Humanism
The development of humanistic perspectives in Italian Renaissance Society
The Renaissance was a period defined less by a span of time than the application of certain ideas to almost every aspect of life. About the mid-fourteenth century in Italy, people realized that the essential values of the Middle Ages no longer suited an environment that was increasingly urban, secular, mercantile, and educated. In particular, city-states, such as Florence and Venice, required a new perspective that validted the lives of the wealthy merchants who governed their communities.
The revolutionary ideas changed the European perspective, spreading through Italian republics and principalities and north into the Alps. Human experience was now celebrated, and this life was identified as something worth cultivating and studying. The ancients set a standard for Europeans first to emulate and then to surpass. To accomplish this, people had to recover the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world; hence the tools of philology,textual editing,archaeology, and numismatics were developed. To know their fellow human beings, people revived portraiture in sculpture and painting through the use of correct anatomy and physiognomy ( the art of discovering character from outward apperance). Some of the famous artists of the time like Leonardo Da Vinci reproduced what his eyes saw as a tool to share with the people his understanding of the external world. Brunelleschi invented linear perspectivein Italy (early 15th century) and Alberti confined it. Buildings were conformed to the percepts og Vitruvius, the Roman architect, and the vocabulary of design and decorationwas adopted from the ancients. Taken together, these ideas and practices constitute Humanism, which became the central cultural and intellectual expression of the Renaissance; a direct consequence was a new a remarkable self-confidance in human agency “ Man is the measure of all things” and “Man can do anything he wills” became...
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