ing. Books circulated widely in towns
among aristocrats and members of the
middle class. The works of an Italian au-
thor could be studied widely in Germany,
France, the Netherlands, and England,
while artists in those countries found it
worth their trouble and expense to visit
Rome and other Italian cities to study the
art of the ancients. The French writer
Michel de Montaigne wrote that “mixing
with men is wonderfully useful, and visit-
ing foreign countries to bring back knowl-
edge of the characters and ways of those
nations, and to rub and polish our brains
by contact with those of others.... [There
is] no better school for forming one’s life
than to set before it constantly the diver-
sity of other lives, ideas, and customs.”^2
Artists of the Renaissance escaped their
medieval role as craftsmen and artisans,
who had been obedient to the rules of
their guilds and working on commission
from churches and wealthy patrons. Mich-
elangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da
Vinci created an individual point of view
and philosophy, and fully expressed this
outlook in their works. The best artists
took their place as equals of kings and
popes, who vied for their artworks and
their allegiance.
Many political and religious leaders
took great pains to patronize artists and
give their cities a cloak of classical gran-
deur meant to reflect the virtues of its
leaders. Lorenzo de’ Medici, the prince of
Florence, and Popes Julius II and Leo X
recruited the bests artists of their day,
commissioned hundreds of important
works, and paid their charges handsomely.
The taste for art extended to the merchant
class that strived to imitate the nobility by
decorating their homes with paintings,
sculpture, and architecture in the classical
style.
State and Church in the
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a time of artistic in-
novation and unruly, violent politics. The
social and political turmoil was due to the
expanding economy and the rise of new
social classes. Merchants, artisans, and
petty nobility all demanded attention to
their interests. To quell this factionalism,
the Renaissance prince ruled with arbi-
trary power, unchecked by elected assem-
blies or councils. He had the power to levy
taxes, raise armies, arrest and punish op-
ponents, and promulgate laws that in
many cases served for his personal benefit.
He relied on prestige and the fear of his
subjects to secure his authority and, ulti-
mately, establish a family dynasty. The
tools of this task were diplomacy, military
force, bribery, marriage, and assassination.
A good prince knew the proper time and
place to use all the weapons at his dis-
posal; politics became not simply an exer-
cise of power but a demanding profession
at which certain men excelled and others
did not.
Some Renaissance leaders emulated
Rome in forming republics, and claiming
that their power came directly from the
consent of the people. The Renaissance re-
public, however, was far from a democ-
racy. It was an oligarchy of leading mer-
chants or nobles, who passed laws in
assemblies and governed through councils,
in which the term of office was brief,
sometimes as short as two months. City
republics, including Siena, Genoa. Flo-
rence, and Venice in Italy, controlled sur-
rounding land and taxed its farmers, al-
though granting no right of representation
to peasants living outside the walls.
Secular power often vied with sacred
authority, with the Catholic ChurchPreface