The difference between the Renaissance and the Modern era. Stages of the renaissance

June 15, 1520. Rome, Piazza Navona. And at the beginning of the 16th century, the square could be easily recognized by its shape, even without the fountains and facades that give it its current, baroque appearance. However, in 1520, the Baroque era had not yet arrived, and the Renaissance had not yet ended - or so it seemed. The impending catastrophe hardly made itself felt, but people with increased sensitivity already felt its approach, especially after the event that happened in this square.


That day, a huge fire was burning in the center of the square. Around him, in their priestly vestments embroidered with gold, stood the highest ranks of the church. Without experiencing any remorse, they looked with a feeling of satisfaction at the flames that greedily devoured the creations of a man recognized as a most dangerous heretic. The pope's representative loudly read the bull, in which not only the blasphemer himself, but also all his books were cursed. This heretic's name was Martin Luther.

Under the bull was the signature of Pope Leo X of the Medici family, who finally deigned to break away from his overly protracted hunt. However, he was never able to grasp the extent of the crisis that engulfed the entire Western Christian world and to extinguish it in time. The very language of the papal decree, against his will, betrays Leo X’s complete absorption in worldly pursuits. It began with these words: “Arise, O Lord, and judge this matter. A wild boar burst into our vineyard.”

Luther, that wild boar, did exactly the same as the pope - he lit his own fire, in which not only the papal bull, but also the entire code of canonical laws burned. Luther initially rebelled against the sale of indulgences. Thanks to the trade in absolution, the popes annually collected huge sums of money, which were used to build luxurious Renaissance palaces. This time, money was needed to build a new St. Peter's Basilica, which thus became not only the largest Christian church in the world, but also required a huge number of human sacrifices. The sale of indulgences gave impetus to the development of events, as a result of which the fire of war flared up in Europe for more than a hundred years and which led to a split in the dominant church in the Western world.


Some scholars believe that the seeds of the schism sprouted wildly seven years after the burning of Luther’s books in Piazza Navona. On Sunday - it had to happen on Sunday! - On May 5, 1527, the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V attacked the holy city of Rome with a fury such as the barbarians had never known. The destruction of the city carried out by Charles V in 1527 had no equal in the entire history of its existence. However, it would be unfair to say that it occurred because Protestants predominated in the troops of Charles V. The motives of the people who killed and robbed townspeople and raped women cannot be justified or explained by their religious beliefs. Nevertheless, churches and their decorations were destroyed throughout the city - it is quite possible that the fire in which Luther's works were burned ignited the hearts of the invaders and forced them to sack Rome.


In any case, the defeat was terrible. The imperial army numbered about 35 thousand soldiers, while the Romans - men, women and children - probably numbered no more than 54 thousand. Realizing that he was unable to save the city, the pope ran along the wall connecting the Vatican with the Castel Sant'Angelo and locked himself there. From the parapets, he watched the city perish, how the flames consumed everything that came in his way, and listened to the cries of his herd, which he had no strength to protect. The suffering of the inhabitants of Rome can only be compared with the suffering of the first martyrs for the faith, who died at the stake or on the rack.

The impetus for the development of art that the Florentine Renaissance gave Rome reached its greatest strength in the first quarter of the 16th century, when Michelangelo and Raphael worked in the Eternal City. The defeat of 1527 marked the end of the High Renaissance in Rome. Most of the artists who came here from other regions of Italy fled home. Michelangelo returned to the Eternal City some time after the tragedy, but many others did not. The city was in a terrible state, and the villages surrounding it were depopulated.


This time, however, the restoration of Rome, unlike the Middle Ages, began almost immediately after the departure of the imperial army, and the new Rome far surpassed all its predecessors. It rose from the ashes thanks to the efforts of the Council of Thirty (the Council of Trent, active from 1545 to 1564), which was organized and worked under the leadership of the then reigning popes: Paul III, Pius IV and Pius V. They set about reforming the Roman church. This was the first major renewal of the Catholic Church in modern times, the latter having recently been completed by Vatican Council II. The rule of the popes was reorganized, and the spirit of change prevailed everywhere. The Catholic Reformation was a response to the Reformation started by Luther, but it was not a simple response. Inspired by the ideas of the Trent Fathers (who were part of the Council of Trent) and generated by the high emotional mood that reigned in the order of Jesuit preachers that arose at the same time, the Counter-Reformation became the background for the development of Baroque art.


Rome became the center of spiritual revival, and the Baroque style became the elegant instrument with which the renewed church expressed itself in art. The Eternal City was destined to become the majestic capital of the Baroque...

The revival is divided into 4 stages:

    Proto-Renaissance (2nd half of the 13th century - 14th century)

    Early Renaissance (early 15th century - end of 15th century)

    High Renaissance (late 15th - first 20 years of the 16th century)

    Late Renaissance (mid-16th - 90s of the 16th century)

Proto-Renaissance

The Proto-Renaissance is closely connected with the Middle Ages, with Romanesque, Gothic traditions, this period was the preparation for the Renaissance. This period is divided into two sub-periods: before the death of Giotto di Bondone and after (1337). The most important discoveries, the brightest masters live and work in the first period. The second segment is associated with the plague epidemic that struck Italy. All discoveries were made on an intuitive level. The earliest art of the proto-Renaissance manifested itself in sculpture (Niccolò and Giovanni Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio, Andrea Pisano). Painting is represented by two art schools: Florence ( Cimabue, Giotto) and Siena ( Duccio, Simone Martini).

Early Renaissance

The period of the so-called “Early Renaissance” covers in Italy the time from 1420 to 00 of the year"1500 HYPERLINK "year%221500%A0year"of the year. During these eighty years, art has not yet completely abandoned the traditions of the recent past, but has tried to mix into them elements borrowed from classical antiquity. Only later, and only little by little, under the influence of increasingly changing conditions of life and culture, do artists completely abandon medieval foundations and boldly use examples of ancient art, both in the general concept of their works and in their details.

While art in Italy was already resolutely following the path of imitation of classical antiquity, in other countries it long adhered to the traditions of the Gothic style. North of Alps, as well as in Spain The Renaissance begins only at the end of the 15th century, and its early period lasts approximately until the middle of the next century.

High Renaissance

The third period of the Renaissance - the time of the most magnificent development of his style - is usually called the “High Renaissance”. It extends in Italy for approximately 1500 By %% 20year"1527 HYPERLINK "20year%221527%20year"year. At this time, the center of influence of Italian art moved from Florence to Rome, thanks to the accession to the papal throne Julia II- an ambitious, courageous and enterprising man, who attracted the best artists of Italy to his court, occupied them with numerous and important works and gave others an example of love for art. Under this Pope and under his immediate successors, Rome becomes, as it were, new Athens times Pericles: many monumental buildings are built here, magnificent works of sculpture are created, frescoes and paintings are painted, which are still considered the pearls of painting; at the same time, all three branches of art harmoniously go hand in hand, helping one another and mutually influencing each other. Antiquity is now studied more thoroughly, reproduced with greater rigor and consistency; calm and dignity replace the playful beauty that was the aspiration of the previous period; reminiscences of the medieval completely disappear, and a completely classical imprint falls on all works of art. But imitation of the ancients does not drown out their independence in artists, and they, with great resourcefulness and vividness of imagination, freely rework and apply to their work what they consider appropriate to borrow for themselves from ancient Greco-Roman art.

The work of three great Italian masters marks the pinnacle of the Renaissance, this is Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), Michelangelo Buonarotti(1475 - 1564) and Rafael Santi (1483 - 1520).

Late Renaissance

The late Renaissance in Italy spans the period from the 1530s to the 1590s to the 1620s. Some researchers also consider the 1630s to be part of the Late Renaissance, but this position is controversial among art critics and historians. The art and culture of this time are so diverse in their manifestations that it is possible to reduce them to one denominator only with a large degree of convention. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica writes that “The Renaissance as an integral historical period ended with % fall of Rome in 1527." Triumphant in Southern Europe Counter-Reformation, which viewed with caution any free thought, including the glorification of the human body and the resurrection of the ideals of antiquity as the cornerstones of Renaissance ideology. Worldview contradictions and a general feeling of crisis resulted in Florence in the “nervous” art of contrived colors and broken lines - mannerism. IN Parma where he worked Correggio, mannerism arrived only after the artist’s death in 1534. In artistic traditions Venice had its own logic of development; until the end of the 1570s. worked there Titian And Palladio, whose work had little in common with the crisis in the art of Florence and Rome.

Northern Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance had virtually no influence on other countries until 1450 d. After 1500 The style spread across the continent, but many late Gothic influences persisted even into the era baroque.

The Renaissance period in the Netherlands, Germany and France is usually identified as a separate style movement, which has some differences with the Renaissance in Italy, and is called "Northern Renaissance". The most noticeable stylistic differences are in painting: unlike Italy, traditions and skills have been preserved in painting for a long time 00108000 Gothic art, less attention was paid to the study of ancient heritage and knowledge of human anatomy.

Outstanding representatives -% Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Some works of late Gothic masters, such as Jan van Eyck And Hans Memling.

1. General information

Renaissance, or Renaissance, is a period in the cultural and historical development of the countries of Central Western and Northern Europe that replaced the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, the main preconditionsfor the cultural takeoff of the Renaissance, and the Renaissance itself became, in turn, a powerful impetus for the subsequent development of culture in the era of enlightenment. Despite the locality of the Renaissance, it had a global influence on the subsequent development of culture. Renaissance ideas spread unevenly in European countries, so in the Renaissance it is customary to distinguish several periods.

1.1. Background of the Renaissance

The Renaissance is primarily a phenomenon of urban culture. The emergence of new bourgeois economic relations in the depths of the feudal system is connected primarily with the city. The erosion of class boundaries and class isolation, the accumulation of material wealth and the growth of political influence of townspeople, manifested in the emergence of city-republics, contributes to the formation of a new civic consciousness. A medieval city dweller is a person far from the aristocracy of the nobility and the asceticism of the church. He builds the material basis of his life thanks to his energy, hard work, business qualities, and knowledge. Therefore, he values ​​the same qualities in other people. At the same time, the majority of townspeople are literate people who know how to appreciate beauty, striving for knowledge and beauty; it is their perception that the beautiful works of art of the Renaissance are oriented towards. A kind of impetus for the beginning of the Renaissance was the acquaintance of European peoples with the works of ancient culture. The term Renaissance itself was understood as an attempt to revive the high achievements of ancient culture, to imitate them, although in fact the results of the Renaissance turned out to be more significant. It is no coincidence that Renaissance ideas first arose in Italy, on whose territory a significant number of ancient monuments have been preserved. Some of the ideas about the era of antiquity were obtained by the Italians, who were actively trading in the Mediterranean from Byzantium, where ancient art was not destroyed by the invasion of barbarians until the 15th century. and developed dynamically.

1.2. Periodization of the Renaissance

1.2.1. Pan-European periodization

In the pan-European periodization of the Renaissance, there are three main periods.

Early Renaissance (1420 to 1500) covers mainly the territory of Italy, characterized by the fact that at this time Renaissance works proper are known only in Italy; in other countries they are still trying to combine traditional techniques with new Renaissance trends; signs of Gothic art are noticeable in many more works.

High Renaissance (1500 to 1580)the peak of the development of Renaissance art in Italy and the beginning of its decline, the powerful flowering of interest in antiquity and new technologies in art in European countries. Talented people from all over Europe flock to Rome as the capital of art.

Late Renaissance (1580-1650) the period when in Italy the ideas of the Renaissance, pressed by the church, decline, but get a second wind in the countries of Northern Europe, where they receive a new impetus and are refracted in the works of Dutch, German, English artists, therefore this time is also called the Northern Renaissance. The art of the Northern Renaissance developed under the influence of the Reformation, therefore it is imbued with an anti-clerical spirit and attaches great importance to issues of faith. But unlike Italian art, which sought to embellish, idealize reality, it gravitated more towards reality. At the end of this period, a fascination with false picturesqueness, pretentiousness of forms and an unsystematic arrangement of antique motifs appears, the organicity, the spirit of Renaissance ideas is lost. These trends in art are called mannerism, after which the Baroque style was established.

1.2.2. Italian periodization

The Renaissance in Italy did not last long; it fits into the XIV-XVI centuries. In the development of Renaissance ideas and art, it is customary to distinguish the following periods:

Ducento (XIII century) This is how the name of the 13th century sounds in Italian, marked by the appearance of Renaissance features in art; this period is also called the Proto-Renaissance.

Trecento (XIV century) Italian name of the 14th century. for which Renaissance ideas manifested themselves, primarily in painting. An outstanding painter of this time was Giotto di Bondone (see: 3.1.) At the same time, thanks to the work of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio (see: 3.2.) there was a turn to humanism in literature.

Quattrocento (XV century) - Italian designation for the era of art of the 15th century, which is the peak, the flowering of the ideas of revival in all areas of art, the time of life and creativity of Botticelli, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Bellini and others.

Cinquecento (XVI century) Italian name for the period of the decline of the High Renaissance and the beginning of the Late Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael Santi and Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto, who worked at this time, made an invaluable contribution to the development of not only Italian, but also world culture.

The content of the article

RENAISSANCE, a period in the cultural history of Western and Central Europe of the 14th–16th centuries, the main content of which was the formation of a new, “earthly”, inherently secular picture of the world, radically different from the medieval one. The new picture of the world found expression in humanism, the leading ideological current of the era, and natural philosophy, manifested itself in art and science, which underwent revolutionary changes. The building material for the original building of the new culture was antiquity, which was turned to through the head of the Middle Ages and which was, as it were, “reborn” to a new life - hence the name of the era - “Renaissance”, or “Renaissance” (in the French manner), given to it subsequently. Born in Italy, the new culture at the end of the 15th century. passes through the Alps, where, as a result of the synthesis of Italian and local national traditions, the culture of the Northern Renaissance is born. During the Renaissance, the new Renaissance culture coexisted with the culture of the late Middle Ages, which is especially characteristic of the countries that lay north of Italy.

Art.

Under the theocentrism and asceticism of the medieval picture of the world, art in the Middle Ages served primarily religion, conveying the world and man in their relation to God, in conditional forms, was concentrated in the space of the temple. Neither the visible world nor man could be valuable objects of art in their own right. In the 13th century in medieval culture, new trends are observed (the cheerful teaching of St. Francis, the work of Dante, the forerunners of humanism). In the second half of the 13th century. the beginning of a transitional era in the development of Italian art - the Proto-Renaissance (lasted until the beginning of the 15th century), which prepared the Renaissance. The work of some artists of this time (G. Fabriano, Cimabue, S. Martini, etc.), quite medieval in iconography, is imbued with a more cheerful and secular beginning, the figures acquire a relative volume. In sculpture, the Gothic incorporeality of figures is overcome, Gothic emotionality is reduced (N. Pisano). For the first time, a clear break with medieval traditions manifested itself at the end of the 13th - the first third of the 14th century. in the frescoes of Giotto di Bondone, who introduced a sense of three-dimensional space into painting, painted more voluminous figures, paid more attention to the setting and, most importantly, showed a special, alien to exalted Gothic, realism in depicting human experiences.

On the soil cultivated by the masters of the Proto-Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance arose, which passed through several phases in its evolution (Early, High, Late). Associated with a new, essentially secular worldview expressed by humanists, it loses its inextricable connection with religion; painting and statue spread beyond the temple. With the help of painting, the artist mastered the world and man as they appeared to the eye, using a new artistic method (transferring three-dimensional space using perspective (linear, aerial, color), creating the illusion of plastic volume, maintaining the proportionality of figures). Interest in personality and its individual traits was combined with the idealization of a person, the search for “perfect beauty.” The subjects of sacred history did not leave art, but from now on their depiction was inextricably linked with the task of mastering the world and embodying the earthly ideal (hence the similarities between Bacchus and John the Baptist by Leonardo, Venus and the Mother of God by Botticelli). Renaissance architecture loses its Gothic aspiration to the sky and gains “classical” balance and proportionality, proportionality to the human body. The ancient order system is being revived, but the elements of the order were not parts of the structure, but decoration that adorned both traditional (temple, palace of authorities) and new types of buildings (city palace, country villa).

The founder of the Early Renaissance is considered to be the Florentine painter Masaccio, who picked up the tradition of Giotto, achieved an almost sculptural tangibility of figures, used the principles of linear perspective, and moved away from the conventions of depicting the situation. Further development of painting in the 15th century. went to schools in Florence, Umbria, Padua, Venice (F. Lippi, D. Veneziano, P. della Francesco, A. Palaiolo, A. Mantegna, C. Crivelli, S. Botticelli and many others). In the 15th century Renaissance sculpture is born and develops (L. Ghiberti, Donatello, J. della Quercia, L. della Robbia, Verrocchio and others, Donatello was the first to create a self-standing round statue not related to architecture, the first to depict a naked body with an expression of sensuality) and architecture (F. Brunelleschi, L.B. Alberti, etc.). Masters of the 15th century (primarily L.B. Alberti, P. della Francesco) created the theory of fine arts and architecture.

The Northern Renaissance was prepared by the emergence in the 1420s - 1430s, on the basis of late Gothic (not without the indirect influence of the Giottian tradition), of a new style in painting, the so-called “ars nova” - “new art” (E. Panofsky’s term). Its spiritual basis, according to researchers, was, first of all, the so-called “New Piety” of the northern mystics of the 15th century, which presupposed specific individualism and pantheistic acceptance of the world. The origins of the new style were the Dutch painters Jan van Eyck, who also improved oil paints, and the Master from Flemalle, followed by G. van der Goes, R. van der Weyden, D. Bouts, G. tot Sint Jans, I. Bosch and others (middle - second half of the 15th century). New Netherlandish painting received a wide response in Europe: already in the 1430–1450s, the first examples of new painting appeared in Germany (L. Moser, G. Mulcher, especially K. Witz), in France (Master of the Annunciation from Aix and, of course, J .Fouquet). The new style was characterized by a special realism: the transfer of three-dimensional space through perspective (although, as a rule, approximately), the desire for volume. The “new art,” deeply religious, was interested in individual experiences, the character of a person, valuing in him, first of all, humility and piety. His aesthetics are alien to the Italian pathos of the perfect in man, the passion for classical forms (the faces of the characters are not perfectly proportional, they are gothically angular). Nature and everyday life were depicted with special love and detail; carefully painted things had, as a rule, a religious and symbolic meaning.

Actually, the art of the Northern Renaissance was born at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries. as a result of the interaction of the national artistic and spiritual traditions of the Trans-Alpine countries with the Renaissance art and humanism of Italy, with the development of northern humanism. The first artist of the Renaissance type can be considered the outstanding German master A. Dürer, who involuntarily, however, retained Gothic spirituality. A complete break with Gothic was made by G. Holbein the Younger with his "objectivity" of the painting style. The painting of M. Grunewald, on the contrary, was imbued with religious exaltation. The German Renaissance was the work of one generation of artists and fizzled out in the 1540s. In the Netherlands in the first third of the 16th century. currents oriented towards the High Renaissance and the mannerism of Italy began to spread (J. Gossart, J. Scorel, B. van Orley, etc.). The most interesting thing in Dutch painting of the 16th century. - this is the development of the genres of easel painting, everyday life and landscape (K. Masseys, Patinir, Luke of Leiden). The most nationally original artist of the 1550s–1560s was P. Brueghel the Elder, who owned paintings of everyday life and landscape genres, as well as parable paintings, usually associated with folklore and a bitterly ironic look at the life of the artist himself. The Renaissance in the Netherlands ends in the 1560s. The French Renaissance, which was entirely courtly in nature (in the Netherlands and Germany, art was more associated with the burghers) was perhaps the most classical in the Northern Renaissance. The new Renaissance art, gradually gaining strength under the influence of Italy, reaches maturity in the middle - second half of the century in the work of architects P. Lesko, the creator of the Louvre, F. Delorme, sculptors J. Goujon and J. Pilon, painters F. Clouet, J. Cousin Senior. The “Fontainebleau school”, founded in France by the Italian artists Rosso and Primaticcio, who worked in the mannerist style, had a great influence on the above-mentioned painters and sculptors, but the French masters did not become mannerists, having accepted the classical ideal hidden under the mannerist guise. The Renaissance in French art ends in the 1580s. In the second half of the 16th century. the art of the Renaissance of Italy and other European countries gradually gives way to mannerism and early baroque.

The science.

The most important condition for the scale and revolutionary achievements of the science of the Renaissance was the humanistic worldview, in which the activity of mastering the world was understood as a component of the earthly destiny of man. To this we must add the revival of ancient science. A significant role in the development was played by the needs of navigation, the use of artillery, the creation of hydraulic structures, etc. The dissemination of scientific knowledge, their exchange between scientists would not have been possible without the invention of printing ca. 1445.

The first achievements in the field of mathematics and astronomy date back to the mid-15th century. and are largely associated with the names of G. Peyerbach (Purbach) and I. Muller (Regiomontanus). Müller created new, more advanced astronomical tables (to replace the Alfonsian tables of the 13th century) - "Ephemerides" (published in 1492), which were used in their travels by Columbus, Vasco da Gama and other navigators. A significant contribution to the development of algebra and geometry was made by the Italian mathematician of the turn of the century L. Pacioli. In the 16th century The Italians N. Tartaglia and G. Cardano discovered new ways to solve equations of the third and fourth degree.

The most important scientific event of the 16th century. was the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in his treatise On the revolution of the celestial spheres(1543) rejected the dominant geocentric Ptolemaic-Aristotelian picture of the world and not only postulated the rotation of celestial bodies around the Sun, and the Earth around its axis, but also for the first time showed in detail (geocentrism as a guess was born in Ancient Greece) how, based on such a system, it is possible explain - much better than before - all the data of astronomical observations. In the 16th century the new world system, in general, did not receive support in the scientific community. Only Galileo provided convincing evidence of the truth of Copernicus' theory.

Based on experience, some 16th century scientists (among them Leonardo, B. Varchi) expressed doubts about the laws of Aristotelian mechanics, which reigned supreme until that time, but did not offer their own solution to the problems (later Galileo would do this). The practice of using artillery contributed to the formulation and solution of new scientific problems: Tartaglia in his treatise New science considered issues of ballistics. The theory of levers and weights was studied by Cardano. Leonardo da Vinci became the founder of hydraulics. His theoretical research was related to his construction of hydraulic structures, land reclamation work, construction of canals, and improvement of locks. The English doctor W. Gilbert initiated the study of electromagnetic phenomena by publishing an essay About magnet(1600), where he described its properties.

A critical attitude towards authorities and reliance on experience were clearly manifested in medicine and anatomy. Flemish A. Vesalius in his famous work About the structure of the human body(1543) described the human body in detail, relying on his numerous observations when dissecting corpses, criticizing Galen and other authorities. At the beginning of the 16th century Along with alchemy, iatrochemistry emerged - medicinal chemistry, which developed new medicinal drugs. One of its founders was F. von Hohenheim (Paracelsus). Rejecting the achievements of his predecessors, he, in fact, did not go far from them in theory, but as a practitioner he introduced a number of new drugs.

In the 16th century Mineralogy, botany, and zoology developed (Georg Bauer Agricola, K. Gesner, Cesalpino, Rondelet, Belona), which in the Renaissance were at the stage of collecting facts. A major role in the development of these sciences was played by reports from researchers of new countries, containing descriptions of flora and fauna.

In the 15th century Cartography and geography were actively developing, Ptolemy's mistakes were corrected, based on medieval and modern data. In 1490 M. Beheim creates the first globe. At the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries. Europeans' search for the sea route between India and China, advances in cartography and geography, astronomy and shipbuilding culminated in the discovery of the coast of Central America by Columbus, who believed that he had reached India (the continent called America first appeared on Waldseemüller's map in 1507). In 1498, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama reached India, circumnavigating Africa. The idea of ​​reaching India and China by the western route was realized by the Spanish expedition of Magellan - El Cano (1519–1522), which circumnavigated South America and made the first trip around the world (the sphericity of the Earth was proven in practice!). In the 16th century Europeans were confident that “the world today is completely open and the entire human race is known.” Great discoveries transformed geography and stimulated the development of cartography.

The science of the Renaissance had little impact on the productive forces that developed along the path of gradual improvement of tradition. At the same time, the successes of astronomy, geography, and cartography served as the most important prerequisite for the Great Geographical Discoveries, which led to fundamental changes in world trade, colonial expansion and a price revolution in Europe. Achievements of science during the Renaissance a necessary condition for the genesis of classical science of the New Age.

Dmitry Samotovinsky

Renaissance or Renaissance (Italian Rinascimento, French Renaissance) - restoration of ancient education, revival of classical literature, art, philosophy, ideals of the ancient world, distorted or forgotten in the “dark” and “backward” period of the Middle Ages for Western Europe. It was the form that the cultural movement known under the name of humanism took from the mid-14th to the beginning of the 16th centuries (see the brief and articles about it). It is necessary to distinguish humanism from the Renaissance, which is only the most characteristic feature of humanism, which sought support for its worldview in classical antiquity. The birthplace of the Renaissance is Italy, where the ancient classical (Greco-Roman) tradition, which had a national character for the Italian, never faded. In Italy the oppression of the Middle Ages was never felt particularly strongly. The Italians called themselves "Latins" and considered themselves descendants of the ancient Romans. Although the initial impetus for the Renaissance came partly from Byzantium, the participation of the Byzantine Greeks in it was negligible.

Renaissance. video film

In France and Germany, the antique style was mixed with national elements, which in the first period of the Renaissance, the Early Renaissance, appeared more sharply than in subsequent eras. The late Renaissance developed ancient examples into more luxurious and powerful forms, from which Baroque gradually developed. While in Italy the spirit of the Renaissance almost uniformly penetrated all the arts, in other countries only architecture and sculpture were influenced by ancient models. The Renaissance also underwent national processing in the Netherlands, England and Spain. After the Renaissance degenerated into rococo, the reaction came, expressed in the strictest adherence to ancient art, Greek and Roman models in all their primitive purity. But this imitation (especially in Germany) finally led to excessive dryness, which in the early 60s of the XIX century. tried to overcome it by returning to the Renaissance. However, this new reign of the Renaissance in architecture and art lasted only until 1880. From that time on, baroque and rococo began to flourish next to it.