members of the Medici family into the scene. Getty Images.

St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria, by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. © Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images.

The King’s Fountain, a painting by an anonymous sixteenth-century Dutch painter, depicting the waterfront in Lisbon’s Alfama District. The Berardo Collection, Lisbon, Portugal. https://berardocollection.com/?article=32&lang=en&page=1&sid=50002


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