Renaissance Magazine

THE
RENAISSANCE

TIMES

The What was
Renaissance Humanism?
How did it
A Look At
begin? Dante’s
Divine
Comedy

The Renaissance How did
it begin?

The Renaissance is generally They studied the writings and
considered to have started in works of the Greeks and the
Florence, Italy around the Romans and realized that
years 1350 to 1400. The start earlier civilizations had lived
of the Renaissance also was differently. This new way of
the end of the Middle Ages. thinking was called
Humanism One of the big Humanism. Now people
changes in the Renaissance thought that life could be
was in the basic way people enjoyable and they could
thought about things. In the have comforts. They started
Middle Ages people thought to think that people should
that life was supposed to be be educated and that things
hard. They grew up thinking like art, music, and science
that life was nothing but hard could make life better for
work and war. However, everyone. This was a real
around the 1300s, the people change in the way people
in Florence, Italy began to thought.
think differently about life.

Florence, Italy In the 1400's the Medici family
came into power in Florence.
At the start of the Renaissance, They were wealthy bankers and
Italy was divided up into a helped the arts along by
number of powerful city-states. sponsoring many artists and
These were areas of land that using their personal funds to
were ruled by a large city. Each further the humanist movement.
city-state had its own
government. One of the major
city-states was Florence. The
government that ran Florence
was a republic, like ancient Rome.
This meant that the citizens
elected their own leaders. In the
late 1300s, Florence had become a
rich city. Wealthy merchants and
businessmen had the money to
hire artisans and craftspeople.
This inspired competitions
among artists and thinkers. Art
began to flourish and new
thoughts began to emerge.

Petrarch and Humanism & Giotto di
Bondone

Petrarch and Humanism

Francesco Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism". He was
a scholar and a poet who lived in Florence in the 1300s. He studied
poets and philosophers from Ancient Rome such as Cicero and Virgil.
His ideas and poetry became an inspiration to many writers and poets
throughout all of Europe as the Renaissance spread.

Giotto di Bondone - First Renaissance Painter Giotto was a painter in
Florence, Italy.

He was the first painter to break away from the standard Byzantine
style painting of the Middle Ages and try something new. He painted
objects and people as they actually looked in nature. Previously,
artists had all painted more abstract paintings that didn't look real at
all. Giotto is said to have started the Renaissance in art with his new
style of realistic painting.

Dante Inferno, Canto I

Another major contributor to the Dante Alighieri, 1265 - 1321
start of the Renaissance was Dante
Alighieri. He lived in Florence and Midway upon the journey of our life
wrote the Divine Comedy in the I found myself within a forest dark,
early 1300s. This book is For the straightforward pathway had
considered to be the greatest been lost.
literary work ever written in the
Italian language. New Ideas Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
Spread This new way of thinking What was this forest savage, rough,
and style of art quickly spread to and stern,
other wealthy Italian city-states Which in the very thought renews the
such as Rome, Venice, and Milan. fear.
This early part of the Renaissance
is often called the Italian So bitter is it, death is little more;
Renaissance. Italy would become But of the good to treat, which there I
wealthy through trade and their found,
new ideas soon spread throughout Speak will I of the other things I saw
all of Europe. there.

I cannot well repeat how there I
entered,
So full was I of slumber at the
moment
In which I had abandoned the true
way.