Baldassare Castiglione ( )

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1 Baldassare Castiglione ( ) A diplomat (one who negotiates with other states/countries) and author whose famous Book of the Courtier described the ideal Renaissance gentleman. Castiglione was born into a noble family of Lombardy in northern Italy. As a young man he attended the court of the Sforza family, rulers of Milan. He became an ambassador to the papal court after the election of Pope Leo X. In Rome he struck up a friendship with the Italian artist Raphael, who painted a well-known portrait of the author. In 1521 Castiglione attained a position in the church: He was sent as an ambassador to Spain by Pope Clement VII, where he attended to Charles V, king of Sapin and Holy Roman Emperor. In 1528 Castiglione published Il Cortegiano, known in English as the Book of the Courtier. The book was based on the author's experiences at the ducal court of Urbino. In a series of lively dialogues and conversations, based on those he heard at the court, he expounds on the training and manners of the proper gentleman. Castiglione sees the courtier as a new type of man, one educated in the arts and literature and trained for military service. The courtier, in his view, should act with self-control and the dignity that comes from long experience of the world and training in a wide range of fields. This idea represents an important change from the medieval chivalric knight, who fought in service to a feudal overlord and solicited the affection of an idealized and unattainable lady. The Book of the Courtier was translated into French, English, German, and Spanish. It was held in high regard in royal courts of France and England, and played a key role in introducing the Italian Renaissance to northern Europe.

2 Niccolo Machiavelli ( ) Machiavelli was a central figure of the Italian Renaissance whose short book The Prince has remained a famous book of political philosophy. Born in Florence, Italy, Machiavelli was schooled in ancient Roman literature. In 1503 Machiavelli became an officer of the Florence city militia. He observed with great interest the career of Cesare Borgia, the ruthless and ambitious son of Pope Alexander VI. Borgia never hesitated in using deceit, violence, and all-out war to further his own goals (the conquest of territory that In 1512, a new government came to power in Florence, and Machiavelli was forced out of office, arrested, and charged with conspiracy. Subject to torture, he refused to confess to his crime. He survived and retired to his estate in the nearby countryside, where he took up study of the ancient Greek and Roman teachings and wrote down his experiences and his philosophy of government in a book called The Prince. In The Prince, he drew on the works of ancient authors as well as his own experience of government and of political leaders, giving his opinion that a ruler must be prepared to act ruthlessly, and inspire fear in his rivals, in order to ensure his authority and the well-being of his nation. Machiavelli's rather dark view of human character, however, was guided by his opinion that the ultimate goal of the actions of a prince should be the stability of the state he rules. In the case that a ruler must act with violence or cruelty, he must act quickly and effectively, and minimize harsh actions as soon as possible. This book had a large impact on leaders throughout Europe.

3 LEONARDO DA VINCI Painter Engineer UNIVERSAL MAN. Leonardo da Vinci ranks as one of the most accomplished figures in European history. He practiced the arts of painting, sculpture, and drawing to a high level of perfection. At the same time he also found employment as an architect, and a civil and military engineer. In his private Notebooks he kept a record of his many theoretical explorations of subjects in mechanics, physics, anatomy, geometry, and mathematics. While the artist's output of paintings was comparatively small, his emphasis on ideal human form, landscape painting, and proportion helped to establish the standards of High Renaissance style after Because of the range of his pursuits, Leonardo has long been accepted as one of the highest expressions of the Renaissance concept of the "universal man." EARLY CAREER. Da Vinci was born in a small village near Vinci, Italy. As a child he displayed talent in drawing, and as he reached maturity he became an apprentice to a Florentine painter and eventually became the artist's chief assistant. By 1472, Leonardo joined the painter's guild at Florence. The most important project that da Vinci undertook during his years in the city was his Last Supper, a mural painting for the refectory or dining room of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. He painted this work one of the most famous in the European tradition with an experimental technique he developed, and unfortunately the work began to decay immediately. The Last Supper continued to be damaged by restoration projects conducted over the centuries, although a preservation campaign completed in 1999 did much to remove the tampering of later artists. In the work, da Vinci relied on a careful balancing of groups of disciples around Christ. In addition, his use of perspective seems to set the work off in a higher plane, as does the brilliant idealization of the artist's painting of the figures' faces and hands. In 1499, two years after completing the Last Supper, Leonardo soon returned to Florence, where he began a number of works. The most important project of this period in Florence, though, was the Mona Lisa, a portrait of the wife of a high-ranking Florentine government official. Most of the other works that da Vinci commenced during these years in Florence were left incomplete at his death or have since been lost. LATER YEARS. The artist's later years were spent in Milan, Rome, and finally France. During this time Leonardo painted less, but devoted himself increasingly to his scientific studies. Mechanics and anatomy, which had been lifelong interests, now absorbed more of the artist's attentions. Leonardo suffered a stroke that damaged the right side of his body. He made only a partial recovery, but continued to work on his Notebooks and scientific experiments until his death in 1519.

4 MICHELANGELO Painter Sculptor Architect EARLY LIFE. Michelangelo was born in the small town of Caprese in Italy. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Florence, where Michelangelo attended Latin school until he was thirteen. Becoming an apprentice to a successful Florentine painter. Michelangelo advanced far enough in his craft to join the large entourage of artists, poets, and scholars who surrounded Lorenzo de' Medici, who was the de facto ruler of Florence at the time. In the Medici household Michelangelo received a rudimentary exposure to humanism and Latin literature. Although he never became a scholar, he did spend two years within the Medici household ( ), an experience that exposed him to the world of learning that flourished in Florence at the time. FIRST WORKS. The death of Lorenzo de' Medici, Michelangelo's patron, left the artist without support, and in 1494 Florence expelled the Medici family altogether. Michelangelo followed the Medici faction to Bologna where he lived for a time with a wealthy family before returning to Florence. Still without a patron, Michelangelo traveled to Rome in 1496 with letters of recommendation from a memb of the Medici family. Here the ancient monuments of the city seem to have inspired the sculptor, and he quickly carved his Bacchus, a work that imitated the style of the Romans. The fame of th work securely established the artist's reputation, and he would never again want for commissions and wealthy patrons. ASTONISHING PRODUCTIVITY. The early decades of the sixteenth century were a time of remarkable productivity for the artist. In 1501 Michelangelo returned to Florence where he carved the famous David, a work immediately revered as a masterpiece. To honor this achievement, the town gave the colossal nude a position of honor in front of the city's town hall. In 1505, Michelangelo returned to Rome, where he had been summoned by Pope Julius II to work on the pope's tomb. Difficulties and disagreements vexed this project, which took almost forty years to complete. Despite those hardships Michelangelo managed to complete the ceiling and sidewall frescoes of the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and These frescoes, recently cleaned and restored during the 1980s, allow us to trace Michelangelo's stylistic development in this period of his life. In these years the artist left behind the painting style of the fifteenth-century Renaissance in which he had been trained as an apprentice. Somewhat later, around 1520, the artist began to develop his skills as an architect. The Medici family commissioned Michelangelo to design a set of tombs in the New Sacristy of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence. Michelangelo now brought to his sculpture the same heavily muscled and tense style he had used in the later panels of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

5 GALILEO GALILEI GALILEO GALILEI ( ) is considered to be the father of modern science. Born at Pisa, Italy, Galileo received some of his early schooling there. Having heard in Venice of the newly invented telescope, Galileo immediately constructed one of his own and in 1610 announced many astronomical discoveries. These included his discovery that the Milky Way is made up of innumerable stars and his observation of the satellites of Jupiter. He also made observations of sunspots and of the phases of Venus. Thus he vastly expanded astronomical knowledge and challenged the established beliefs, which were based on Aristotle s ancient ideas and a Middle Ages monk named Thomas Aquinas ideas. Shortly after the publication of these discoveries, Galileo was appointed as head philosopher and mathematician to the grand duke of Tuscany. Galileo s studies all proved and supported the beliefs of Nicolas Copernicus. Copernicus published the heliocentric theory earlier, which stated that the Sun was the center of the universe. This was contradictory to common knowledge at the time; many people at that time believed the earth was the center of the universe. In 1633 Galileo was sentenced to life imprisonment for his theories and beliefs about outer space. Church leaders pressured him not to support the ides of Copernicus. However, Galileo published a book that supported Copernicus theories. Pope Urban VII angrily ordered Galileo to Rome to stand trial before the Inquisition. In April, 1633 Galileo stood trial. Galileo reluctantly stated that he would not use Copernican theory in order to receive a more lenient sentence from the pope. The pope ordered Galileo under house arrest near his villa near Florence, where he spent the remainder of his life.

6 NICOLAUS COPERNICUS Born: February 19, 1473 Torun, Poland Died: May 24, 1543 Frauenberg, East Prussia (now Frombork, Poland) Polish astronomer The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the founder of the heliocentric ordering of the planets, which at the time was a revolutionary idea that stated the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun. Early life Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, in Torun, Poland, about 100 miles south of Danzig. He belonged to a family of merchants. His uncle, the bishop and ruler of Ermland, was the person to whom Copernicus owed his education, career, and security. Copernicus studied at the University of Cracow from 1491 to While he did not attend any classes in astronomy, it was during his student years there that Copernicus began to collect books on mathematics and astronomy (the study of the universe). In 1496, through the efforts of his uncle, he became a canon (priest) at Frauenburg, remaining in that office for the remainder of his life. Copernicus then set out for Bologna, Italy, where he came under the influence of Domenico Maria de Novara, an astronomer. There Copernicus also recorded some planetary positions, and he did the same in Rome, where he spent the year of The heliocentric system At this time Copernicus was thinking about problems of astronomy, and the heliocentric system in particular. The system is outlined in a short manuscript. In it there was a list of seven axioms (truths), all of which stated a feature specific to the heliocentric system. The third stated in particular: "All the spheres revolve about the sun as their midpoint, and therefore the sun is the center of the universe."

7 CATHERINE DE' MEDICI Queen of France CULTURED BEGINNINGS. Catherine de' Medici was one of the most powerful women of the sixteenth century. She was the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, duke of the Italian city of Urbino, and the French princess Madeleine de la Tour D'Avergne, but was completely orphaned by the age of one. Her upbringing was entrusted to nuns in the city of Florence and later in Rome. Her marriage to the heir to the French throne, Henri, the duke of Orléans (king of France from ), was negotiated by her uncle, Pope Clement VII. This wedding took place in Paris in October According to long-standing legend, Catherine made a sensation in her first appearance at the wedding ball by wearing a new style of high-heeled shoe that gave a swaying undulation and grace to her dance steps. Shoes with soles and heels were just coming into use in the early sixteenth century, and they had a definite effect on dancing, since they allowed performers to stomp and stamp their feet and to perform more intricate steps than was possible in the older fifteenth-century styles. Whether or not Catherine introduced these shoes to France cannot be determined, but she has long been credited with raising the standards of civility and culture in France's noble courts. Her cuisine was widely admired, and noble families searched for Italian cooks that could make the kinds of dishes that Catherine served at state festivities. Italians have long been fond of crediting the subsequent glories of French cooking to the advances that this Italian princess introduced into the royal kitchens in the sixteenth century. COURT FESTIVITIES. Catherine's years in political life were tumultuous ones, dominated by the ongoing controversies and civil conflicts between French Protestants, known as Huguenots, and Catholics. One way in which Catherine escaped the stress of these difficulties was through the development of ordered dance in her court. Like dance enthusiasts elsewhere in Renaissance Europe, Catherine saw in the art a way of teaching the harmony and order that should prevail in the social and political world. Dance was, in her mind and in the minds of other cultivated Europeans, a model for properly ordered social relationships. In the many festivities she staged at court during the troubled years of her reign, she relied upon dance to express these ideas. She staged a series of "magnificences," grander than any that had yet been seen in France. These costly spectacles were attacked at the time as a source of ruination and poverty to the French crown, although Catherine saw them as an essential way to unify the French monarchy's quarrelling noble factions. Out of her efforts the ballet de cour emerged, a royal art form that joined together artistic stage designs, poetry, music, and dance. This genre influenced both the rise of the opera and the seventeenth -century ballet. Thus although Catherine's years as regent of France were troubled, her political career has long been credited with being an important stimulus to the development of the "fine arts" in France.

I. The Renaissance was the period that followed the Middle Ages. It was a time of renewed interest in things of this world.

Renaissance I. The Renaissance was the period that followed the Middle Ages. It was a time of renewed interest in things of this world. A. Human beings and their conditions B. Education, art, literature,