3 Renaissance
<p>The <b>Renaissance</b> (<small><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English" title="British English">UK</a></small> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English" title="Help:IPA for English">/rᵻˈneɪsəns/</a>, <small><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English" title="American English">US</a></small> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English" title="Help:IPA for English">/rɛnəˈsɑːns/</a>)<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodization" title="Periodization">period</a> in Europe, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages" title="Middle Ages">Middle Ages</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_history" title="Modern history">modern history</a>. </p>
<p>
It started as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_movement" title="Cultural movement">cultural movement</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy" title="Italy">Italy</a> in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Middle_Ages" title="Late Middle Ages">Late Medieval period</a> and later spread to the rest of Europe, marking the beginning of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_period" title="Early modern period">Early Modern Age</a>.
The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its own invented version of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism" title="Renaissance humanism">humanism</a>, derived from the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras" title="Protagoras">Protagoras</a>, who said that "Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science and literature. Early examples were the development of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_%28graphical%29" title="Perspective (graphical)">perspective</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting" title="Oil painting">oil painting</a> and the recycled knowledge of how to make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete" title="Concrete">concrete</a>. Although the invention of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movable_type#Metal_movable_type_in_Europe" title="Movable type">metal movable type</a> sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe.
As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch" title="Petrarch">Petrarch</a>; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting" title="Painting">painting</a>; and gradual but widespread <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education" title="History of education">educational reform</a>. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy" title="Diplomacy">diplomacy</a>, and in science to an increased reliance on observation and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning" title="Inductive reasoning">inductive reasoning</a>. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath" title="Polymath">polymaths</a> as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci" title="Leonardo da Vinci">Leonardo da Vinci</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo" title="Michelangelo">Michelangelo</a>, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup>
The Renaissance first began in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence" title="Florence">Florence</a>, in the 14th century.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup> Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time: its political structure; the patronage of its dominant family, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Medici" title="House of Medici">Medici</a>;<sup id="cite_ref-strathern_5-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-strathern-5">[5]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-6">[6]</a></sup> and the migration of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_scholars_in_the_Renaissance" title="Greek scholars in the Renaissance">Greek scholars</a> and texts to Italy following the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople" title="Fall of Constantinople">Fall of Constantinople</a> to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_people" title="Turkish people">Ottoman Turks</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-Britannica1_7-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-Britannica1-7">[7]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-Harris_8-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-Harris-8">[8]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-Norwich_9-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-Norwich-9">[9]</a></sup> Other major centres were northern <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_city-states" title="Italian city-states">Italian city-states</a> such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice" title="Republic of Venice">Venice</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Genoa" title="Republic of Genoa">Genoa</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Milan" title="Duchy of Milan">Milan</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna" title="Bologna">Bologna</a>, and finally <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome" title="Rome">Rome</a> during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Papacy" title="Renaissance Papacy">Renaissance Papacy</a>.
The Renaissance has a long and complex <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography" title="Historiography">historiography</a>, and, in line with general scepticism of discrete <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodization" title="Periodization">periodizations</a>, there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual culture heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of <i>Renaissance</i> as a term and as a historical delineation.<sup id="cite_ref-brotton_10-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-brotton-10">[10]</a></sup> The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_history" title="Art history">art historian</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Panofsky" title="Erwin Panofsky">Erwin Panofsky</a> observed of this resistance to the concept of "Renaissance":</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is perhaps no accident that the factuality of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance" title="Italian Renaissance">Italian Renaissance</a> has been most vigorously questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of civilization—historians of economic and social developments, political and religious situations, and, most particularly, natural science—but only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly ever by historians of Art.<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-11">[11]</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia" title="Nostalgia">nostalgia</a> for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_antiquity" title="Classical antiquity">classical antiquity</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-huizinga_12-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-huizinga-12">[12]</a></sup> while social and economic historians, especially of the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longue_dur%C3%A9e" title="Longue durée">longue durée</a></i>, have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras,<sup id="cite_ref-starn_13-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-starn-13">[13]</a></sup> which are linked, as Panofsky observed, "by a thousand ties".<sup id="cite_ref-14" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-14">[14]</a></sup>
The word <i>Renaissance</i>, literally meaning "Rebirth" in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s.<sup id="cite_ref-15" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-15">[15]</a></sup> The word also occurs in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Michelet" title="Jules Michelet">Jules Michelet</a>'s 1855 work, <i>Histoire de France</i>. The word <i>Renaissance</i> has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_Renaissance" title="Carolingian Renaissance">Carolingian Renaissance</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century" title="Renaissance of the 12th century">Renaissance of the 12th century</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-mur_16-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-mur-16">[16]</a></sup></p>