Renaissance is a period in cultural and ideological development Western and Central Europe. The Renaissance manifested itself most clearly in Italy, because... did not exist in Italy single state(except for the south). The main form of political existence is small city-states with a republican form of government; feudal lords merged with bankers, rich merchants and industrialists. Therefore, in Italy feudalism in its full forms it never worked out. The atmosphere of rivalry between cities placed first place not on origin, but on personal ability and wealth. There was a need not only for energetic and enterprising people, but also for educated ones. Therefore, a humanistic direction in education and worldview appears. The Renaissance is usually divided into Early (beginning of 14 - end of 15) and High (end of 15 - First quarter of 16). This era includes greatest artists Italy – Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), Michelangelo Buonarroti(1475 -1564) and Rafael Santi(1483 – 1520). This division applies directly to Italy and, although the Renaissance reached its greatest flowering on the Apennine Peninsula, its phenomenon spread to other parts of Europe. Similar processes north of the Alps are called « Northern Renaissance ». Similar processes occurred in France and in German cities. Medieval man, and people of modern times looked for their ideals in the past. During the Middle Ages, people believed that they continued to live in... The Roman Empire continued and cultural tradition: Latin, study of Roman literature, the difference was felt only in the religious sphere. But during the Renaissance, the view of antiquity changed, which saw something radically different from the Middle Ages, mainly the absence of the comprehensive power of the church, spiritual freedom, and the attitude towards man as the center of the universe. It was these ideas that became central to the worldview of humanists. Ideals so consonant with new development trends gave rise to the desire to resurrect antiquity in full, and it was Italy with its a huge amount Roman antiquities became fertile ground for this. The Renaissance manifested itself and went down in history as a period of extraordinary rise of art. If before the work arts served church interests, that is, they were cult objects, now works are created to satisfy aesthetic needs. Humanists believed that life should be enjoyable and they rejected medieval monastic asceticism. The following Italian writers and poets played a huge role in the formation of the ideology of humanism: as Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321), Francesco Petrarch (1304 - 1374), Giovanni Boccaccio(1313 – 1375). Actually, they, especially Petrarch, were the founders of both Renaissance literature and humanism itself. Humanists perceived their era as a time of prosperity, happiness and beauty. But this does not mean that it was without controversy. The main one was that it remained the ideology of the elite; new ideas did not penetrate the masses. And the humanists themselves were sometimes in a pessimistic mood. Fear of the future, disappointment in human nature, the impossibility of achieving the ideal in social order permeate the sentiments of many Renaissance figures. Perhaps the most significant thing in this sense was the intense anticipation end of the world in 1500. The Renaissance laid the foundations of a new European culture, a new European secular worldview, and a new European independent personality.

At the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, when Italy found itself at the center of international politics, the Renaissance spirit penetrated into other European countries. It manifested itself, in particular, in the strong Italian influence on political life and economic relations, which gave rise to the English historian A. Toynbee talking about the “Italianization” of Europe.

The situation was different in the field of culture. Outside Italy, especially in northern Europe, the ancient heritage played a much more modest role than in the homeland of the Renaissance (read about the Italian Renaissance). Of decisive importance were national traditions and features historical development various peoples.

These circumstances were clearly manifested in Germany, where a broad cultural movement arose, called the Northern Renaissance. It was in Germany, at the height of the Renaissance, that printing was invented. In the middle of the 15th century. Johannes Guttenberg (c. 1397-1468) published the world's first printed book, a Latin edition of the Bible. Printing quickly spread throughout Europe, becoming a powerful means of disseminating humanistic ideas. This epoch-making invention changed the entire character of European culture.

Prerequisites Northern Renaissance developed in the Netherlands, especially in the rich cities of the southern province - Flanders, where almost simultaneously with the early Italian Renaissance elements of a new culture arose, the most striking expression of which was painting. Another sign of the advent of new times was the appeal of Dutch theologians to moral problems Christian religion, their desire for “new piety”. In such a spiritual atmosphere, the greatest thinker of the Northern Renaissance, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), grew up. A native of Rotterdam, he studied in Paris, lived in England, Italy, Switzerland, gaining pan-European fame with his works. Erasmus of Rotterdam became the founder of a special direction of humanistic thought, called Christian humanism. He understood Christianity primarily as a system moral values that should be followed in everyday life.

Based on an in-depth study of the Bible, the Dutch thinker created his own theological system - the “philosophy of Christ.” Erasmus of Rotterdam taught: “Do not think that Christ is concentrated in rites and services, no matter how you observe them, and in church institutions. A Christian is not the one who is sprinkled, not the one who is anointed, not the one who is present at the sacraments, but the one who is imbued with love for Christ and practices pious deeds.”

Simultaneously with High Renaissance in Italy there was a flourishing of fine arts and in Germany. The central place in this process was occupied by genius artist Albrecht Durer (1471-1528). His homeland was the free city of Nuremberg in southern Germany. During his trips to Italy and the Netherlands, the German artist had the opportunity to get acquainted with the best examples contemporary European painting.

In Germany itself at that time this type became widespread. artistic creativity, like an engraving - a relief design applied to a board or metal plate. Unlike paintings, engravings reproduced in the form of individual prints or book illustrations, became the property of the most wide circles population.

Dürer perfected the engraving technique. His series of woodcuts "Apocalypse", illustrating the main biblical prophecy, is one of the greatest masterpieces of graphic art.

Like other masters of the Renaissance, Dürer entered the history of world culture as an outstanding portrait painter. He became the first German artist to receive European recognition. The artists Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), known as a master of mythological and religious scenes, and Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543) also gained great fame.

Holbein worked for several years in England, at the king's court Henry VIII, where he created a whole gallery of portraits of his famous contemporaries. His work marked one of the peaks of the artistic culture of the Renaissance.

French Renaissance

The culture of the Renaissance in France was also very unique. After the end of the Hundred Years' War, the country experienced cultural upsurge, relying on their own national traditions.

The flourishing and enrichment of French culture was facilitated by geographical location countries, which opened up opportunities for close acquaintance with cultural achievements The Netherlands, Germany, Italy.

The new culture enjoyed support in France royal power, especially during the reign of Francis I (1515-1547). Becoming nation state and the strengthening of royal power was accompanied by the formation of a special court culture, reflected in architecture, painting, and literature. In the river valley Several castles were built in the Loire in the Renaissance style, among which Chambord stands out. The Loire Valley is even called the “showcase of the French Renaissance.” During the reign of Francis I, the country residence of the French kings, Fontainebleau, was built, and construction began on the Louvre, a new royal palace in Paris. Its construction was completed during the reign of Charles IX. Under Charles IX himself, the construction of the Tuileries Palace began. These palaces and castles were among the most remarkable architectural masterpieces of France. The Louvre is now one of largest museums peace.

The Renaissance era marks the birth of the portrait genre, which for a long time prevailed in French painting. The most famous were the court artists Jean and François Clouet, who captured images of French kings from Francis I to Charles IX and others famous people of its time.

The most striking phenomenon of the French Renaissance is considered to be the work of the writer Francois Rabelais (1494-1553), which reflected both national identity country and Renaissance influence. His satirical novel"Gargantua and Pantagruel" presents a wide panorama of French reality of that time.

Active participant political life France at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century. Philippe de Commines laid the foundations of French historical and political thought New time. The greatest contribution to their further development contributed by the remarkable thinker Jean Bodin (1530-1596) with his works “The Method of Easy Knowledge of History” and “Six Books on the State.”

English humanism

The largest center of humanistic culture in England was Oxford University, which had long traditions classical education. Here I studied ancient literature Thomas More (1478-1535), whose name has become a symbol of English humanism. His main work is “Utopia”. It depicts the image of an ideal state. This book laid the foundation and gave the name to a peculiar literary genre - social utopia. “Utopia” translated from Greek means “a country that does not exist.”

Depicting an ideal society, More contrasted it with contemporary English reality. The fact is that the New Age brought with it not only undoubted achievements, but also serious social contradictions. The English thinker was the first to show in his work the social consequences of the capitalist transformation of the English economy: mass impoverishment of the population and the split of society into rich and poor.

In search of the reason for this situation, he came to the conviction: “Wherever there is private property“Where everything is measured by money, the correct and successful course of government affairs is hardly ever possible.” T. More was big politician of his time, in 1529-1532. he even served as Lord Chancellor of England, but due to disagreement with the religious policies of King Henry VIII, he was executed.

Daily Life of the Renaissance

The Renaissance brought big changes not only in artistic culture, but also into everyday culture, daily life people. It was then that many familiar to modern man household items.

An important innovation was the appearance of a variety of furniture, which replaced the simple and bulky designs of the Middle Ages. The need for such furniture led to the emergence of a new craft - carpentry, in addition to the simpler carpentry.

The dishes became richer and better made; In addition to knives, spoons and forks became widespread. The food also became more varied, the range of which was significantly enriched due to products brought from the new open countries. Overall growth wealth, on the one hand, and a sharp increase in the number precious metals and stones that poured into Europe as a result of the Great geographical discoveries, on the other hand, led to the flourishing jewelry art. Life in Renaissance Italy becomes more refined and beautiful.

The later Middle Ages bequeathed to the Renaissance such things as scissors and buttons, and at the beginning of the XTV century. In Burgundy, which then dictated fashion in Europe, clothing cutting was invented. Clothes making became a special profession - the craft of tailoring. All this created a real revolution in the field of fashion. If previously clothes did not change for a very long time, now they could easily be designed to suit any taste. The Italians adopted the fashion for tailored clothing that arose in Burgundy and began to develop it further, setting the tone for the whole of Europe.

Historical significance of the Renaissance

The most important merit of Renaissance culture was that it first revealed inner world man in his entirety.

Attention to the human personality and its uniqueness was manifested in literally everything: in lyric poetry and prose, in painting and sculpture. IN fine arts Portraits and self-portraits became more popular than ever before. In literature widespread development received such genres as biography and autobiography.

The study of individuality, that is, the characteristics of character and psychological make-up that distinguish one person from another, has become the most important task of cultural figures. Humanism has led to a wide-ranging acquaintance with human individuality in all its manifestations. The entire Renaissance culture as a whole shaped new type personalities, distinctive feature which individualism became.

At the same time, while affirming the high dignity of the human personality, Renaissance individualism also led to its revelation negative aspects. Thus, one historian noted “the envy of celebrities competing with each other,” who had to constantly fight for their own existence. “As soon as humanists begin to rise,” he wrote, “they immediately become highest degree unscrupulous in their means towards each other.” It was during the Renaissance, another researcher concluded, “ human personality, completely left to herself, surrendered to the power of her own selfish interests, and the corruption of morals became inevitable.”

From the end of the 15th century, the decline of Italian humanism began. In the context of diverse conflicts characteristic of history XVI c., humanistic culture as a whole has collapsed. The main result of the development of humanism was the reorientation of knowledge towards the problems of human life on earth. The revival as a whole was a very complex and ambiguous phenomenon, which marked the beginning modern stage in the history of Western Europe.

From the book “Utopia” by T. More

For “social well-being there is one and only way - to declare equality in everything. I don’t know if this can be observed where everyone has their own property. Because when someone, based on a certain right, appropriates for himself as much as he can, then no matter how great the wealth, it will be entirely divided among a few. For the rest they leave poverty as their lot; and it almost always happens that some are much more worthy of the fate of others, for the first are predatory, dishonest and good for nothing, while the second, on the contrary, are modest, simple men, and with their everyday zeal they bring more good to society than to themselves "

Used literature:
V.V. Noskov, T.P. Andreevskaya / History from the end of the 15th century to late XVIII century

The uniqueness of the Renaissance lies in the fact that, having one source (the ancient worldview, which received new life in Italy), this era gave rise to various original manifestations in almost all European countries. The Renaissance in Italy began very first, achieved the most brilliant results - and is therefore considered exemplary. It is no coincidence that the titans of the Renaissance, that is, the figures who had the greatest influence on the future European culture, almost everyone is Italian. Painters Sandro Botticelli, Raphael Santi, Giorgione, Titian, architects Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Batista Alberti, artist, sculptor, architect, poet Michelangelo Buonarroti, a unique man Leonardo da Vinci, who contributed to the development of almost all areas of knowledge, and many others .

Renaissance picture of the world

If you try to abstract from the external visual side of the Renaissance, from the paintings of Raphael and Leonardo, from the sculptures of Michelangelo, from the beautiful Italian architectural masterpieces, you will find that general characteristics The Renaissance is impossible without the concept of Renaissance humanism. Humanism means a worldview in which man is the center of the universe. God is not completely rejected (although many Renaissance figures expressed ideas that, to one degree or another, can be interpreted either as atheistic or occult), but fades into the background. He remains the Creator, but now he seems to retreat into the shadows, leaving man to decide for himself. own destiny and the fate of the world. It is in order for a person to cope with this task that his nature must be studied in every possible way.

Moreover, to study in all its manifestations, needs and needs, physical, emotional, mental, rational and so on. As a result, a humanistic ideal of a person should be formed - a being endowed with moral and mental virtues, and at the same time possessing moderation and restraint. Renaissance ethics stated that these virtues are not something innate, but are cultivated in a person through study ancient literature, art, history, culture. This is why education came to the fore during the Renaissance. Within the framework of the medieval worldview, a person did not need to know much; it was enough for him to believe in God and fulfill the church commandments, caring not so much about earthly life as about saving the soul for eternal life.

Now the earthly component of life has been rehabilitated, and then, contrary to the precepts of the first humanists, it has been elevated to the absolute. So education during the Renaissance became a true birth for the individual: only by gaining knowledge about human nature and its creativity, a person could be considered complete. The ideal of a comprehensively developed personality was a person beautiful body, pure in mind, exalted in soul and at the same time engaged in some kind of creative work that transforms reality. It is no coincidence that the heroes of Renaissance paintings are not just nice people, these are heroes shown at the moment of committing some significant act or accomplishment. The requirements for women were somewhat relaxed: Renaissance women themselves were an illustration of beauty human nature. Female sensuality, which in the Middle Ages was hidden in every possible way as sinful, was now emphasized in every possible way, especially in the visual arts.

Alexander Babitsky

Renaissance or Renaissance (Italian Rinascimento, French Renaissance) - restoration of ancient education, revival classical literature, art, philosophy, ideals ancient world, distorted or forgotten during 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 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 bore for the Italians, never faded national character. 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

In France and Germany, the antique style was mixed with national elements, which in the first period of the Renaissance, Early Renaissance, acted 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, a 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 alongside it again.

The history of the Renaissance begins in This period is also called the Renaissance. The Renaissance changed into culture and became the forerunner of the culture of the New Age. And the Renaissance ended in the 16th-17th centuries, since in each state it has its own start and end date.

Some general information

Representatives of the Renaissance are Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio. They became the first poets to sublime images and they began to express their thoughts in frank, common language. This innovation was received with a bang and spread in other countries.

Renaissance and art

The peculiarity of the Renaissance is that the human body became the main source of inspiration and subject of study for artists of this time. Thus, the emphasis was placed on the similarity of sculpture and painting with reality. The main features of the art of the Renaissance period include radiance, refined use of the brush, the play of shadow and light, care in the work process and complex compositions. For Renaissance artists, the main images were from the Bible and myths.

In resemblance real person with his image on this or that canvas was so close that fictional character seemed alive. This cannot be said about the art of the twentieth century.

The Renaissance (its main trends are briefly outlined above) perceived the human body as an endless beginning. Scientists and artists regularly improved their skills and knowledge by studying the bodies of individuals. The prevailing view then was that man was created in the likeness and image of God. This statement reflected physical perfection. The main and important objects of Renaissance art were the gods.

Nature and beauty of the human body

Renaissance Art great attention devoted to nature. A characteristic element of the landscapes was varied and lush vegetation. Skies of a blue hue that were pierced by the sun's rays that penetrated the clouds white, were a magnificent backdrop for the floating creatures. Renaissance art worshiped beauty human body. This feature was manifested in the refined elements of the muscles and body. Difficult poses, facial expressions and gestures, a harmonious and clear color palette are characteristic of the work of sculptors and sculptors of the Renaissance period. These include Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and others.