THE ITALIAN CITIES AND THE RENAISSANCE
Italy the center of European culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
117. While England and France were settling their differences in the wretched period of the Hundred Years' War, and the little German principalities, left without a leader,[212] were busied with their petty concerns, Italy was the center of European culture. Its cities,—Florence, Venice, Milan, and the rest,—reached a degree of prosperity and refinement undreamed of beyond the Alps. Within their walls learning and art made such extraordinary progress that this period has received a special name,—the Renaissance,[213] or new birth. The Italian towns, like those of ancient Greece, were really little states, each with its own peculiar life and institutions. Of these city-states a word must be said before considering the new enthusiasm for the works of the Romans and Greeks and the increasing skill which the Italian artists displayed in painting, sculpture, and architecture.
Map of Italy in the fourteenth century.
The map of Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century was still divided into three zones, as it had been in the time of the Hohenstaufens. To the south lay the kingdom of Naples. Then came the states of the Church, extending diagonally across the peninsula. To the north and west lay the group of city-states to which we now turn our attention.
Venice and its relations with the East.
Of these none was more celebrated than Venice, which in the history of Europe ranks in importance with Paris and London. This singular town was built upon a group of sandy islets lying in the Adriatic Sea about two miles from the mainland. It was protected from the waves by a long, narrow sand bar, similar to those which fringe the Atlantic coast from New Jersey southward. Such a situation would not ordinarily have been deliberately chosen as the site of a great city; but its very desolation and inaccessibility had recommended it to its first settlers, who, in the middle of the fifth century, had fled from their homes on the mainland to escape the savage Huns.[214] As time went on the location proved to have its advantages commercially, and even before the Crusades Venice had begun to engage in foreign trade. Its enterprises carried it eastward, and it early acquired possessions across the Adriatic and in the Orient.[215] The influence of this intercourse with the East is plainly shown in the celebrated church of St. Mark, whose domes and decorations suggest Constantinople rather than Italy.
A Scene in Venice
St Mark's, Venice
Venice extends her sway on the Italian mainland.
The aristocratic government of Venice.
It was not until early in the fifteenth century that Venice found it to her interest to extend her sway upon the Italian mainland. She doubtless believed it dangerous to permit her rival, Milan, to get possession of the Alpine passes through which her goods found their way north. It may be, too, that she preferred to draw her food supplies from the neighborhood instead of transporting them across the Adriatic from her eastern possessions. Moreover, all the Italian cities except Venice already controlled a larger or smaller area of country about them. Although Venice was called a republic, there was a strong tendency toward a government of the few. About the year 1300 all the townsmen except the members of certain noble families were excluded from the Grand Council, which was supposed to represent the people at large.
In 1311 the famous Council of Ten was created, whose members were elected by the Grand Council for one year. The whole government, domestic and foreign, was placed in the hands of this smaller council, in conjunction with the doge (i.e., duke), the nominal head of the republic; but they were both held strictly accountable to the Grand Council for all that they did. The government was thus concentrated in the hands of a very few. Its proceedings were carried on with great secrecy, so that public discussion, such as prevailed in Florence and led to innumerable revolutions there, was unheard of in Venice. The Venetian merchant was a busy person who was quite willing that the state should exercise its functions without his interference. In spite of the aristocratic measures of the council, there was little tendency to rebellion, so common in the other Italian towns. The republic of Venice maintained pretty much the same form of government from 1300 until its destruction by Napoleon in 1797.
Milan and the despotically governed towns of northern Italy.
118. Milan was the most conspicuous example of the large class of Italian cities which were governed by an absolute and despotic ruler, who secured control of a town either by force or guile, and then managed its affairs for his own personal advantage. At the opening of the fourteenth century a great part of the towns which had leagued themselves against Frederick Barbarossa[216] had become little despotisms. Their rulers were constantly fighting among themselves, conquering, or being conquered by, their neighbors. The practices of the Visconti, the family who seized the government of Milan, offer a fair example of the policy of the Italian tyrants.
The power of the Visconti was first established by the archbishop of Milan. He imprisoned (1277) in three iron cages the leading members of the family who were in control of the city government at the moment, and had his nephew, Matteo Visconti, appointed by the emperor as the imperial representative. Before long Matteo was generally recognized as the ruler of Milan, and was followed by his son. For over a century and a half some one of the family always showed himself skillful enough to hold his precarious position.
Tomb of Gian Galeazzo Visconti
Gian Galeazzo Visconti, 1385–1402.
The most distinguished of the Visconti despots was Gian Galeazzo. He began his reign by capturing and poisoning his uncle, who was ruling over a portion of the already extensive territory of the Visconti.[217] It seemed for a time that he might conquer all of northern Italy; but his progress was checked by the republic of Florence and then cut short by premature death. Gian Galeazzo exhibited all the characteristic traits of the Italian despots. He showed himself a skillful and successful ruler, able to organize his government admirably. He gathered literary men about him; and the beautiful buildings which were begun by him indicate his enthusiasm for art. Yet he was utterly unprincipled, and resorted to the most hideous methods in order to gain possession of coveted towns which he could not conquer or buy outright.
Position and character of the Italian despots.
There are many stories of the incredible ferocity exhibited by the Italian despots.[218] It must be remembered that they were very rarely legitimate rulers, but usurpers, who could only hope to retain their power so long as they could keep their subjects in check and defend themselves against equally illegitimate usurpers in the neighboring cities. This situation developed a high degree of sagacity, and many of the despots found it to their interest to govern well and even to give dignity to their rule by patronizing artists and men of letters. But the despot usually made many bitter enemies and was almost necessarily suspicious of treason on the part of those about him. He was ever conscious that at any moment he might fall a victim to the dagger or the poison cup.
The condottieri.
The Italian towns carried on their wars among themselves largely by means of hired troops. When a military expedition was proposed, a bargain was made with one of the leaders (condottieri), who provided the necessary force. As the soldiers had no more interest in the conflict than did those whom they opposed, who were likewise hired for the occasion, the fight was not usually very bloody; for the object of each side was to capture the other without unnecessarily rough treatment.
It sometimes happened that the leader who had conquered a town for his employer appropriated the fruits of the victory for himself. This occurred in the case of Milan in 1450. The Visconti family having died out, the citizens hired a certain captain, named Francesco Sforza, to assist them in a war against Venice, whose possessions now extended almost to those of Milan. When Sforza had repelled the Venetians, the Milanese found it impossible to get rid of him, and he and his successors became rulers over the town.
Machiavelli's Prince.
An excellent notion of the position and policy of the Italian despots may be derived from a little treatise called The Prince, written by the distinguished Florentine historian, Machiavelli. The writer appears to have intended his book as a practical manual for the despots of his time. It is a cold-blooded discussion of the ways in which a usurper may best retain his control over a town after he has once got possession of it. The author even takes up the questions as to how far princes should consider their promises when it is inconvenient to keep them, and how many of the inhabitants the despot may wisely kill. Machiavelli concludes that the Italian princes who have not observed their engagements over-scrupulously, and who have boldly put their political adversaries out of the way, have fared better than their more conscientious rivals.
Florence.
119. The history of Florence, perhaps the most important of the Italian cities, differs in many ways from that of Venice and of the despotisms of which Milan is an example. In Florence all classes claimed the right to interest themselves in the government. This led to constant changes in the constitution and to frequent struggles between the different political parties. When one party got the upper hand it generally expelled its chief opponents from the city. Exile was a terrible punishment to a Florentine, for Florence was not merely his native city,—it was his country, and loved and honored as such.
The Medici.
Lorenzo the Magnificent.
By the middle of the fifteenth century Florence had come under the control of the great family of the Medici, whose members played the rôle of very enlightened political bosses. By quietly watching the elections and secretly controlling the selection of city officials, they governed without letting it be suspected that the people had lost their power. The most distinguished member of the house of Medici was Lorenzo the Magnificent (d. 1492); under his rule Florence reached the height of its glory in art and literature.
The Palace of the Medici in Florence
Character of Florentine culture.
As one wanders about Florence to-day, he is impressed with the contradictions of the Renaissance period. The streets are lined with the palaces of the noble families to whose rivalries much of the continual disturbance was due. The lower stories of these buildings are constructed of great stones, like fortresses, and their windows are barred like those of a prison; yet within they were often furnished with the greatest taste and luxury. For in spite of the disorder, against which the rich protected themselves by making their houses half strongholds, the beautiful churches, noble public buildings, and works of art which now fill the museums indicate that mankind has never, perhaps, reached a higher degree of perfection in the arts of peace than amidst the turmoil of this restless town.
"Florence was essentially the city of intelligence in modern times. Other nations have surpassed the Italians in their genius.... But nowhere else except at Athens has the whole population of a city been so permeated with ideas, so highly intellectual by nature, so keen in perception, so witty and so subtle, as at Florence. The fine and delicate spirit of the Italians existed in quintessence among the Florentines. And of this superiority not only they, but the inhabitants also of Rome and Lombardy and Naples were conscious.... The primacy of the Florentines in literature, the fine arts, law, scholarship, philosophy, and science was acknowledged throughout Italy" (Symonds).
The Renaissance, or new birth.
120. The thirteenth century had been, as we have seen, a period of great enthusiasm for learning. The new universities attracted students from all parts of Europe, and famous thinkers like Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Roger Bacon wrote great treatises on religion, science, and philosophy. The public delighted in the songs and romances composed and recited in the language of the people. The builders contrived a new and beautiful style of architecture, and, with the aid of the sculptors, produced buildings which have never since been surpassed and rarely equaled. Why, then, are the two succeeding centuries called the period of the new birth,—the Renaissance,—as if there was a sudden reawakening after a long sleep, as if Europe first began in the fourteenth century to turn to books and art?
The word renaissance was originally used by writers who had very little appreciation of the achievements of the thirteenth century. They imagined that there could have been no high degree of culture during a period when the Latin and Greek classics, which seemed so all-important to them, were not carefully studied. But it is now coming to be generally recognized that the thirteenth century had worthy intellectual and artistic ambitions, although they were different both from those of Greece and Rome and from our own.
We cannot, therefore, conceive the "new birth" of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries quite as it was viewed by writers of a century ago, who failed to do justice to the preceding period. Nevertheless, about the middle of the fourteenth century, a very great and fundamental change did begin in thought and taste, in books, buildings, and pictures, and this change we may very well continue to call the Renaissance. We can best judge of its nature by considering the work of the two greatest men of the fourteenth century, Dante and Petrarch.
Dante, 1264–1321.
Dante was first and foremost a poet, and is often ranked with Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare. He is, however, interesting to the historian for other things than his flights of fancy and the music of his verse. He had mastered all the learning of his day; he was a scientist and a scholar as well as a poet. His writings show us how the world appeared about the year 1300 to a very acute mind, and what was the range of knowledge available to the most thoughtful men of that day.
Dante's use of Italian.
Dante was not a churchman, as were all the scholars whom we have hitherto considered. He was the first literary layman of renown since Boethius,[219] and he was interested in helping other laymen who knew only their mother tongue to the knowledge heretofore open only to those who could read Latin. In spite of his ability to write Latin, he chose the mother tongue for his great poem, The Divine Comedy. Italian was the last of the important modern languages to develop, perhaps because in Italy Latin remained longest intelligible to the mass of the people. But Dante believed that the exclusive use of Latin for literary purposes had already in his time become an affectation. He was confident that there were many people, both men and women, who knew only Italian, who would gladly read not only his verses but his treatise on science,—The Banquet,[220] as he poetically calls it.
Extent of Dante's knowledge.
Dante's writings indicate that mediæval scholars were by no means so ignorant of the universe as they are popularly supposed to have been. Although they believed, like the ancients, that the earth was the center around which the sun and stars revolved, they were familiar with some important astronomical phenomena. They knew that the earth was a sphere and guessed very nearly its real size. They knew that everything that had weight was attracted towards its center, and that there would be no danger of falling off should one get on the opposite side of the globe; they realized also that when it was day on one side of the earth it was night on the other.
Dante's veneration for the ancient writers.
While Dante shows a keen interest in the theological studies so popular in his time and still speaks of Aristotle as "the Philosopher," he exhibits a profound admiration for the other great authors of Rome and Greece. When in a vision he visits the lower world, Virgil is his guide. He is permitted to behold the region inhabited by the spirits of virtuous pagans, and there he finds Horace and Ovid, and Homer, the sovereign poet. As he reclines upon the green turf he sees a goodly company of ancient worthies,—Socrates, Plato, and other Greek philosophers, Cæsar, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and many others. He is so overcome by the honor of sitting among such great men that he finds no words to report what passed between them. He feels no horror for their paganism, and while he believes that they are not admitted to the beatific joys of heaven, he assigns them a comfortable abode, where they hold dignified converse with "faces neither sad nor glad."[221]
Petrarch, 1304–1374.
121. The veneration for the ancient writers felt by Dante becomes a burning enthusiasm with Petrarch, who has been well called "the first modern man." He was the first scholar and man of letters to desert entirely the mediæval learning and lead his contemporaries back to a realization of the beauty and value of Greek and Roman literature. In the mediæval universities, logic, theology, and the interpretation of Aristotle were the chief subjects of study. While scholars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries possessed and read most of the Latin writers who have come down to us, they failed to appreciate their beauty and would never have dreamed of making them the basis of a liberal education.[222]
Petrarch
Petrarch declares that when a boy he delighted in the sonorous language of Cicero even before he could understand its meaning. As the years went on he became convinced that he could have no higher aim in life than that of collecting copies of all the Latin classics upon which he could lay hands. He was not only an indefatigable scholar himself, but he possessed the power of stimulating, by his example, the intellectual ambition of those with whom he came in contact. He rendered the study of the Latin classics popular among cultivated persons; and by his own untiring efforts to discover the lost or forgotten works of the great writers of antiquity he roused a new enthusiasm for the formation of libraries.[223]
Obstacles to the study of the classics.
It is hard for us to imagine the obstacles which confronted Petrarch and the scholars of the early Renaissance. They possessed no good editions of the Roman and Greek authors, in which the correct wording had been determined by a careful comparison of all the known ancient copies. They considered themselves fortunate to secure a single manuscript of even the best known authors, and they could have no assurance that it was not full of mistakes. Indeed, the texts were so corrupted by the carelessness of the copyists that Petrarch declares that if Cicero or Livy should return and stumblingly read his own writings, he would promptly pronounce them the work of another, perhaps a barbarian.
Petrarch's European reputation and influence.
Petrarch enjoyed an unrivaled influence throughout western Europe, akin to that of Erasmus and Voltaire in later times. He was in constant communication with scholars, not only in Italy, but in the countries beyond the Alps. From his numerous letters which have been preserved, a great deal may be learned of the intellectual life of the time.[224]
Petrarch has no sympathy with the popular studies of his time.
It is clear that he not only promoted the new study of the Roman writers, but that he also did much to discredit the learning which was popular in the universities. He refused to include the works of the great scholastic writers of the thirteenth century in his library. Like Roger Bacon he was disgusted by the reverence in which the bad translations of Aristotle were held. As for the popular study of logic, Petrarch declared that it was good enough for boys, but that nothing irritated him more than to find a person of mature years devoting himself to the subject.
Contrast between Petrarch's and Dante's attitude toward their mother tongue.
While Petrarch is far better known for his beautiful Italian verses than for his long Latin poems, histories, and essays, he did not share Dante's confidence in the dignity of their mother tongue. He even depreciates his Italian sonnets as mere popular trifles written in his youth. It was not unnatural that he and those in whom he aroused an enthusiasm for Latin literature should look scornfully upon Italian. It seemed to them a crude form of speech, good enough perhaps for the common people and for the transaction of the daily business of life, but immeasurably inferior to the language in which their predecessors, the Roman poets and prose writers, had written. The Italians, it must be remembered, felt the same pride in Latin literature that we feel in the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare. The Italian scholars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries merely turned back to their own earlier national literature for their models, and tried their best to imitate the language and style of its masters.
The humanists.
122. Those who devoted themselves to the study and imitation first of Roman, and later of Greek literature, are commonly called humanists, a name derived from the Latin word humanitas; that is, culture, especially in the sense of literary appreciation. They no longer paid much attention to Peter Lombard's Sentences. They had, indeed, little taste for theology, but looked to Cicero for all those accomplishments which go to the making of a man of refinement.
Reason for the enthusiastic study of the classics.
The humanities, as Greek and Latin are still called, became almost a new religion among the Italian scholars during the century following Petrarch's death. In order to understand their exclusive attention to ancient literature we must remember that they did not have a great many of the books that we prize most highly nowadays. Now, every nation of Europe has an extensive literature in its own particular tongue, which all can read. Besides admirable translations of all the works of antiquity, there are innumerable masterpieces, like those of Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Goethe, which were unheard of four centuries ago. Consequently we can now acquaint ourselves with a great part of the best that has been written in all ages without knowing either Latin or Greek. The Middle Ages enjoyed no such advantage. So when men began to tire of theology, logic, and Aristotle's scientific treatises, they naturally turned back with single-hearted enthusiasm to the age of Augustus, and, later, to that of Pericles, for their models of literary style and for their ideals of life and conduct.
Pagan tendencies of the Italian humanists.
A sympathetic study of the pagan authors led many of the humanists to reject the mediæval view of the relation of this life to the next.[225] They reverted to the teachings of Horace and ridiculed the self-sacrifice of the monk. They declared that it was right to make the most of life's pleasures and needless to worry about the world to come. In some cases the humanists openly attacked the teachings of the Church, but generally they remained outwardly loyal to it and many of them even found positions among the officers of the papal curia.
The classics become the basis of a liberal education.
Humanism produced a revolution in the idea of a liberal education. In the sixteenth century, through the influence of those who visited Italy, the schools of Germany, England, and France began to make Latin and Greek literature, rather than logic and other mediæval subjects, the basis of their college course. It is only within the last generation that Latin and Greek have begun to be replaced in our colleges by a variety of scientific and historical studies; and many would still maintain, with the humanists of the fifteenth century, that Latin and Greek are better worth studying than any other subjects.
Ignorance of Greek in the Middle Ages.
The humanists of the fourteenth century ordinarily knew no Greek. Some knowledge of that language lingered in the West all through the Middle Ages, but we hear of no one attempting to read Plato, Demosthenes, Æschylus, or even Homer, and these authors were scarcely ever found in the libraries. Petrarch and his followers were naturally much interested in the constant references to Greek literature which occur in Cicero and Horace, both of whom freely recognized their debt to Athens. Shortly after Petrarch's death the city of Florence called to its university a professor of Greek, Chrysoloras from Constantinople.
Revival of Greek studies in Italy.
Chrysoloras in Florence.
A young Florentine law student, Leonardo Bruni, tells us of a dialogue which he had with himself when he heard of the coming of Chrysoloras. "Art thou not neglecting thy best interests if thou failest now to get an insight into Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, and the other great poets, philosophers, and orators of whom they are telling such wonderful things? Thou, too, mightest commune with them and imbue thyself with their wisdom. Wouldst thou let the golden opportunity slip? For seven hundred years no one in Italy has known Greek literature, and yet we agree that all language comes from the Greeks. How greatly would familiarity with that language advantage thee in promoting thy knowledge and in the mere increase of thy pleasure? There are teachers of Roman law to be found everywhere, and thou wilt never want an opportunity to continue that study, but there is but one teacher of Greek, and if he escapes thee there will be no one from whom thou canst learn."
The knowledge of Greek becomes common in Europe.
Many students took advantage of the opportunity to study Greek, and Chrysoloras prepared the first modern Greek grammar for their use. Before long the Greek classics became as well known as the Latin. Italians even went to Constantinople to learn the language; and the diplomatic negotiations which the Eastern Church carried on with the Western, with the hope of gaining help against the Turks, brought some Greek scholars to Italy. In 1423 an Italian scholar arrived at Venice with no less than two hundred and thirty-eight Greek books, thus transplanting a whole literature to a new and fruitful soil.[226] Greek as well as Latin books were carefully copied and edited, and beautiful libraries were established by the Medici, the duke of Urbino, and Pope Nicholas V, who founded the great library of the Vatican,[227] still one of the most important collections of books in the world.
Advantages of printing with movable types.
123. It was the glory of the Italian humanists to revive the knowledge and appreciation of the ancient literatures, but it remained for patient experimenters in Germany and Holland to perfect a system by which books could be multiplied rapidly and cheaply. The laborious copying of books by hand[228] had several serious disadvantages. The best copyists were, it is true, incredibly dexterous with their quills, and made their letters as clear and small as if they had been printed. But the work was necessarily very slow. When Cosimo, the father of Lorenzo the Magnificent, wished to form a library, he applied to a book contractor, who procured forty-five copyists. By working hard for nearly two years these men were able to produce only two hundred volumes.
Moreover, it was impossible before the invention of printing to have two books exactly alike. Even with the greatest care a scribe could not hope to avoid all mistakes, and a careless copyist was sure to make a great many. The universities required their students to report immediately any mistakes discovered in their text-books, in order that the error might be promptly rectified and not lead to a misunderstanding of the author. With the invention of printing it became possible to produce in a short time a great many copies of a given book which were exactly alike. Consequently, if great care were taken to see that the types were properly set, the whole edition, not simply a single copy, might be relied upon as correct.
Closing Lines of the Psalter of 1459 (much reduced)[229]
The earliest printed books.
Black letter.
Roman letters.
Italics.
The earliest book of any considerable size to be printed was the Bible, which appears to have been completed at Mayence in the year 1456. A year later the famous Mayence Psalter was finished, the first dated book. There are, however, earlier examples of little books printed with engraved blocks and even with movable types. In the German towns, where the art spread rapidly, the printers adhered to the style of letters which the scribe had found it convenient to make with his quill—the so-called Gothic, or black letter.[230] In Italy, where the first printing press was set up in 1466, a type was soon adopted which resembled the letters used in ancient Roman inscriptions. This was quite similar to the style of letter commonly used to-day. The Italians also invented the compressed italic type, which enabled them to get a great many words on a page. The early printers generally did their work conscientiously, and the very first book printed is in most respects as well done as any later book.
Importance of Italian art in the Renaissance period.
124. The stimulus of the antique ideals of beauty and the renewed interest in man and nature is nowhere more apparent than in the art of the Renaissance period in Italy. The bonds of tradition, which had hampered mediæval art,[231] were broken. The painters and sculptors continued, it is true, to depict the same religious subjects which their mediæval predecessors had chosen. But in the fourteenth century the Italian artists began to draw their inspiration from the fragments of antique art which they found about them and from the world full of life and beauty in which they lived. Above all, they gave freer rein to their own imagination. The tastes and ideals of the individual artist were no longer repressed but became the dominant element in his work. The history of art becomes, during the Renaissance, a history of artists.
Italian architecture.
Italy inherits the art of Greece and Rome.
The Gothic style in architecture had never taken root in Italy. The Italians had continued to build their churches in a more or less modified Romanesque[232] form. While the soaring arches and delicate tracery of the Gothic cathedral had become the ideal of the North, in Italy the curving lines and harmonious proportions of the dome inspired the best efforts of the Renaissance builders. They borrowed many fine details, such as capitals and cornices, from the antique, and also—what was far more important—the simplicity and beauty of proportion which characterized classical architecture. Just as Italy had inherited, in a special sense, the traditions of classical literature, so it was natural that it should be more directly affected than the rest of Europe by the remains of Greek and Roman art. It is in harmony of proportion and beauty of detail that the great charm of the best Renaissance buildings consists.
Niccola of Pisa, 1206–1280.
It is, perhaps, in sculpture that the influence of the antique models was earliest and most obviously shown. The sculptor, Niccola of Pisa (Niccola Pisano), stands out as the first distinguished leader in the forward movement. It is evident that he studied certain fragments of antique sculpture—a sarcophagus and a marble vase that had been found in Pisa—with the greatest care and enthusiasm. He frankly copied from them many details, and even several whole figures, in the reliefs on his most famous work, the pulpit in the baptistery at Pisa.[233] But while sculpture was the first of the arts to feel the new impetus, its progress was slow; it was not until the fifteenth century that it began, in Italy, to develop on wholly independent and original lines.
Frescoes and easel pictures.
The paintings of the period of the early Renaissance were usually frescoes; that is, they were painted directly upon the plaster walls of churches and sometimes of palaces. A few pictures, chiefly altar pieces, were executed on wooden panels, but it was not until the sixteenth century that easel paintings, that is, detached pictures on canvas, wood, or other material, became common.
Relief by Niccola of Pisa from Pulpit at Pisa, showing Influence of Antique Models
Giotto, 1266(?)-1337.
In the fourteenth century there was an extraordinary development in the art of painting under the guidance and inspiration of the first great Italian painter, Giotto. Before his time the frescoes, like the illuminations in the manuscripts of which we have spoken in a previous chapter, were exceedingly stiff and unlifelike. With Giotto there comes a change. Antique art did not furnish him with any models to copy, for whatever the ancients had accomplished in painting had been destroyed.[234] He had therefore to deal with the problems of his art unaided, and of course he could only begin their solution. His trees and landscapes look like caricatures, his faces are all much alike, the garments hang in stiff straight folds. But he aimed to do what the earlier painters apparently did not dream of doing—that is, paint living, thinking, feeling men and women. He was not even satisfied to confine himself to the old biblical subjects. Among his most famous frescoes are the scenes from the life of St. Francis,[235] a theme which appealed very strongly to the imagination of people and artists alike all through the fourteenth century.
Renaissance artists often practiced several arts.
Giotto's dominating influence upon the art of his century is due partly to the fact that he was a builder as well as a painter, and also designed reliefs for sculpture. This practicing of several different arts by the same artist was one of the striking features of the Renaissance period.
Italian art in the fifteenth century.
125. During the fifteenth century, which is known as the period of the Early Renaissance, art in Italy developed and progressed steadily, surely, and with comparative rapidity, toward the glorious heights of achievement which it reached in the following century. The traditions of the Middle Ages were wholly thrown aside, the lessons of ancient art thoroughly learned. As the artists became more complete masters of their tools and of all the technical processes of their art, they found themselves ever freer to express in their work what they saw and felt.
Florence the art center of Italy.
Florence was the great center of artistic activity during the fifteenth century. The greatest sculptors and almost all of the most famous painters and architects of the time either were natives of Florence or did their best work there. During the first half of the century sculpture again took the lead. The bronze doors of the baptistery at Florence by Ghiberti, which were completed about 1450, are among the very best products of Renaissance sculpture. Michael Angelo declared them worthy to be the doors of paradise. A comparison of them with the doors of the cathedral of Pisa, which date from the end of the twelfth century, furnishes a striking illustration of the change that had taken place. A contemporary of Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia (1400–1482), is celebrated for his beautiful reliefs in glazed baked clay and in marble, of which many may be seen in Florence.
BRONZE DOORS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT PISA
(Twelfth Century)
Relief by Luca della Robbia
One of the best known painters of the first half of the fifteenth century, Fra[236] Angelico, was a monk. His frescoes on the walls of the monastery of San Marco (and elsewhere) reflect a love of beauty and a cheerful piety, in striking contrast to the fiery zeal of Savonarola,[237] who, later in the century, went forth from this same monastery to denounce the vanities of the art-loving Florentines.[238]
Rome becomes the center of artistic activity.
126. Florence reached the height of its preëminence as an art center during the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was an ardent patron of all the arts. With his death (1492), and the subsequent brief but overwhelming influence of Savonarola, this preëminence passed to Rome, which was fast becoming one of the great capitals of Europe. The art-loving popes, Julius II and Leo X,[239] took pains to secure the services of the most distinguished artists and architects of the time in the building and adornment of St. Peter's and the Vatican, i.e., the papal church and palace.
The church of St. Peter.
The idea of the dome as the central feature of a church, which appealed so strongly to the architects of the Renaissance, reached its highest realization in rebuilding the ancient church of St. Peter. The task was begun in the fifteenth century; in 1506 it was taken up by Pope Julius II with his usual energy, and it was continued all through the sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth, under the direction of a succession of the most famous artist-architects of the time, including Raphael and Michael Angelo. The plan was changed repeatedly, but in its final form the building is a Latin cross surmounted by a great dome, one hundred and thirty-eight feet in diameter. The dimensions and proportions of this greatest of all churches never fail to impress the beholder with something like awe.
Height of Renaissance art.
Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael.
During the sixteenth century the art of the Renaissance reached its highest development. Among all the great artists of this period three stand out in heroic proportions—Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Raphael. The first two not only practiced, but achieved almost equal distinction in, the three arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting.[240] It is impossible to give in a few lines any idea of the beauty and significance of the work of these great geniuses. Both Raphael and Michael Angelo left behind them so many and such magnificent frescoes and paintings, and in the case of Michael Angelo statues as well, that it is easy to appreciate their importance. Leonardo, on the other hand, left but little completed work. His influence on the art of his time, which was probably greater than that of either of the others, came from his many-sidedness, his originality, and his unflagging interest in the discovery and application of new methods. He was almost more experimenter than artist.
St. Peter's and the Vatican, Rome
The Venetian school.
Titian, 1477–1576.
While Florence could no longer boast of being the art center of Italy, it still produced great artists, among whom Andrea del Sarto may be especially mentioned.[241] But the most important center of artistic activity outside of Rome in the sixteenth century was Venice. The distinguishing characteristic of the Venetian pictures is their glowing color. This is strikingly exemplified in the paintings of Titian, the most famous of all the Venetian painters.
Painting in northern Europe.
Dürer, 1471–1528.
It was natural that artists from the northern countries should be attracted by the renown of the Italian masters and, after learning all that Italy could teach them, should return home to practice their art in their own particular fashion. About a century after Giotto's time two Flemish brothers, Van Eyck by name, showed that they were not only able to paint quite as excellent pictures as the Italians of their day, but they also discovered a new way of mixing their colors superior to that employed in Italy. Later, when painting had reached its height in Italy, Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger[242] in Germany vied with even Raphael and Michael Angelo in the mastery of their art. Dürer is especially celebrated for his wonderful woodcuts and copperplate engravings, in which field he has perhaps never been excelled.[243]
Rubens, 1577–1640, and Rembrandt, 1607–1669.
Van Dyck, 1599–1641, and his portraits.
Velasquez.
When, in the seventeenth century, painting had declined south of the Alps, Dutch and Flemish masters,—above all, Rubens and Rembrandt,—developed a new and admirable school of painting. To Van Dyck, another Flemish master, we owe many noble portraits of historically important persons.[244] Spain gave to the world in the seventeenth century a painter whom some would rank higher than even the greatest artists of Italy, namely, Velasquez (1599–1660). His genius, like that of Van Dyck, is especially conspicuous in his marvellous portraits.
HOLY FAMILY BY ANDREA DEL SARTO
Geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages.
Marco Polo.
127. Shortly after the invention of printing, which promised so much for the diffusion of knowledge, the horizon of western Europe was further enlarged by a series of remarkable sea voyages which led to the exploration of the whole globe. The Greeks and Romans knew little about the world beyond southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia; and much that they knew was forgotten during the Middle Ages. The Crusades took many Europeans as far east as Egypt and Syria. As early as Dante's time two Venetian merchants, the Polo brothers, visited China and were kindly received at Pekin by the emperor of the Mongols. On a second journey they were accompanied by Marco Polo, the son of one of the brothers. When they got safely back to Venice in 1295, after a journey of twenty years, Marco gave an account of his experiences which filled his readers with wonder. Nothing stimulated the interest of the West more than his fabulous description of the golden island of Zipangu (Japan) and of the spice markets of the Moluccas and Ceylon.[245]
The discoveries of the Portuguese in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
About the year 1318 Venice and Genoa opened up direct communication by sea with the towns of the Netherlands.[246] Their fleets, which touched at the port of Lisbon, aroused the commercial enterprise of the Portuguese, who soon began to undertake extended maritime expeditions. By the middle of the fourteenth century they had discovered the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. Before this time no one had ventured along the coast of Africa beyond the arid region of Sahara. The country was forbidding, there were no ports, and mariners were, moreover, hindered in their progress by the general belief that the torrid region was uninhabitable. In 1445, however, some adventurous sailors came within sight of a headland beyond the desert and, struck by its luxuriant growth of tropical trees, they called it Cape Verde (the green cape). Its discovery put an end once for all to the idea that there were only parched deserts to the south.
For a generation longer the Portuguese continued to venture farther and farther along the coast, in the hope of finding it coming to an end, so that they might make their way by sea to India. At last, in 1486, Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Twelve years later (1498) Vasco da Gama, spurred on by Columbus' great discovery, after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope and northward beyond Zanzibar, steered straight across the Indian Ocean and reached Calicut, in Hindustan, by sea.
The spice trade.
These adventurers were looked upon with natural suspicion by the Mohammedan spice merchants, who knew very well that their object was to establish a direct trade between the spice islands and western Europe. Hitherto the Mohammedans had had the monopoly of the spice trade between the Moluccas and the eastern ports of the Mediterranean, where the products were handed over to Italian merchants. The Mohammedans were unable, however, to prevent the Portuguese from concluding treaties with the Indian princes and establishing trading stations at Goa and elsewhere. In 1512 a successor of Vasco da Gama reached Java and the Moluccas, where the Portuguese speedily built a fortress. By 1515 Portugal had become the greatest among maritime powers; and spices reached Lisbon regularly without the intervention of the Italian towns, which were mortally afflicted by the change.
Importance of spices in encouraging navigation.
There is no doubt that the desire to obtain spices was the main reason for the exploration of the globe. This motive led European navigators to try in succession every possible way to reach the East—by going around Africa, by sailing west in the hope of reaching the Indies, before they knew of the existence of America; then, after America was discovered, by sailing around it to the north or south, and even sailing around Europe to the north. It is hard for us to understand this enthusiasm for spices, for which we care much less nowadays. One former use of spices was to preserve food, which could not then as now be carried rapidly, while still fresh, from place to place; nor did our conveniences then exist for keeping it by the use of ice. Moreover, spice served to make even spoiled food more palatable than it would otherwise have been.
The Voyages of Discovery
Idea of reaching the spice islands by sailing westward.
It inevitably occurred to thoughtful men that the East Indies could be reached by sailing westward. The chief authority upon the form and size of the earth was still the ancient astronomer, Ptolemy, who lived about A.D. 150. He had reckoned the earth to be about one sixth smaller than it is; and as Marco Polo had given an exaggerated idea of the distance which he and his companions had traveled eastward, it was supposed that it could not be a very long journey from Europe across the Atlantic to Japan.
Columbus discovers America, 1492.
The first plan for sailing west was, perhaps, submitted to the Portuguese king in 1474, by Toscanelli, a Florentine physician. In 1492, as we all know, a Genoese navigator, Columbus (b. 1451), who had had much experience on the sea, got together three little ships and undertook the journey westward to Zipangu, which he hoped to reach in five weeks. After thirty-two days from the time he left the Canary Islands he came upon land, the island of San Salvador, and believed himself to be in the East Indies. Going on from there he discovered the island of Cuba, which he believed to be the mainland of Asia, and then Haiti, which he mistook for the longed-for Zipangu. Although he made three later expeditions and sailed down the coast of South America as far as the Orinoco, he died without realizing that he had not been exploring the coast of Asia.[247]
Magellan's expedition around the world.
After the bold enterprises of Vasco da Gama and Columbus, an expedition headed by Magellan succeeded in circumnavigating the globe. There was now no reason why the new lands should not become more and more familiar to the European nations. The coast of North America was explored principally by English navigators, who for over a century pressed north, still in the vain hope of finding a northwest passage to the spice islands.
The Spanish conquests in America.
Cortez began the Spanish conquests in the western world by undertaking the subjugation of the Aztec empire in Mexico in 1519. A few years later Pizarro established the Spanish power in Peru. It is hardly necessary to say that Europeans exhibited an utter disregard for the rights of the people with whom they came in contact, and treated them with contemptuous cruelty. Spain now superseded Portugal as a maritime power and her importance in the sixteenth century is to be attributed largely to the wealth which came to her from her possessions in the New World.
The Spanish main.
By the end of the century the Spanish main—i.e., the northern coast of South America—was much frequented by adventurous seamen, who combined in about equal parts the occupations of merchant, slaver, and pirate. Many of these hailed from English ports, and it is to them that England owes the beginning of her commercial greatness.[248]
Copernicus (1473–1543) discovers that the earth is not the center of the universe.
128. While Columbus and the Portuguese navigators were bringing hitherto unknown regions of the earth to the knowledge of Europe, a Polish astronomer, Kopernik (commonly known by his Latinized name, Copernicus), was reaching the conclusion that the ancient writers had been misled in supposing that the earth was the center of the universe. He discovered that, with the other planets, the earth revolved about the sun. This opened the way to an entirely new conception of the heavenly bodies and their motions, which has formed the basis of modern astronomy.
It was naturally a great shock to men to have it suggested that their dwelling place, instead of being God's greatest work to which He had subordinated everything, was but a tiny speck in comparison to the whole universe, and its sun but one of an innumerable host of similar bodies, each of which might have its particular family of planets revolving about it. Theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, declared the statements of Copernicus foolish and wicked and contrary to the teachings of the Bible. He was prudent enough to defer the publication of his great work until just before his death; he thus escaped any persecution to which his discovery might have subjected him.
Miscellaneous inventions.
In addition to the various forms of progress of which we have spoken, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the invention or wide application of a considerable number of practical devices which were unknown to the Greeks and Romans. Examples of these are, besides printing, the compass, gunpowder, spectacles, and a method of not merely softening but of thoroughly melting iron so that it could be cast.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries not merely a period of revival.
The period of which we have been speaking was, in short, by no means merely distinguished for the revival of classical learning. It was not simply a re-birth of the ancient knowledge and art, but a time during which Europe laid the foundations for a development essentially different from that of the ancient world and for achievements undreamed of by Aristotle or Pliny.
General Reading.—The culture of Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is best treated by Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (The Macmillan Company, $4.00). This is especially adapted for the rather advanced student. The towns are interestingly described in Symonds, Age of Despots (Scribner's Sons, $2.00). For Florence and the Medici, see Armstrong, Lorenzo de' Medici and Florence in the Fifteenth Century (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50). Machiavelli's Prince may be had in translation (Clarendon Press, $1.10). The best prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy is that of Charles Eliot Norton (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 3 vols., $4.50). In Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $2.00), the reader will find much material to illustrate the beginnings of humanism. The volume consists mainly of Petrarch's own letters to his friends. The introduction gives a much fuller account of his work than it was possible to include in the present volume. For similar material from other writers of the time, see Whitcomb, A Literary Source Book of the Italian Renaissance (Philadelphia, $1.00). The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini is a very amusing and instructive book by one of the well-known artists of the sixteenth century. Roscoe's translation in the Bohn series (The Macmillan Company, $1.00) is to be recommended for school libraries.
The greatest of the sources for the lives of the artists is Vasari, Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. This may be had in the Temple Classics (The Macmillan Company, 8 vols., 50 cents each) or a selection of the more important lives admirably edited in Blashfield and Hopkins' carefully annotated edition (Scribner's Sons, 4 vols., $8.00). Vasari was a contemporary of Michael Angelo and Cellini, and writes in a simple and charming style. The outlines of the history of the various branches of art, with ample bibliographies, are given in the "College Histories of Art," edited by John C. Van Dyke; viz., Van Dyke, The History of Painting, Hamlin, The History of Architecture, and Marquand and Frothingham, The History of Sculpture (Longmans, Green & Co., each $2.00). Larger works with more illustrations, which might be found in any good town library are: Fergusson, History of Modern Architecture, Lübke, History of Sculpture, Woltmann and Woermann, History of Painting, and Fletcher, A History of Architecture. Two companies publish very inexpensive reproductions of works of art: the so-called Perry pictures at a cent apiece, and the still better Cosmos pictures (Cosmos Picture Company, New York), costing somewhat more.
For the invention of printing see De Vinne, The Invention of Printing, unfortunately out of print, and Blades, Pentateuch of Printing (London, $4.75). Also Putnam, Books and their Makers during the Middle Ages, Vol. I (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $2.50).