Lecture 7 Renaissance men. What is a Renaissance man? A renaissance man or polymath is a person who is talented (skilled) in multiple fields, and who.

Lecture 7

Renaissance men

What is a Renaissance man?• A renaissance man or polymath is a person who is

talented (skilled) in multiple fields, and who is very cultured and has a broad base of knowledge.

• In the actual Renaissance period, men who were educated aspired to become Renaissance men. They were expected to know several languages, understand philosophy and scientific teachings, appreciate literature and art, and further, to be deft sportsmen. Such emphasis was inspired by earlier periods, and for the first time, scholars had access to many of the Greek philosophers and writers whose work had been lost for centuries. (There were few Renaissance women, since routinely, women were not educated. (

• Perhaps the quintessential renaissance man of this period was Leonardo Da Vinci, who was a master of art, an engineer, an anatomy expert, and also pursued many other disciplines with great success.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Biographical Information: • Born on April 15, 1452 • Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da

Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence.

• He moved a lot during his childhood.• At the age of 14, Leonardo was apprenticed to

one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio.

• Leonardo had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, and sculpting.

The Baptism of Christ

A painting by Leonardo and his master Verrocchio showing the act of Baptism of Jesus Christ. (First official work)

Most important paintings1. The Last Supper:

”one of you shall betray me”

Jesus and his disciples

The Mona Lisa

Details about the painting:• it is regarded as the most famous painting in the

world, and is visited by many thousands of people every year.

• Leonardo has used a technique known as Sfumato - the blurring of sharp edges by blending colours - to leave the corners of the eyes and the mouth in shadow. It is this technique that makes the Mona Lisa's expression ambiguous.

• The background of the painting has been made to look more hazy, with fewer distinct outlines than the foreground. This technique is known as aerial perspective, and Leonardo was one of the first painters to use it to give his paintings more depth.

• A lot of interpretations have been given to the portrait whether it belongs to someone or it is a self-portrait.

Not only an artist …• Leonardo also developed an intense interest

in non-artistic subjects. He worked as a civil and military engineer and mapmaker for Cesare Borgia, where he applied his growing knowledge of mechanics. He used engineering in achievements like the flying machine, the control of the water supply, the construction of engines of war.

• He immersed himself in fields as diverse as anatomy, biology, mathematics, and physics.

• Leonardo made discoveries in meteorology and geology, learned the effect of the moon on the tides, foreshadowed modern theories of the formation of continents, and deduced the nature of fossil shells. He invented a large number of potentially useful and ingenious machines and devices, among them an underwater diving suit.

"The heavens often rain down the richest gifts on human beings, but sometimes they bestow with lavish abundance upon a single individual beauty, grace and ability, so that whatever he does, every action is so divine that he distances all other men, and clearly displays how his greatness is a gift of God and not an acquirement of human art. Men saw this in Leonardo."Georgio Vasari

Michelangelo• Italian Renaissance painter,

sculptor, architect, poet and engineer.

• Perfectionist, always criticizing his works and finding flaws within them. He was continuously dissatisfied with his creations.

• Concentration on the details of the human body (daring for the Middle Ages).

• Idealization of masculinity (homosexual)

Most important works: • Sistine Chapel ceiling• Paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine

Chapel. A work representing creation, the Downfall

of Man and the Promise of Salvation through the prophets and Genealogy of Christ.

The most famous paintings on the ceiling include the Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the Prophet Isaiah and others.

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Nicolaus CopernicusAchievements: * He discovered that the sun NOT the earth

is at the center of the universe. Before the Copernican heliocentric, the

world believed in the Ptolematic geocentric theory which stated that the universe was a closed space. The Ptolematic theory said that the earth at the center of the universe. This theory fed man’s ego because in it man sat at the center of the earth and the earth sat at the center of heavens. Man was made by God and in this image, he was the next thing to God.

**Copernicus’ theory led man to think that he is simply part of nature and not superior to it.

Reaction to his theory:

A man called Andreas Osiander was frightened by the scientific ideas it expressed. He wrote a letter to the reader in place of Copernicus’s original preface in which he merely presented a simpler way to calculate the positions of the heavenly bodies. To this, Copernicus was shocked because he was sure of his theory. At that time, he suffered a stroke and dies on 24th May 1543.

Galileo Galilei• Copernicus set the scene for major advances

in science, he marked the beginning of the scietific revolution. Before him science was a servant to the church but he took the first step to change that.

• Galileo comes afterwards to confirm Copernicus’ theory. He even goes beyond that as he provides evidence.

• Same problem: at the time the church, which was very powerful and influential in his time, strongly supported the theory of a geocentric, or Earth-centered, universe. After Galileo began publishing papers about his astronomy discoveries, he was accused of being a heretic, a person who violates the Church teachings.

Another opposition: • He opposed the classical theory of

Aristotle that stated that heavier objects fall more quickly than lighter ones. Galileo said that Aristotle was wrong and that no matter what the difference in weight, two heavy objects will fall simultaneously at the same speed.

Christopher Columbus• He was an Italian

navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents.

• One of the major developments of the Renaissance is that it gave chance for the discovery for new parts of the world.

Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci• The successful voyages of Christopher

Columbus increased Vespucci's desire to take a part in the general European movement to seek a western passage to the Indies.

• He was the first person to demonstrate that the New World discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was not the eastern appendage of Asia, but rather a previously-unknown "fourth" continent. (America; named after him)

Giovanni Boccaccio

• One of the earliest Renaissance men.

• Born in Paris in 1313 to an Italian Merchant and a French noble women. )illegitimate son)

• Studied the poems of Dante in 1373.

IL Decameron• His most important work• In it he breaks away from the Italian literary

tradition and presents something new.• For the first time, Boccacio presented man

as the shaper of his own destiny, rather than being at the mercy of the Divine grace. That’s why he’s considered a revolutionary writer of his time.

• He raised the vernacular to the level of the classics. (wrote in Italian)

• He made a dictionary of Classical Mythology.

Dante Alighieri

The Divine Comedy: • His masterpiece• The Divine comedy is a story divides into

tree main sections: the poet’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.

• Through his masterpiece he established the Tuscan dialect as the literary language of Italy.

• Dante argued for the use of the vernacular in serious works of literature and for combining a number of Italian dialects to create a national language.