Page 290 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

renaissance 1591

The church next to the
Ducal Palalce (palace of
the Duke) in the Renais-
sance hill town of
Urbino, Italy. The church
and the duke's palace
were usually the most
prominent buildings in
Renaissance towns.

ranean trade more difficult and
less profitable, even for Ital-
ians. Searching for a new route
to the East, Christopher Co-
lumbus, an Italian sailing for
Spain, encountered the Ameri-
cas in 1492; the Portuguese
began exploring the coast of
Africa until Vasco da Gama
their fellow human beings, people revived portraiture in succeeded in 1497 in establishing an ocean route
sculpture and painting through the use of correct between India and Europe.
anatomy and physiognomy (the art of discovering char- These voyages and the commercial connections and
acter from outward appearance).To reproduce what the newly discovered wealth they brought changed the shape
eye sees as a tool to share people’s understanding of the of Europe forever. The center of power on the continent
external world, Brunelleschi invented linear perspective in shifted away from the Mediterranean (literally once the cen-
Italy early in the fifteenth century, and Alberti codified it. ter of the Earth, media terra) to the Atlantic seaboard.
Buildings conformed to the precepts of Vitruvius, the Spain,Portugal,France,England,and later the Netherlands
Roman architect, and the vocabulary of design and dec- became the dynamic nations, expanding beyond Europe
oration was adopted from the ancients. Taken together, into the empires they were building around the world,
these ideas and practices constitute humanism, which extending long-distance trade to places in Africa, the Amer-
became the central cultural and intellectual expression of icas, and the Pacific never contemplated by the Italians.
the Renaissance; a direct consequence was a new and
remarkable self-confidence in human agency.“Man is the Renewed Self-Confidence
measure of all things” and “Man can do anything he wills” The result was a renewed self-confidence among Euro-
became accepted beliefs within the humanist community. peans that included a reinforced belief in the power of
This intellectual, cultural, and artistic revolution par- human beings to comprehend nature. Practical experi-
alleled the economic and social revolution that was ments resulted from this belief: Science presupposes the
occurring. The virtual Italian monopoly on the lucrative validity of human observation and the ability to interpret
long-distance luxury trade to the East galvanized peoples it. Newly discovered plants and animals from outside
north of the Alps to find the means to challenge Italian Europe could be depicted through exact illustrations
economic dominance.The end of the HundredYears’War made possible by the Renaissance tradition of naturalism
(1453) and the English Wars of the Roses (1485) stimu- in art; skills such as reliable cartography for navigation
lated northern commerce; the crusade of rulers Ferdinand were facilitated by related concepts such as linear
and Isabella of Spain against the Moors of Granada cre- perspective. Altogether, Europe assumed an energetic,
ated a united Spanish kingdom by 1492.Also, the fall of outward-looking attitude that drove the voyages of dis-
Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 made Mediter- covery and the expansion of trade—events that resulted