Italian Renaissance
The traditional historical characterisation of
the Renaissance
is the movement which occurred in northern Italy in the Italian city-states.
The Renaissance in Italy was intertwined with
the intellectual movement known as Renaissance
humanism and with the fiercely independent and combative urban societies
of northern Italy in the 13th to 16th centuries.
The first 2-3 decades of the 15th century saw
the emergence of an almost unique cultural efflorescence, particularly in
Florence. This 'Florentine enlightenment' (Holmes) was a major achievement.
It was a classical, classicising culture which sought to live up to the
republican ideals of Athens and Rome. Sculptors used Roman models and
classical themes. This society had a new relationship with the classical
past. It felt it owned it and revived it. Florentines felt akin to 1st
century BC republican Rome. Rucellai wrote that he belonged to a great age;
Bruni's Panegyric to the City of Florence expresses similar
sentiments. There was a genuine appreciation of the plastic arts--pagan idols
and statuary--with nudity, expressions of human dignity, etc.
A similar parallel movement was also occurring
in the arts in the early 15th century in Florence--an avant-garde,
classicising movement. Many of the same people were involved; there was a
close community of people involved in both movements. Valla said that, as
they revived Latin, so was Latin architecture revived, for example Rucellai's
Palazzo built by Alberti. Of Brunelleschi,
he felt that he was the greatest architect since Roman times.
Sculpture was also revived, in many cases before
the other arts. There was a very obvious naturalism about contemporary
sculpture, and highly true to life figures were being sculpted. Often
biblically-themed sculpture and paintings included recognizable Florentines.
This intense classicism was applied to literature
and the arts. In most city-republics there was a small clique with a
camaraderie and rivalry produced by a very small elite. Alberti felt that he
had played a major part, as had Brunelleschi, Masaccio, etc. Even he admitted
he had no explanation of why it happened.
There are several possible explanations for its
occurrence in Florence:
1. The Medici did it--the portrait and solo
sculpture emerged, especially under Lorenzo. This is the `conventional'
response: Renaissance Florence = The Medici = the genius of artisans =
Renaissance
Unfortunately, this fails to fit chronologically. 1410 and 1420 can be said
to be the start of the Renaissance, but the Medici came to power later. They
were certainly great patrons but much later. If anything, the Medici jumped
on an already existing bandwagon.
2. The `great
man' argument. Donatello, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo were just
geniuses.
This is a circular argument with little explanatory power. Surely it would be
better, more human and accessible to understand the circumstances which help
these geniuses to come to fruition.
3. A similar argument is the `rise of
individualism' theory attributable to Burckhardt. This argues for a change
from collective neutrality towards the `lonely genius'. Goldthwaite says it
was part of the emergence of the family and the submersion of the clan
system.
However, the Kents (F.W. and Dale) have argued that this was and remained a
society of neighborhood, kin and family. Florentines were very constrained
and tied into the system; it was still a very traditional society
4. Frederick Antal has argued that the triumph
of Masaccio et al. was the triumph of the middle class over the older,
more old-fashioned feudal classes, so that the middle class wanted painters
to do more bourgeois paintings.
This doesn't make sense. Palla Strozzi commissioned old fashioned paintings
whereas Cosimo de' Medici went for new styles in art.
5. Hans Baron's argument is based on the new
Florentine view of human nature, a greater value placed on human life and on
the power of man, thus leading to civic humanism, which he says was born very
quickly in the early 15th century. In 1401 and 1402, he says Visconti was
narrowly defeated by republican Florence, which reasserted the importance of
republican values. Florence experienced a dramatic crisis of independence
which led to civic values and humanism.
Against this we can say that Baron is comparing unlike things. In a technical
sense, Baron has to prove that all civic humanist work came after 1402,
whereas many such works date from the 1380s. This was an ideological battle
between a princely state and a republican city-state, even though they varied
little in their general philosophy. Any such monocausal argument is very
likely to be wrong.
Kent says there is plenty of evidence of
preconditions for the Renaissance in Florence. In 1300, Florence had a civic
culture, with people like Latini who had a sense of classical values, though
different from the values of the 15th century. Villani also had a sense of
the city as `daughter and creature of Rome'. Petrarch in the mid-14th century
hated civic life but bridged the gap between the 14th and 15th centuries as
he began to collect antiquities. The 1380s saw several classicising groups,
including monks and citizens. There was a gradual build-up rather than a big
bang. Apart from the elites there was already an audience for the
Renaissance. Florence was a very literate audience, already self-conscious
and aware of its city and place in the political landscape.
The crucial people in the 14th and 15th century
were
·
Chrysolaras:
increased interest in the grammar of ancient architecture (1395)
·
Niccoli: a
major influence on the perception of the classics.
Their teachings reached the upper classes
between 1410 and 1420 and this is when the new consciousness emerged. Brucker
noticed this new consciousness in council debates around 1410; there are increased
classical references.
Florence experienced not just one but many
crises; Milan, Lucca, the Ciompi. The sense of crisis was over by 1415 and
there was a new confidence, a triumphant experience of being a republic.
Between 1413-1423 there was an economic boom.
The upper class had the financial means to support scholarship. Gombrich says
there was a sense of ratifying yourself to the ancient world, leading to a
snobbishness and an elite view of education, and a tendency for the rich
wanting to proclaim their ascendancy over the poor and over other cities.
The early Renaissance was an act of
collaboration. Artisans and artists were enmeshed in the networks of their
city. Committees were usually responsible for buildings. There were
collaborations between patricians and artisans without which the Renaissance
could not have occurred. Thus it makes sense to adopt a civic theory of the
Renaissance rather than a `great man' theory.
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History
Sardinia's history is very ancient. In 1979 human remains were
found that were dated to 150,000 BC.
In Prehistory
Sardinia's inhabitants developed a trade in obsidian, a
stone used for the production of the first rough tools, and this activity
brought Sardinians into contact with most of the Mediterranean
peoples.
In the age from Neolithic
times to the Roman Empire, the Nuragic civilisation took shape on the island.
Still today, more than 7,000 Nuraghe survive. It is speculated that the mysterious Shardana people
landed in Sardinia coming from the eastern Mediterranean Sea, in about the 20th
century BC. Very little is known about this people, whose name (which probably
means the People of the Sea) has been found in some Egyptian
inscriptions, and most hypothesss are developed following some linguistic
studies; according to these, the town of Sardis (Lydia) would have
been their starting point from which they would have reached the Tyrrhenian
Sea, dividing into what were to become the Sardinians and the Etruscans.
However most theories regarding the original
population of Sardinia have been formulated prior to genetics research and in
the traditional frame of east-west movements. Genetics has now showed that
Sardinians are a pre-Indo-European population different from all surrounding
and much younger groups. The density, extensiveness and mere size of the
architectural remains from the Neolithic, pointing to a considerable population
of the island, together with recent theories about the location of the Hercules
Columns, reverse the question into where Sardinians did land, or where the
Shardana settled beside the know Egyptian destination.
A Roman and later Byzantine
province, the island was divided from the 9th to 12th century among four
independent Giudicati, which
fell to the kingdom of Aragon
in 1323-1409: the giudicato of Arborea was the last to
fall. The autochthonous population of the city of Alghero (S'Alighera
in Sardinian, L'Alguer in Catalan) was expulsed and the city
repopulated by the Catalan invaders, whose descendants speak Catalan to
this day.
Kingdom of Sardinia
In 1720 Sardinia
became an independent kingdom under the House of Savoia, rulers of Piedmont. At
the time of Italian reunification in 1860, the King of Sardinia became King of Italy.
Prehistory
Prehistory usually refers to the period of human
history prior to the advent of writing, which marks
the beginning of recorded history. More precisely, prehistory
is the period from which no known written records (including later copies) have
been preserved. In Egypt,
prehistory would end around 3500 BC. In New Guinea,
prehistory would end around 1900. Still earlier periods of time are usually known as geological history.
When did prehistory begin? People disagree. Some
would begin it with Homo erectus, around 1.5 million years ago. Others
would begin it around 40,000 BC, with the Cro-Magnons.
If however, human prehistory is defined, as presumably it should be, as the
pre-literate history of Homo sapiens sapiens then at least the matter
can be resolved in principle, and the recent pace of progress in understanding
the evolution of Homo sapiens suggests the
answer will not be long in coming. Current best estimates are in the range of
100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
Prehistory is often subdivided by a three-age
system:
·
The Stone Ages:
o Paleolithic
-- Old Stone Age.
o Epipalaeolithic
-- characterised by the use of microliths, not distinguished by all scholars.
o Mesolithic
-- Middle Stone Age.
o Neolithic --
Late Stone Age, usually referring to the beginnings of agriculture.
o
Chalcolithic or Eneolithic -- mixed stone and metal tools, not a period
distinguished by all scholars. Bronze Age -- use of copper and/or bronze tools.
Iron Age -- the Iron Age began around 2200 BC in Turkey and the Caucasus
Mountains. It came later to other areas. It didn't come to Polynesia until the
coming of the Europeans, between 1500 and 1750 .
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