Renaissance: The Birthplace of Modern Thought

I’ve always had a passion for the the arts, mathematics, and science. Each of these academic pathways are important in their own ways, and have helped us to progress to where we are now. These fields all had a major boost from the time of the renaissance, where geniuses seemingly came out of nowhere and questioned what humanity was capable of achieving. So I decided to do some research on the people that are significant to the renaissance period.

What I Know

The Renaissance was a period between 1300 and 1600 AD. During this time people made huge strides in the arts, and lead us into thinking how we do today. I recognise some famous artists like Leonardo Di Vinci, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo

What I Want to Know

So what interests

me is what exactly did these people do in their lifetimes to make them into the renowned artists that we hear about today. What caused them to sprout up at this time period and not before. Who were some of the artists. What was the timeframe that these people came out of like.
What I learned
The renaissance was one of the greatest boosts in human technology that has ever been recorded in human history. The writers of HISTORY.com (2010) reported that the renaissance was the period directly after the middle ages of Europe, where people started to take up educational values and the fine arts. The renaissances origins can be traced back to the early 13th and 14th century in Italy. Italian scholars started to take up Roman culture and art forms and decided to expand upon it. Writers at HISTORY.com (2010) wrote “Writers such as Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) looked back to ancient Greece and Rome and sought to revive the languages, values and intellectual traditions of those cultures”(p1).
So what suddenly causes all this innovation and looking back on ancient culture. Robert Wilde(2016) found that the renaissance could have been sparked by a pop culture theme of reading ancient texts from monasteries that had not been read for a long period of time. Robert Wilde writes “Fourteenth century writer Petrarch typified this – he may even have triggered it – by writing about his own lust for discovering texts” (p1). He goes on to say “secular readers developed a taste, even a hunger, for seeking out, reading and spreading old works, chief of all classical writings, on a more widespread level than centuries previous”(p1). This sparked an era where information is recovered rather than lost.
Though people had a passion for reading old works, a lot of the ancient texts were lost to the East in places like constantinople or muslim lands. The European people were able to obtain these texts through trading with merchants who saw opportunity with this new social fad, or scholars that taught ancient culture. Robert Wilde(2016) reported that “a huge number of Greek texts and scholars arrived in Europe with the fall of Constantinople in 1453”(p1). This was a huge event for the Renaissance because it enabled easier access to the texts for Europeans, and probably reduced the cost
The biggest contributor for getting these works to common folk was the invention of the printing press.

It allowed for the first ever easily enabled mass production of written works because instead of words being handwritten they could be typed with less effort. Also written texts were more legible than in the past which allowed for easier translation. Robert Wilde writes “ the press removed scribal errors, allowing humanists and scholars to know they were comparing the nuances of the same text, and not someone’s mistake”(p1). This enabled them to criticize papers more easily to improve on them even more (kind of like what English teachers do to papers today).

Although it is gruesome, the Black Death was actually a big foundation for the Renaissance time frame. The Black Death was a plague that devastated Europe, and is estimated to have killed 1/3 of its population. This however gave the remaining people a larger wealth and an ability to rank higher socially. Because there was more wealth and a more open social structure, people wanted to show off what they had. They were willing to pay large sums of money to show the prestige that they had gained. This allowed for famous artists to be funded for larger

projects.
There were many famous artists that came from the Renaissance time frame.

Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael are the most well known of these “Renaissance Men”. Out of these 4 the most famous would probably be Leonardo Da Vinci. The Famous People Staff(2017) reported at the article entitled “Leonardo Da Vinci Biography” that he was born on april 15th 1452 AD in the city of Venice, Italy. In his younger years he lived with his uncle in vinci, and was educated in latin,mathematics, and geometry.Sometime around when he 14, Leonardo started to apprentice under a great painter named Andrea del Verrocchio. The Famous People Staff (2017) wrote about his time under the apprenticeship of Verrocchio reporting that “He learned to paint and sculpt under him and was also taught the basics of metallurgy, drafting, chemistry, botany, cartography and carpentry at his workshop”(p1). Out of these Da Vinci chose the art field to be his main profession, but still did a lot of exploring in the other

fields.
Da Vinci did a lot with his unique skills. During his years as an artist he was renowned as a famous painter. Leonardo’s painted “The Last Supper” which was one of his grandest artworks. The Famous People Staff (2017) wrote about his creation of “The Last Supper” reporting that “It is believed that Leonardo worked on this from dawn to dusk without stopping to eat and considered it his masterpiece due to its characterization and design”.(p1) Leonardo also painted the “Mona Lisa”. Leonardo never actually handed this painting in because he liked the feeling of excellence from it, so he kept it with him until he died.
Leonardo also followed his passion for the sciences. Under his apprenticeship of Verrocchio he gained formal training in human anatomy. He was very adept at dissecting human corpses because of his steady hands. This skill enabled Leonardo to draw thousands of anatomical features of the human body. His most famous anatomical drawings was of the ,vitruvian man, which was a man standing in two forward positions at once.
Leonard also liked to invent new things. The Famous People Staff wrote “he was obsessed with flight and had plans for building something similar to a helicopter in 1502. He even created musical instruments and hydraulic water pumps, most of which were considered irrational at the time and were never made”(p1). If Leonardo were to have finished some of his inventions it is possible he would have also had other legacies put to his already legendary name.
Second was Michelangelo. The Famous People Staff(2017) reported on the article, “Michelangelo Biography”, that Michelangelo was born on March 6th, 1475 in the city of Caprese, Michelangelo, Italy. His birth name was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, but he is usually just called by the first part of his name. When he was young his mother suffered from an illness and died,