The word Renaissance means “rebirth.” It names a period in European history, roughly from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth century, when scholars and artists, first in Italy and then across Europe, set out to revive the learning and art of ancient Greece and Rome, and in doing so created something new. It gave the world Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, linear perspective and the printed book, Machiavelli and Shakespeare. It also gave us a story about history itself that historians have spent a century and a half questioning.

Who named it

People of the time spoke of a revival. In 1550 the Italian painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari, in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, described a rinascita, a rebirth of the arts after centuries of decline. But the period's name as we use it was popularized in the nineteenth century. The French historian Jules Michelet used “Renaissance” for a whole era in 1855, and in 1860 the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt published The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, the most influential book on the subject ever written. Burckhardt argued that Renaissance Italy gave birth to the modern world, above all to the modern individual, conscious of himself as a unique person rather than merely a member of a group.

The idea of a “dark age”

The Renaissance idea depended on a contrast. Fourteenth century Italian scholars, especially the poet Petrarch, described the centuries after the fall of Rome as a time of darkness, in which classical learning had been forgotten. Later writers turned this into the idea of the “Dark Ages” or “Middle Ages,” a long interval between two bright periods, antiquity and their own time.

Modern historians largely reject this picture. The medieval centuries produced universities, Gothic cathedrals, great poets such as Dante, and philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas. In 1927 the American historian Charles Homer Haskins wrote of a “Renaissance of the twelfth century,” pointing out that medieval scholars had already revived much ancient learning, often through Latin translations of Arabic and Greek texts. Ancient Greek knowledge had also been preserved and developed in the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world. The Renaissance did not rescue a lost civilization from total darkness; it built on many sources.

Why Italy?

Historians point to several reasons why the Renaissance began in Italy.

• Cities and wealth. Italy had many large, rich cities, such as Florence, Venice, Milan and Genoa, grown wealthy from trade, banking and manufacturing. Wealthy merchants and rulers could pay for art and scholarship.
• Roman ruins. Italians lived among the remains of ancient Rome, which they saw as their own heritage.
• Political rivalry. Italy was divided into competing city-states and principalities, each eager to display its prestige through buildings, art and learned men.
• Contact with Byzantium. Italian merchants traded with the East, and Byzantine scholars brought Greek learning to Italy, especially after 1397.

After the Black Death

The Renaissance also followed catastrophe. The Black Death, which reached Italy in 1347 to 1348, killed perhaps a third to half of Europe's population; Florence may have lost half or more of its people. Some historians argue that the shock of mass death encouraged reflection on human life and achievement, and that labor shortages raised wages and shifted wealth. Others are cautious about drawing such direct links. What is clear is that the Renaissance flowered in a society that had survived disaster.

Early, High and Late

Historians often divide the Italian Renaissance into phases, though the dates are rough. The Early Renaissance, from about 1400 to 1490, centered on Florence, with artists such as Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio. The High Renaissance, from about 1490 to 1527, saw the work of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, much of it in Rome. The Late Renaissance, after 1527, saw a more anxious and elaborate style, sometimes called Mannerism, while Renaissance ideas spread through the rest of Europe. In England and parts of the north, the Renaissance flowered even later, into the early seventeenth century.

Worked example: is “Renaissance” a fair label?

Historians use period labels for convenience, but labels carry judgments. Test this one.

• What it captures. A real movement among educated Europeans to study classical texts and imitate ancient art, which changed education, art and thought.
• What it hides. Strong continuities with the medieval past; the contributions of Byzantine and Islamic scholars; the fact that most people, peasants and laborers, lived much as their grandparents had.
• Whose perspective? The label reflects the self-image of a small educated elite who believed they were reviving civilization. It describes their ambitions as much as reality.
• Still useful? Yes, if used carefully, as a name for a cultural movement rather than a sudden break from darkness to light.

This course uses the word in that careful sense. It follows the scholars and artists who sought to recover the ancient world and, in the process, made a new one. It also asks who was included in their vision of human dignity, and who was left out.