Michelet’s idea proved very popular with historians. Although historians now refer
to this as the ‘early modern’ period, and some literary historians have followed them,
the idea of a Renaissance remains useful to cultural and literary history.
The turn towards classical models of verse began with a man whom Chaucer calls
‘Fraunceys Petrak, the lauriat poete’. On Easter Sunday 1341, Petrarch (‘Petrak’) was
crowned with a wreath of laurel in Rome before Robert, King of Naples. The
Renaissance revived classical cultural models, such as the laureation of poets. Greek
had died out in the West, but returned after 1400 with the arrival of Byzantine schol-
ars in Italy, who in 1440 founded a Platonic Academy in Florence. After the Turks
to ok Constantinople in 1453, Greek scholars brought manuscripts to Italy. Petrarch,
a humanist, collected classical manuscripts. Aldus Manutius (1449–1515) printed
elegant classical texts at his Aldine press in Venice. The Renaissance is sometimes
called the ‘Revival of Learning’, yet the classical texts it ‘discovered’ had survived
because they had been copied into medieval manuscripts. The contrast between
Renaissance learning and medieval ignorance is often exaggerated.
The Renaissance spread from 15th-century Italy to France, Spain and beyond.
The Northern Renaissance was, except in the Low Countries, more intellectual than
artistic; it was set back by the Reformation (see p. 81). The art of the Italian
Renaissance is today better known than its literature. The High Renaissance trio of
Leonardo da Vinci,Michaelangelo Buonarottiand Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)
typify its characteristics: Leonardo was a painter, an anatomist, a scientist and inven-
tor; Michaelangelo a sculptor, an architect, a painter and a poet; and Raphael’s paint-
ings in the Vatican gave classic form to the long flowering of Italian art.
The change from medieval to Renaissance was at first more formal than substan-
tial; literature changed less than art and architecture, although the content of all
three remained Christian. Celebrated icons of the High Renaissance are78 3 · TUDOR LITERATURE: 1500–1603
humanist A student of
humanitas(Lat. ‘humanity’;
also ‘literature’); a lover of
litterae humaniores(‘more
humane letters’); an admirer
of classical models derived
from antiquity; a writer
following such models. (Later
meanings – such as promoter
of humane values, believer in
‘the religion of humanity’,
atheist – date from the 19th
century.)
Renaissance artists and authors
Architects
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446)
Leon Battista Alberti (1402–1472)
Painters
Piero della Francesca (1410/20–1492)
Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506)
Sandro Botticelli (1444–1510)
High Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Michaelangelo Buonarotti (1475–1564)
Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael) (1483–1520)
Albrecht Dürer (Germany) 1471–1528)
Humanist authors
Netherlands
Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536)
England
Thomas More (1478–1535)Italy
Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374)
Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533)
Torquato Tasso (1554–95)France
François Rabelais (1494–1553)
Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585)
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)Spain
Francisco Ximenes (1436–1517)
Jorge de Montemayor (1519–1561)
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)Portugal
Luis de Camoens (1524–1580)