The Renaissance Essay Research Paper Renaissance PeriodWithin

The Renaissance Essay, Research Paper Renaissance Period Within only a few decades, between the years 1450 and 1550, the history of the world was changed drastically. During that century, in which the modern world was born, Gutenberg perfected printing, Christopher Columbous discovered continents unknown to Europe, it was found that the Earth revolved around the sun, Luther founded a new religion, the cannon and harquebus ended the age of chivalry, and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo created a new form of art. At the same time most of the great European countries were formed and national languages began to evolve. People started to call themselves French, Italian, Spanish, English, or German. Europeans planted their flags on the shores of every ocean. Artists, writers,

philosophers, and humanists proclaimed that ‘nothing is more admirable than man.’ They rediscovered the heritage of Greece and Rome and proclaimed the Renaissance, the ‘Rebirth’ of the spirit, of intelligence, of creativity, and of beauty. Michelangelo Michelangelo was born March 6, 1475, in the small village of Caprese near Arezzo. Michelangelo’s father a Florentine official named Ludovico Buonarroti with connections to the ruling Medici family, placed his 13-year-old son in the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. After about two years, Michelangelo studied at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens and shortly thereafter was invited into the household of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Magnificent. There he had an opportunity to converse with the younger

Medici. Michelangelo produced at least two relief sculptures by the time he was 16 years old, the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs, which show that he had achieved a personal style at a very early age. His patron Lorenzo died in 1492; two years later Michelangelo fled Florence, when the Medici were temporarily expelled. Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the small Tuscan town of Vinci, near Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. In the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best education that Florence, the intellectual and artistic center of Italy, could offer. About 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio. Leonardo da Vinci was one

of the great masters of the High Renaissance, celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavors. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies-particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics-anticipated many of the developments of modern science. D rer D rer, Albrecht (1471-1528), the most famous artist of Reformation Germany, widely known for his paintings, drawings, prints, and theoretical writings on art, all of which had a profound influence on 16th-century artists in his own country and in the Lowlands. D rer was born May 21, 1471, in

Nuremberg. His father, Albrecht D rer the Elder, was a goldsmith and his son’s first art teacher. From his early training, the young D rer inherited a legacy of 15th-century German art strongly dominated by Flemish late Gothic painting. After studying with his father, D rer was apprenticed in 1486 to the painter and printmaker Michael Wolgemut at the age of 15. D rer embarked on his bachelor’s journey in 1490. In 1492 he was in Colmar, where he tried to join the workshop of the German painter and engraver Martin Schongauer, who, unknown to D rer, had died in 1491. D rer was advised by Schongauer’s brothers to travel to the Swiss publishing center of Basel to find work. In Basel and later in Strasbourg, D rer made illustrations for several publications in 1494. During this