Outline Lecture Nineteen—The “Renaissance” or Rebirth of Humanism
Key Focus:
1) The tenets of Humanism and how they depart from Scholasticism
2) Socio-political and cultural implications of the Renaissance
I) The Rise of Humanism
a) The Curriculum of Humanism
i) The study of poetry and oration
ii) Departure from Scholasticism
iii) Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374)
(1) Return to classical virtue and reason
(2) Two benefits of studying classical literature
iv) Was secular humanism compatible with Church doctrine?
b) The Spirit of Humanism
i) Pico Della Mirandola’s (1463-1494) “Oration on the Dignity of Man”
(1) Distinct rhetorical style
(2) Celebration of humanity
(a) “A great miracle” and “wondrous being”
(b) “Indeterminate form” and “chameleon” figure
(c) Summation of all beings
(d) Marsilio Ficino’s suggestion that “Man is a kind of God”
II) Renaissance Art and the Ideology of Control
a) The “discovery” of linear perspective
i) How to transpose three-dimensional space onto two-dimensional canvas
(1) Fixed vanishing point and vantage point
(a) Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”
(b) Raphael’s “The School of Athens”
ii) Artist becomes the seer and organizer of reality
b) Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)
i) “Intellectual control, not mystic transcendence” in architecture
ii) Comparison to Gothic style
c) Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)
i) Function and symbol of urban design and public buildings
d) Social Implications of Renaissance Rationalism
i) Dictatorship of Reason?
(1) In the cradle of merchant dictatorships
(2) Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (early 1500s)
(3) Power of the Medici family and its patronage of art
ii) Paradigm for Historical Perspective
(1) Linear perspective applied to historical perspective
(2) A teleological outlook on history
iii) Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) and the “Conquest of Nature”
(1) Consummate “Renaissance Man”
(2) Legacy of the West’s ecological perspective