Significant Events
The Duomo, as it is sometimes called, was so big, and so important, it helped start a whole new era of art and engineering. It was designed with four perpendicular arms so that the entire building has the shape of a cross, symbolizing the crucifixion of Christ.
What is the Florence Cathedral?
A form of government in which the leader is not a king and certain citizens have the right to vote.
What is a republic?
The language of everyday speech in particular region.
What is vernacular?
Italian painter and sculptor and engineer and scientist and architect; the most versatile genius of the Italian Renaissance.
Who was Leonardo da Vinci?
Machine by which text and images are transferred to paper or other media by means of ink.
What is a printing press?
A series of violent conflicts for control of Italy. Fought largely by France and Spain but involving much of Europe, they resulted in the Spanish Habsburgs dominating Italy and shifted power from Italy to northwestern Europe.
What are the Italian Wars?
A member of the middle class who lived in a city or town.
What is a burgher?
A painting done on fresh, wet plaster with water-based paints.
What is a fresco?
German printer who was the first in Europe to print using movable type and the first to use a press.
Who was Johannes Gutenberg?
The areas comprising a large district in central Italy ruled as a temporal domain by the popes from a.d. 755 until the greater part of it was annexed in 1860, by Victor Emmanuel II: the remaining part, Rome and its environs, was absorbed into the kingdom of Italy in 1870.
What are the Papal States?
A short period of the most exceptional artistic production in the Italian states, particularly Rome, capital of the Papal States, and in Florence, during the Italian Renaissance.
What is the High Renaissance?
A soldier who fights primarily for pay.
What is a mercenary?
Italian statesman, political philosopher and author that wrote The Prince.
Who is Niccolo Machiavelli?
The father of Humanism, and a great scholar and poet of the 14th century in Italy.
Who was Francesco Petrarch?
Comprised that part of the Italian Peninsula south of the Papal States between 1282 and 1816. It was created as a result of the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302), when the island of Sicily revolted and was conquered by the Crown of Aragon, becoming a separate Kingdom of Sicily.
What is the Kingdom of Naples?
A short treatise on how to acquire power, create a state, and keep it, the work was an effort to provide a guide for political action based on the lessons of history and his own experience as a foreign secretary in Florence.
What is The Prince?
The revival of art and literature under the influence of classical models in the 14th–16th centuries.
What is the Renaissance?
An Italian banker and politician, the first member of the Medici political dynasty that served as de facto rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance.
Who was Cosimo de' Medici?
An Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings.
Who was Raphael Sanzio?
A period in which artists north of the Alps—namely, in the Low Countries (the Netherlands and Belgium), Germany, France, and England— adopted and adapted the ideas of the Italian Renaissance. It is characterized by a realistic approach to painting, improved techniques, and the proliferation of printmaking.
What is the Northern Renaissance?
The varying complex of lands in western and central Europe ruled over first by Frankish and then by German kings for 10 centuries (800–1806).
What is the Holy Roman Empire?
An intellectual movement of the Renaissance based on the study of the humanities, which included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy, and history.
What is humanism?
Artistic techniques used to give the effect of three-dimensional depth to two-dimensional surfaces.
What is perspective?
An Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art
Who was Michelangelo Buonarroti?
According to humanists, students should learn history, ethics, public speaking, grammar, logic, poetry, mathematics, astronomy, and music. The purpose of this type of education was to produce individuals who follow a path of virtue and wisdom.
What are liberal studies?