Welcome to the Human Renaissance virtual museum display. Your experience will be best had if the instructions are followed, as they will make the process of navigation smooth and cohesive.
Each Room within this site is composed of an introduction essay, and a motion graphics presentation. It is best that you read the introduction essay prior to viewing the video in each room. The audio play back is not linked to the video, so feel free to pause the video at any moment to prolong the viewing. In fact, it is likely that pausing the video will be necessary as the text will typically not be available on screen long enough to be read fully.
Human Renaissance
Soon after the Middle Ages, the wave of the Renaissance swept over Europe and was a phenomenon that shattered the previous domination of medieval culture. With it came the philosophy of humanism, a philosophy that emphasized the importance of individual achievement through discovery and inquiry. The first humanists created their work by combining their own ideas with those of ancient philosophers. The influence of this new philosophy led to an increase in the value placed upon the arts. This movement begun in Italy, specifically in Florence, where merchants and political officials would commission the work of artists. Within Florence resided the Medici family, who through their wealth and power maintained the cities stability. The Medici family members were also informed and respected connoisseurs of the arts. Despite the fall of the Roman Empire, its cultural remnants continued to influence and shape future cultures throughout Italy. City-states throughout Italy begun to flourish, creating a prime foundation for the rise of the Renaissance. With the Renaissance came many changes in general focus. One being, the emphasis on furthering the arts and the progression and rise of new techniques and styles. An important facet of this was the aim to improve the portrayal of perspective. Artist, Donatello exhibits this improvement in his work. We can see this progression in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, who is known as one of the best artists of the Renaissance, and often referred to as “the renaissance man.” In addition to these progressions, the invention of printing was discovered, and as a result came the rise of literature.
A major contributor to this movement was Dante, the author of the Divine Comedy. In this epic poem, Dante not only revived the Greek art of Epic poetry, he also increased the accessibility of literature by writing it in the Italian vernacular—enabling a wider, and less educated population to understand his work. His work identified with the progression of the Renaissance in its focus on inquiry and evaluation, a mentality that overtime would increase greatly in influence over the creative forces within the Western World. In Dante’s Inferno he wrote the following passage.
“With what a sense of awe I saw his head
towering above me! For it had three faces:
one was in front, and it was fiery red;
the other two, as weirdly wonderful,
merged with it from the middle of each shoulder
to the point where all converged at the top of the skull
the right was something between white and bile;
the left was about the color one observes
on those who live along the banks of the Nile.
Under each head two wings rose terribly,
Their span proportioned to so gross a bird:
I never saw such sails upon the sea.
They were not feathers—their texture and their form
were like a bat’s wings—and he beat them so
that three winds blew from him in one great storm:
it is these winds that freeze all Cocytus.
He wept from his six eyes, and down three chins
The tears ran mixed with bloody froth and pus. “
In this quote Dante refers to the very lowest point of the pit of Hell, wherein belong traitors. Here, he illustrates Satan himself chewing on the most extreme traitor of all time, Judas, who is thought to have betrayed Jesus. This serves as an example of how Dante, through his works integrated the pagan and Christian worlds. This passage, as well as the work as a whole embodied the author’s inquiries regarding the after life, concepts of sin, and of self-evaluation.
Montaigne exhibited the same revolutionary tendencies in his work, specifically within Of Cannibals. While it appears to simply be story of cannibal life, this work is more so an expression, through relating to such a life, of his own values of simplicity and naturalistic living. In this piece he wrote the following passage.
“All our efforts cannot even succeed in reproducing
the nest of the tiniest little bird, its contexture,
its beauty and convenience; or even the web of the puny spider.
All things, says Plato, are produced by nature, by fortune, or by art;
the greatest and most beautiful by one or the other of the first two,
the least and most imperfect by the last.”
This passage from Of Cannibals expresses Montaigne’s belief that it is impossible to reproduce the beauty that exists in the natural, in the original, or in the divinely created. He celebrates the simplicity of the original creation, and writes that the most imperfect replications of natural forms of beauty are created through art. We can see how his mindset aligned with the rise of the Renaissance, in that he was not only returning to a more natural state of being, but that he was also inquiring of the world, of what is necessary, most beautiful, and what simplicity can bring.
In this exhibit, we will attempt to outline the progression of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. We will begin with the powerful influence of the Medici family, specifically how they fueled the progress of many of the main artists of Florence by commissioning their work. Secondly, we will delve into the exploration of a few of the scientists who had direct ties to the Medici family, how they revolutionized their field, and the principles that governed the founding of perspective as well as three-dimensional art on two-dimensional planes. Lastly, we will explore the man who is most often identified with the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, as he represents the culmination of changes and progressions that were produced as a result of humanism, the return to the natural world, and bits and pieces of the classical traditions.
Now please Continue to Room One by pressing the button at the top of the screen