THE END OF THE MEDIÆVAL EPOCH
While Leonardo was in his prime the period usually marked as terminating the Middle Ages was passed. Recent students are much less disposed than were students of the earlier generation to emphasise the division of past time into epochs; and of course it cannot be too often emphasised that the year 1492 marked no decisive turning-point in the estimate of contemporary minds. Nevertheless, the close of the fifteenth century has by common consent been regarded as marking the culmination of that intellectual development in Italy which has long been spoken of as the Renaissance. Scholars of to-day are fond of pointing out that the real re-birth of culture began away back in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and we have seen how far this new development had progressed in the time of Dante and Petrarch. Nevertheless, despite the illogicality of such divisions, classifications of time, like the minor classifications of the zoölogist, have utility as aids to memorising and to vivid presentation of the facts of history, that make them all but indispensable. And doubtless the popular mind at least will long cling to the term “Renaissance” and apply it more particularly to that great final development of the graphic arts which reached its culmination late in the fifteenth and early in the sixteenth century and which had such exponents as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and their minor confrères.
It is quite impossible to attempt anything like an elaborate discussion of the culture of this period within present spatial limits. We can at best glance at the work of the great central figure of the epoch, Michelangelo, and, letting him typify the period, content ourselves with scarcely more than mentioning the names of his great contemporaries.[a]