The Italian Renaissance | Echoes of the Renaissance (Lecture 36)

Lecture 36: This course has introduced, developed, and discussed the Italian Renaissance as a cultural and intellectual phenomenon in the political and social context of the Italian city-states. The remarkable efflorescence of culture that Italy witnessed from the mid-14th to the mid-16th century stands as a monument to the human imagination.

That Italy failed politically and economically by the end of that period in many ways puts this achievement into clearer perspective. Castiglione suggests in The Book of the Courtier that individual cultivation can be successfully achieved by any man or woman who seeks knowledge, truth, love, and beauty, regardless of the circumstances, although hard times make the process more difficult. In some ways, the Italian Renaissance continued strongly into the last century, as ideals of beauty based on Naturalism, proportion, and the ability to reproduce what the eye sees remained the foundation of academic art.

The role of antiquity continued in the architectural vocabulary of public buildings, and the central place of the Greek and Roman classics was sustained in the education of elite groups in every Western nation. It can be argued, then, that the echoes of the Renaissance died only in the 20th century, with the triumph of objective science over purely human values.

Secondary Sources:
Alan Bullock, The Humanist Tradition in the West.

Supplementary Reading:
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself.