The Renaissance was that change in the outlook of Europe which took place during the centuries from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. In its broadest sense the Renaissance affected every department of human life. But in its narrower sense it refers to the revival of the learning of ancient Greece, and to the effects of that revival on the arts and literature of modern peoples. The Church in the Middle Ages had taught men to revere authority and to find in her teaching an answer to all the problems of life, whereas the Greeks taught men to inquire and to explore rather than to accept, and to enjoy rather than to suffer. It was this attitude of mind, more than anything else, which shook the medieval world to its foundations. The views of the ancient Greeks, now re-born into the world, were in sharp contrast with the ideals of the Middle Ages. From these ideals many men for a time turned with a feeling of contempt.
The Renaissance was a many-sided movement: it deeply influenced learning and education, art and architecture, science and invention, geography and exploration, and, above all, religion. After the fall of Rome, a knowledge of Greek had rapidly died out in the West and no provision was made for its teaching similar to that made for Latin. In Italy, owing to the closeness of its relations with the East, the number of scholars, monks, and others, who learnt some Greek was greater than elsewhere. It is not, surprising, therefore, that the revival of learning received its main impulse from Italy. From the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italian scholars became more and more devoted to ancient studies, and they began to visit Constantinople, where Greek learning had been preserved. There they hunted out, copied, and eagerly studied the precious manuscripts of the past, and these opened up a new world of thought. Further, from the time that the Turks' crossed from Asia into Europe, some of the Greeks themselves began to travel westwards and to accept well-paid teaching posts in the wealthy Italian cities. And, though the revival began in Italy, the new ideas were rapidly circulated by the new printing presses invented at the time, and every nation in due course played its part in the Renaissance.
The great and wealthy city of Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance. Cosimo de Medici, a merchant prince who became ruler of the city, was a patron of the New Learning, and he encouraged Greek scholars to settle in Florence. His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, known as The Magnificent, loved to gather round him the learned men of the day; he spent 60,000 pounds a year on books; and he caused 200 rare manuscripts to be brought from the East to the Medici library. Rome was second only to Florence as a centre of the New Learning. The Popes themselves became great patrons of learning. Nicholas V founded the Vatican Library. When the son of Lorenzo de Medici became Pope as Leo X, the Renaissance in Rome reached its highest point. Leo made Rome, as he said, ' the capital of the world in literature, as it is in everything else'. He provided a hundred professors for his Greek college in Rome, and he brought his father's library to the Holy City. The library was afterwards restored to Florence by his cousin Clement VII, another member of this remarkable Medici family. The New Learning influenced England from the time of Edward IV, and it made great headway in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII when the scholars known as the Oxford Reformers were flourishing.
The first Englishman to bring Greek manuscripts to England was William Selling. One of his pupils was Thomas Linacre, who went to Florence and shared the instruction given to the young Medici princes; he read in the Vatican Library, and made the acquaintance of Aldo at Venice. Another Oxford teacher who drew his inspiration from Italian sources was William Grocyn, one of the first men to give lectures on Greek literature at his University.
One of Grocyn's pupils was John Colet, who visited Italy in 1496 and returned to lecture on the Gospels in the Greek original at Oxford. He and Sir Thomas More, were friends of Erasmus, a Dutch scholar of international fame. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was herself a patroness of the New Learning. She founded two Cambridge colleges, Christ's and St. John's, and two Lady Margaret Professorships of Divinity, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. The Revival of Learning was one aspect of the Renaissance; the outburst of artistic energy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was another. The painters of the new period broke away from the conventional art of the Middle Ages and began again to draw from living models. As with the artists, so with the sculptors. Donatello 'went straight with his mighty chisel to original sources - to youth and manhood, and the love of living'. The great figures of that age - Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian - still dominate the history of European art. Examples of their works, and of many other Italian artists of the Renaissance, as well as of the Northern artists - Holbein, Durer, and others - are to be seen in the magnificent collection at the National Gallery.
It was natural that men who sought their inspiration from the Greeks should turn with renewed interest to classical architecture. The ruins of ancient Rome provided examples ready to hand; and soon churches planned like classical temples were rising in every city in Italy. St. Peter's, Rome, was designed by Bramante, and the famous dome added by Michelangelo. But great as was the enthusiasm for this architecture Renaissance architecture did not establish itself in England until the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, though Henry VII's tomb at WestminsterAbbey is an example of the Florentine art of the period.
The Renaissance period, filled as it was with a love of experiment, naturally produced a renewed interest in science. With the exception of isolated geniuses like Friar Roger Bacon, there were no medieval scientists worthy of the name. Practically no scientific discoveries had been made for centuries. Modern Science begins its history with the Renaissance and owes a good deal to Leonardo da Vinci. He was the first of a long line of experimenters whose work has continued to the present day. The greatest shock to the medieval notions of the universe was given by Copernicus. For two thousand years mankind with few exceptions had believed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun revolved round our planet every twenty-four hours. Such had been the teaching of Ptolemy, the Greek scientist. Another Greek, Pythagoras, had questioned it, and advanced the extraordinary notion that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe; but there were few who accepted his theory until Copernicus turned his attention to the 'solar system'. Through slits cut in the walls of his house, Copernicus watched the movements of the planets. Just before he died in 1543 he published a book - 'The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies' - giving to the world the results of his observations.
Twenty years later the famous Galileo was born at Pisa, and it was he who perfected the telescope. He lived to popularise the theory of Copernicus, but he was nearly put to death for his pains and was forced by the Court of Inquisition to recant. The Italian Galileo, and the English Newton who discovered the laws of gravity, were the two greatest scientists of the seventeenth century. In the realm of geographical discovery, no age in the world' s history was more momentous than the Age of the Renaissance. Columbus, who discovered America; Vasco De Gama, who found the Cape Route to India; Cabot, Cartier, and Cortez, the discoverers of Newfoundland, Canada, and Mexico; Balboa, who first sailed on the Pacific; Magellan, whose ship was the first to sail round the world - all these and many more make the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an era without parallel in the annals of discovery.
The new ideas which came surging into the world during the Renaissance acted in many respects as disruptive forces. This was particularly true in the realm of religion. An unquestioning acceptance of authority - i.e. of the teaching of the Catholic Church - was the keynote of the medieval attitude to life, but an eager, inquiring generation began to question this attitude. Men, too, were shocked by the moral decay of the Church and of the Papacy; voices were raised demanding reforms. Some reformers, like Colet and Erasmus, tried to reconcile the new ideas with the Church of Rome and worked to reform it; others, of whom Luther was the greatest, rejected altogether its authority.
The revolution in European history known as the Reformation was an indirect result of the Renaissance - of the New Learning which invited comparison between the present and the past; of the invention of printing which scattered broadcast the new ideas; and again, of the growing idea of the Nation and with it the supremacy of the State. Research Renaissance
Andrea Del Sarto (Andrea D'Agnolo) was a Florentine artist born in 1487, he died in 1531 of the plague. He was a pupil of Giovanni Barile and Piero di Cosimo and was influenced by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. He painted the picture 'Charity' which hangs in the Louvre. Research Andrea Del Sarto
Fra Bartolommeo (real name Baccio Delia Porta) was an Italian painter. He was born in 1475 near Florence and died in 1517. While young he was admitted to the workshop of the Cosimo Roselli where he met Mariotto Albertinelli. He studied painting in Florence, and acquired a more perfect knowledge of art from the works of Leonardo da Vinci. He was an admirer and follower of Savonarola, on whose death he joined the Dominican order in 1500, though he never became a priest, giving up painting for four years until persuaded to start again. He was the friend of Michael Angelo and Raphael; painted many religious pictures, among them a Saint Mark and Saint Sebastian, which are greatly admired. His colouring, in vigour and brilliancy, comes near to that of Titian and Giorgione. Research Fra Bartolommeo
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian artist, architect and scientist. He was born in 1452 at Vinci and died in 1519. Leonardo da Vinci was born the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary and a peasant girl. Despite his notorious birth, he showed promise as a child and in 1470 was sent to study art at the studio if Andrea del Verrocchio. In 1482 he settled in Milan under the patronage of Duke Ludovico Sforza, for whom he painted the 1498 'Last Supper' on a wall of the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. After 1500 he entered service with Cesare Borgia, Duke of Romagna as an architect and engineer. Leonardo da Vinci recorded scientific studies in mirror writing in unpublished note books which have subsequently been discovered and designed the first helicopter (on paper) as well as recording anatomical details after carrying out dissections. Research Leonardo da Vinci
Michael Angelo Buonarotti was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect and poet. He was born in 1475 at Tuscany and died in 1563. He studied drawing under Domenico Ghirlandaio, and sculpture under Bertoldo at Florence, and having attracted the notice of Lorenzo de'Medici, was for several years an inmate of his household.
Having distinguished himself both in sculpture and painting, He was commissioned (together with Leonardo da Vinci) to decorate the senate-hall at Florence with a historical design, but before it was finished, in 1505, he was induced by Pope Julius II to settle in Rome. Here he sculptured the monument of the pontiff (there are seven statues belonging to it) now in the church of St Pietro in Vincoli; and painted the dome of the Sistine Chapel, his frescoes representing the creation and the principal events of sacredhistory.
In 1530 he took a leading part in the defence of Florence against Charles V. Three years later he began his great picture in the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgment, which occupied him eight years. His last considerable works in painting were two large pictures: the Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter in the Pauline Chapel.
In sculpture he executed the Descent of Christ from the Cross, four figures of one piece of marble. His statue of Bacchus was thought by Raphael to possess equal perfection with the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles. As late as 1546 he was obliged to undertake the continuation of the building of St Peter's, and planned and built the dome, but he did not live long enough to see his plan finished, in which many alterations were made after his death. Besides this, he undertook the building of the Piazzadel Campidoglio (Capitol), of the Farnese Palace, and of many other edifices. His style in architecture is distinguished by grandeur and boldness, and in his ornaments the untamed character of his imagination frequently appears, preferring the uncommon to the simple and elegant. His poems, which he considered merely as pastimes, contain, likewise, convincing proofs of his great genius. His prose works consist of lectures, speeches, etc. Research Michael Buonarotti
Helicopter is the name given to a flying machine which can raise itself vertically by means of horizontally revolving propellers or air-screws - known as a rotor. The advantages of such a machine for war puposes, enabling it to rise and land on the deck of a warship with ease, hover in the air for scouting purposes, fly low and slow for attacking ground targets and to land in small areas are so great that since at least the Great War many attempts were made to build a successful helicopter, and the first known attempt was by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 16th century.
In January 1921 Etienne Ochmichen tested a helicopter in France which offered a part solution to the problem. His helicopter with a 25 hp engine lifted 584 lbs. No attempt was made howver to provide a method for balancing or moving the forwards. Both the French and British governments experimented with helicopters in 1920 and 1921, but the problem of stability in the air alluded them. The problem faced by the early helicopter designers being that they were constrained by a need for the aircraft to be able to glide safely to ground in the event of engine failure. This problem was overcome by the discovery that disconnecting the rotor from the engine in the event of engine failure, the rotor then continuing to turn for a while and provide some degree of lift to enable an emergency landing to be made.
The first successful helicopter, the VS-300, was created in 1939 by the Russian-born American engineer Igor Sikorsky. Research Helicopter
The Leonardo Da Vinci was an Italian dreadnought of 22000 tons displacement launched in 1911. The Leonardo Da Vinci was powered by eight 3-drum type boilers providing a top speed of 27 knots and carried a complement of 957. She was armed with thirteen 12-inch guns; eighteen 4.7-inch guns; fourteen 3-inch guns and three 18-inch torpedo tubes. The Leonardo Da Vinci was sunk at Taranto in August 1916 during the Great War, and despite being refloated in 1919 was never returned to service. Research Leonardo Da Vinci
The Leonardo Da Vinci was an Italian Marconi Class ocean-going submarine of 1036 tons displacement launched in 1939. She was powered by Adriatico diesel engines providing a top speed of 18 knots surfaced, could dive to a depth of 60 fathoms, and was armed with two 3.9 inch guns; four machine-guns and eight 21-inch torpedo tubes. Research Leonardo Da Vinci II
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