From the late fifteenth century, Renaissance ideas spread across the Alps to France, the Low Countries, Germany, England, Spain and Central Europe. They mixed with local traditions and new forces, especially the printing press and the Protestant Reformation, to produce a distinctive Northern Renaissance.

Flemish painting

Art in the North did not simply copy Italy. In the early fifteenth century, painters in the Low Countries, what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, developed their own revolution. Jan van Eyck perfected oil painting to create astonishing detail and luminous color. His Ghent Altarpiece, completed in 1432 with his brother Hubert, and his Arnolfini Portrait of 1434, with its mirror reflecting the room, show a close observation of the physical world. Italian artists admired and learned from Flemish techniques.

Dürer

The German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471 to 1528) of Nuremberg traveled to Italy, studied perspective and proportion, and brought Italian ideas home. He became famous across Europe through his prints, woodcuts and engravings that could be reproduced in large numbers and sold widely, making him one of the first artists to profit from mass reproduction. His self-portrait of 1500, presenting himself in a pose like that of Christ, expresses a bold idea of the artist's dignity.

Erasmus

The leading Northern humanist was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (around 1466 to 1536), the most famous scholar in Europe in his day. He combined classical learning with Christian piety in what is called Christian humanism, seeking to reform the church by returning to its original sources. In 1511 he published The Praise of Folly, a satire in which Folly herself mocks the foolishness of theologians, monks, princes and popes. In 1516 he published a new edition of the New Testament in Greek, with his own Latin translation, based on comparing manuscripts. It was a landmark of textual scholarship and was used by Luther for his German translation.

A saying of the time held that Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched. Erasmus's criticisms of church corruption prepared the way for the Reformation, but he himself never left the Catholic Church, and he disliked Luther's harshness and the violence of religious conflict. He favored reform through education and dialogue.

Thomas More

Erasmus's friend, the English lawyer and statesman Thomas More, published Utopia in 1516, describing an imaginary island where property is held in common, everyone works, and there is religious toleration. The name, from Greek, means “no place,” a pun on “good place.” Scholars debate whether More meant it as a serious ideal or a satire. More became chancellor of England under Henry VIII but refused to accept the king as head of the English church, and he was executed in 1535.

Montaigne

In France, Michel de Montaigne (1533 to 1592) invented a new form of writing, the essay, from the French for “attempt.” His Essays, first published in 1580, explored his own thoughts, habits and doubts with remarkable honesty. His motto was a question: “What do I know?” In his essay “Of Cannibals,” written after meeting Indigenous Brazilians brought to France, he argued that Europeans who called others barbarians often behaved more barbarously themselves, a striking challenge to European assumptions of superiority.

Shakespeare and England

The English Renaissance flowered later, in the reign of Elizabeth I. William Shakespeare (1564 to 1616) drew on classical sources, Italian stories and English history, and his plays explored human character with unprecedented depth. Hamlet's speech praising humanity, “What a piece of work is a man,” echoes the Renaissance celebration of human dignity, while turning to doubt in its final line.

Beyond Europe

The Renaissance coincided with European voyages across the oceans. Columbus reached the Americas in 1492, and Vasco da Gama reached India by sea in 1498. These voyages began an age of empire, the conquest of the Americas, and the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. The same learning that celebrated human dignity was used both to justify and to condemn conquest, as Level 8 will discuss.

Worked example: Italy and the North compared

Compare the Italian and Northern Renaissances on several points.

• Classical models. Italians focused heavily on reviving ancient Rome. Northern humanists more often focused on early Christian texts and church reform.
• Art. Italians emphasized ideal forms, perspective and the human body. Northern artists emphasized detail, texture and everyday life.
• Technology. Northern printers spread humanist works cheaply; Erasmus was a best-selling author.
• Religion. In the North, humanism fed directly into the Reformation and religious wars.

Ideas change as they travel. The Renaissance was not one movement exported from Italy but a conversation across Europe, shaped by each place's needs and traditions. Global movements today, from democracy to human rights, change in similar ways as they take root in different cultures.