Europe notes

• a super patron: Isabella d'Este
• educated, brilliant
• a gifted singer, lute player, innovative dancer
• wealthy, powerful parents
• she sponsored painters, sculptors, musicians, writers, architects
• a fashionista, she even designed her own perfume
• patron of de Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bellini, Correggio, and many more
• humanism
• deep interest in what people have already achieved as well as what they are capable of achieving in the future
• it's not a coincidence that humanism resembles the Greek idea of arete
• classical (ancient Greek and Roman) writings were important to them
• worldly (secular) values were essential - concerned with the here and now -
• Christian values still important but separate from secular values
• renaissance man/women
• someone who could master many fields of work
• women were not expected to create art, just inspire artists
• ultimate renaissance man: Leonardo de Vinci
• painter
• scientist
• inventor
• sculptors were realistic figures such as pieta
• carved from marble by Michelangelo from 1498-1499
• found in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City
• painters used perspective - using shadow and depth to create the illusion of three dimensions
• they sometimes painted frescoes
• a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid wet lime plaster
• pigment merges with the plaster, so the painting becomes an integral part of the wall
• writers wrote in the vernacular - their native language
• previously most scholarly writings were in Latin or Greek
• now literature was wore accessible to the masses
• they wrote to express their own thoughts and feelings
• Shakespeare (English)
• Dante Alighieri (Italian)
• niccolo mackiavelli (italian)
• the theme of Machiavelli the price was that the aims of princes - such as glory or survival - can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends