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Renaissance in Italy

Terms in this set (30)

Lorenzo de'Medici
He was known as "the Magnificent" who represented the Renaissance ideal. He was a smart politician who helped keep Florence together in the late 1400's during difficult times. When Lorenzo was ruling, since he was a generous patron, many poets and philosophers visited his palace.
Francesco Petrarch
A Florentine who lived during he 1300's is known as the "Father of Humanism." He assembled a library of classical texts, which inspired others to read these Greek and Roman works. His Sonnets to Laura inspired many later writers.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Was born in 1452 who made sketches of nature and of models in his studio. He dissected corpses to learn more about the human body and how it worked. He created the famous Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Although Leonardo considered himself as only an artist, he was also talented in botany, anatomy, optics, music, architecture, and engineering.
Michelangelo
A genius as a sculptor, engineer, painter, architect, and poet. He created the Pieta and the Statue of David and more popularly created the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He is also known as a architect who created the dome of St/ Peters Cathedral in Rome which served as a model for the Capitol building in Washington D.C.
Raphael
A painter who blended Christian and classical styles. He is best known for his portrayals of the Madonna, mother of Jesus. He studied the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Baladassare Castiglione
The author of The Book of the Courtier, which describes the manners, skills, learning, and virtues that a member of the court should have. He created ideals for the society man and woman.
Niccolo Machiavelli
He served in Florence as a diplomat and observed kings and princes in foreign courts. He published a book called The Prince (1513) where Machiavelli created a guidebook for his ideal ruler. This book was dedicated the Medicis. Many saw this book as being controversial.
Humanism
A Renaissance cultural movement that turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.
Humanities
Learning or literature concerned with human culture.
Perspective
The art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other when viewed from a particular point.
Fresco
A painting done rapidly in watercolor on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling, so that the colors penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries.
Filippo Brunelleschi
An Italian architect who is noted for the dome of Florence Cathedral, which he raised without the use of temporary supports.
Sfumato
The technique of allowing tones and colors to shade gradually into one another, producing softened outlines or hazy forms.
Venice
A city in northeastern Italy, on a lagoon of the Adriatic Sea, capital of Venetia region. It is built on numerous islands that are separated by canals and linked by bridges.
Florence
A city in western central Italy, the capital of Tuscany, on the Arno River. Florence was a leading center of the Italian Renaissance, especially under the rule of the Medici family during the 15th century.
Patron
A person who gives financial or other support to a person, organization, cause, or activity.
Papal States
The temporal dominions belonging to the pope, especially in central Italy.
Duchy of Milan
A state in northern Italy from 1395 to 1797. It was part of the Holy Roman Empire, by then a decentralized entity, and was ruled by several dynasties, most of them major powers from outside Italy.
City States
An independent entity whose territory consists of a city which is not administered as part of another local government.
Sistine Chapel
A chapel in the Vatican, built in the late 15th century by Pope Sixtus IV, containing a painted ceiling and fresco of the Last Judgment by Michelangelo and also frescoes by Botticelli.
Engraving
A form of art where the artist etches a design on a metal plate with acid. The artist then uses the plate to make prints.
Vernacular
The everyday language of ordinary people.
Utopian
An ideal where society is peaceful and harmonious. No one is idle, all are educated, and justice is used to end crime rather than to eliminate the criminal.
Albrecht Durer
A German engraver and painter. A leading artist of the Renaissance, he was important for his technically advanced woodcuts and copper engravings and was also noted for his watercolors and drawings.
Jan van Eyck
Flemish painter who's notable works include "The Adoration of the Lamb" in the church of St. Bavon in Ghent and The Arnolfini Marriage.
Francois Rabelais
A French satirist. His writings are noted for their earthy humor, their parody of medieval learning and literature, and their affirmation of humanist values.
William Shakespeare
An English playwright. His plays are written mostly in blank verse and include comedies, historical plays, the Greek and Roman plays, enigmatic comedies, the great tragedies, and the group of tragicomedies with which he ended his career.
Johann Gutenberg
A German goldsmith and printer who introduced modern book printing. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.
Miguel de Cervantes
A Spanish novelist and playwright. His most well-known work is Don Quixote (1605-15), a satire on chivalric romances that greatly influenced the development of the novel.
Erasmus
A Dutch humanist and scholar. He was the foremost Renaissance scholar of northern Europe, and paved the way for the Reformation with his satires on the Catholic Church.
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