Chapter 13

The Renaissance
 The Expansion of Trade
ü  When wars declined long-distance trade between
Europe and Asia increased.
ü  The Silk Roads were an ancient trade route that
connected Europe with China and the rest of East
Asia.
ü  After the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of
the Tang Dynasty travel on the Silk Road was
dangerous, and few traveled the 5,000-mile route.
ü  During the 1200s, the rise of the Mongol Empire
(Yuan Dynasty of China) brought security, and
trade increased on the Silk Roads.
ü  In 1271, an Italian merchant named Marco Polo
traveled on the Silk Roads for 24 years.
ü  After Polo returned to Italy with tales of great
riches in Asia European merchants increased trade
with Asia.
WATCH Venice Expedia
 New Ways of Thinking
ü  During the Middle Ages, education declined because
of wars and disease.
ü  Humanism is a way of thinking that focus on the
study of classical subjects such as history, grammar,
literature, and philosophy.
ü  Humanism helped people to experiment, explore,
and create ending the Middles Ages and starting the
Renaissance.
ü  The Renaissance (1300-1600 C.E.) was a time of
creativity, learning, and discovery that began in Italy
and spread throughout Europe.
ü  The term Renaissance means “rebirth,” and refers to
people again studying classical art and learning from
ancient Greece and Rome.
ü  During the Renaissance, Florence along the Arno
River was the largest and most important city in
Europe with a population of around 120,000.
WATCH Florence (Firenze) Expedia (1:25)
ü  The Renaissance lasted from about 1300 to 1600.
The Renaissance began in Italy and then spread to
all of Europe.
ü  The Renaissance began in Italy for several reasons
1)  Italy was the center of the Roman Empire.
2)  Artists and writers were closer to the classical
period (Ancient Greeks and Ancient Rome).
3)  Many of the trade routes went through northern
Italy (Florence, Milan, and Venice).
4)  Wealthy merchants and bankers supported the
arts.
ü  The Medici family ruled Florence during the
Renaissance.
ü  The Medici and other wealthy families became
patrons of the arts.
WATCH Medici Masters of Florence Trailer
(0:55-3:52)
 Advance in the Arts
ü  During the Renaissance artists portrayed humans in realistic ways.
ü  Artists during the Renaissance used a new technique known as
perspective to produce three dimensional (3-D) paintings.
Leonardo da Vinci
•  Born 1452 in the village of Vinci, near Florence
•  Studied painting, astronomy, geometry, and anatomy
•  Painted the Last Supper and Mona Lisa
Michelangelo
•  Born 1475 in the Italian village of Caprese
•  Worked as a sculptor and painter
•  Famous sculptures are Moses, David, and Pieta
Raphael
•  Born 1483 in Urbino, Italy, and moved to Florence as a young man
•  Famous paintings include School of Athens and Wedding of the
Virgin
Donatello
•  Born 1386 in Florence
•  Traveled throughout Italy to create statues from stone, bronze,
wood, stucco, and wax
WATCH Leonardo da Vinci Mini Bio and Da Vinci Code Trailer
 Other Influential People of the Renaissance
ü  Filippo Brunelleschi designed and built large domes
for churches including the Duomo in Florence.
ü  Dante Alighieri wrote many poems and books about
life after death including The Divine Comedy.
ü  Vittoria Colonna was an Italian writer, and she
exchanged letters and sonnets with Michelangelo.
ü  Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes wrote the novel
Don Quixote about a landowner who imagines he is a
knight and goes on many adventures.
Read Don Quixote R53-R54
WATCH Don Quixote Bedtime Story (4:00-6:23)
ü  In 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli published The Prince
about how to gain and hold political power.
DISCUSS Is it better to be feared or loved? Why?
ü  During the 1200s and 1300s, many scholars wrote in
Latin, but during the Renaissance (1300-1600)
people wrote vernacular, the native language of
Italian, Spanish, French or English.
 The Renaissance Move North
ü  During the 1400s, Renaissance ideas began to spread north
from Italy to countries such as France, Germany, Spain, and
England.
ü  When the Hundred Years’ War ended in 1453 trade
expanded and cities grew rapidly in northern Europe.
ü  During the Renaissance, Italy was not a unified country, but
a collection of powerful and independent cities.
ü  In the late 1400s, when a war broke out between the many
kingdoms in Italy Italian artists fled to northern Europe for
their safety and to start the Northern Renaissance.
ü  The Italian Renaissance and Northern Renaissance were
different because northern European scholars did not study
the classics (Ancient Greece and Rome) as much as Italian
scholars.
ü  During the mid-1400s, a German named Johann Gutenberg
used moveable type to invent a printing press.
DISCUSS Photo of Night Watcher painting at the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam, Netherlands
WATCH Rick Steves Bruges, Belgium
 Northern Artists and Writers
ü  Albrecht Durer created many woodcuts, a painted
image produced from a wood carving.
ü  Jan Van Eyck and Pieter Bruegel the Elder were two
great Flemish painters.
ü  The term Flemish describes people from a region of
northwest Europe called Flanders (in what is today
Belgium).
ü  From 1558 to 1603, Queen Elizabeth I ruled
England, and the time period is known as the
Elizabethan Age.
ü  The most famous writer of the Northern
Renaissance was William Shakespeare.
•  Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford,
England.
•  During the 1580s, moved to London to pursue a
career in theater.
•  Best known works include A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet.
WATCH Trailer Romeo and Juliet