The Renaissance

The age of humanism

The European Renaissance (the “rebirth” of the classical past) really began in 14th-century Italy with Petrarch and Boccaccio. The 15th century, devoid as it was of major poetic works, was nevertheless of very great importance because it was the century in which a new vision of human life, embracing a different conception of man, as well as more modern principles of ethics and politics, gradually found their expression. This was the result, on the one hand, of political conditions quite different from those of previous centuries and, on the other, of the rediscovery of classical antiquity. With regard to the first point, nearly all Italian princes competed with each other in the 15th century to promote culture by patronizing research, offering hospitality and financial support to literary men of the time, and founding libraries. As a consequence, their courts became centres of research and discussion, thus making possible the great cultural revival of the period. The most notable courts were that of Florence, under Lorenzo de’ Medici “the Magnificent”; that of Naples, under the Aragonese kings; that of Milan, first under the Visconti and later the Sforza family; and finally the papal court at Rome, which gave protection and support to a large number of Italian and Byzantine scholars. To return to the second point, the search for lost manuscripts of ancient authors, begun by Petrarch in the previous century, led to an extraordinary revival of interest in classical antiquity: in particular, much research was devoted to ancient philosophy in general and in particular to Plato (Aristotle had been the dominant voice in the Middle Ages), a fact that was to have profound influence on the thinking of the Renaissance as a whole.

By and large, the new culture of the 15th century was a revaluation of man. Humanism opposed the medieval view of man as a being with relatively little value and extolled him as the centre of the universe, the power of his soul as linking the temporal and the spiritual, and earthly life as a realm in which the soul applies its powers. These concepts, which mainly resulted from the new interest in Plato, were the subject of many treatises, the most important of which were Giannozzo Manetti’s De dignitate et excellentia hominis (completed in 1452; On the Dignity of Man) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oratio de hominis dignitate (written 1486; Oration on the Dignity of Man). The humanist vision evolved during this period condemned many religious opinions of the Middle Ages still widely prevalent: monastic ideals of isolation and noninvolvement in the affairs of the world, for example, were attacked by Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, and Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini. Forthright though these attacks were, humanism was not essentially anti-Christian, for it generally remained faithful to Christian beliefs, and the papal court itself regarded humanism as a force to be assimilated rather than defeated.

In the first half of the century the humanists, with their enthusiasm for Latin and Greek literature, had a disdain for the Italian vernacular. They wrote for the most part in Latin prose. Their poetic production, inspired by classical models and written mostly in Latin and later Greek, was abundant but at first of little value. Writing in a dead language and closely following a culture to which they had enslaved themselves, they rarely showed originality as poets. Toward the end of the 15th century there were notable exceptions in Giovanni Pontano, Michele Marullo Tarcaniota, Politian (Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano), and Jacopo Sannazzaro. These poets succeeded in creating sincere poetry in which conventional and less conventional themes were expressed with new, original intimacy and fervour.

The rise of vernacular literature

Toward the middle of the 15th century Italian began to vie with Latin as the literary language. The Certame Coronario, a public poetry competition held in Florence in 1441 with the intention of proving that the spoken Italian language was in no way inferior to Latin, marked a definite change. In the second half of the century there were a number of works of merit written in Italian and inspired either by the chivalric legends of the Middle Ages or by the new humanist culture.

The “matter of France” and the “matter of Brittany,” which had degenerated into clichés, were given a new lease on life by two poets of very different temperament and education: Matteo Maria Boiardo, whose Orlando innamorato (1483; “Orlando in Love”) reflected past chivalrous ideals as well as contemporary standards of conduct and popular passions; and Luigi Pulci, whose broadly comic Morgante, published before 1480, was pervaded by a new bourgeois and popular morality.

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The new ideals of the humanists were most complete in Politian, Jacopo Sannazzaro, and Leon Battista Alberti, three outstanding figures who combined a wide knowledge of classical antiquity with a personal and often profound inspiration. Politian’s most important Italian work is the incomplete Stanze cominciate per la giostra del Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici (1475–78; “Stanzas Begun for the Joust of the Magnificent Giuliano de’ Medici”)—dedicated to Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano de’ Medici, assassinated in 1478 in the Pazzi conspiracy—which created a mythical world in which concepts of classical origin were relived in a new way. The same could be said of Sannazzaro’s Arcadia (1504), a largely autobiographical pastoral work in verse and prose that remained widely influential up to the 18th century. A more balanced view of contemporary reality was given in Alberti’s literary works, which presented a gloomy picture of human life, dominated by man’s wickedness and the whims of fortune. As for Lorenzo de’ Medici, statesman and patron of many men of letters, he himself had a remarkably vast and varied poetic output.

Pietro Bembo of Venice published his Prose della volgar lingua (“Writings on the Vulgar Tongue”) in 1525. In this work, which was one of the first historical Italian grammars, Bembo demanded an Italian literary language based on 14th-century Tuscan models, particularly Petrarch and Boccaccio. He found Dante’s work stylistically uneven and insufficiently decorous. He was opposed by those who thought that a literary language should be based on contemporary usage, particularly by Gian Giorgio Trissino, who developed Dante’s theories on Italian as a literary language. In practice the problem was both linguistic and stylistic, and there were in the first half of the 16th century a great number of other contributors to the question, though it was Bembo’s theories that finally triumphed in the second part of the century. This was largely due to the activities of the Florentine Accademia della Crusca, and this more scientific approach to the language question resulted in the academy’s first edition of an Italian dictionary in 1612.

During the first decades of the 16th century, treatises on poetry were still composed according to humanist ideas and the teachings of the Roman Augustan poet Horace. It was only after 1536, when the original classical Greek text of Aristotle’s incomplete Poetics was first published, that a gradual development became apparent in aesthetic theory. The traditional principle of imitation was now better analyzed, in the twofold sense of the imitation of classical authors and that of nature. The three theatrical unities (time, space, action) were among the structural rules then reestablished, while much speculation was devoted to epic poetry. The classical conception of poetry as a product of imagination supported by reason was at the basis of 16th-century rhetoric, and it was this conception of poetry, revived in Italy, that triumphed in France, Spain, and England during the following century.

Political, historical, biographical, and moral literature

Niccolò Machiavelli’s works reflected Renaissance thought in its most original aspects, particularly in the objective analysis of human nature. Machiavelli has been described as the founder of a new political science: politics divorced from ethics. His own political experience was at the basis of his ideas, which he developed according to such general principles as the concepts of virtù (“individual initiative”) and fortuna (“chance”). A man’s ability to control his destiny through the exercise of virtù is contested by forces beyond his control, summed up in the concept of fortuna. His famous treatise Il principe (The Prince), composed in 1513, in which he states his conviction of the superiority of virtù, revealed the author’s prophetic attitude, based on his reading of history and his observation of contemporary political affairs. Its description of a model ruler became a code for the wielding of absolute power throughout Europe for two centuries. Machiavelli’s Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (c. 1513–21; Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius), showed the same realistic attitude: public utility was placed above all other considerations, and political virtue was distinguished from moral virtue. His seven books on Dell’arte della guerra (1521; The Art of War), concerning the creation of a modern army, were more technical, whereas his historical works, including the Istorie fiorentine (1520–25; Florentine History), exemplified theories expounded in his treatises. Machiavelli also holds a place in the history of imaginative literature, above all for his play La Mandragola (1518), one of the outstanding comedies of the century.

Although more of a realist (or pessimist) than Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini was the only 16th-century historian who could be placed within the framework of the political theories he constructed. He drew attention to the self-interest of those involved in political action and made Machiavelli’s theories appear idealistic by contrast. One of Guicciardini’s main works, his Ricordi (1512–30; “Things to Remember”; Eng. trans. Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman), has a place among the most original political writings of the century. Guicciardini was also the first, in his Storia d’Italia (1537–40), to compose a truly national history of Italy, setting it in a European context and attempting an impartial analysis of cause and effect.

Giorgio Vasari’s Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri (1568; Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects) contained more than 200 biographies and was the first critical and historical appraisal of Italian art. The autobiography of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (written 1558–66, published 1728) was remarkable for its vigorous spontaneity and its use of popular Florentine language.

The highest moral aspirations of the Renaissance are expressed in Baldassare Castiglione’s Cortegiano (published 1528; The Courtier), which deals with the perfect courtier, the noble lady, and the relationship between courtier and prince. It became one of the most influential books of the century. Giovanni della Casa was the author of another famous treatise, the Galateo (c. 1551–54; Galateo is the name of the chief speaker; Eng. trans. Galateo), a book on courtesy in which the author’s witty mind and the refinement of contemporary Italian society found full expression. The excesses of the period were also vividly reflected in the work of Pietro Aretino, a widely feared polygraph who was called “the scourge of princes” by Ludovico Ariosto. His Ragionamenti (1534–36; “Discussions”), a dialogue between a seasoned prostitute and a beginner, were written in a spontaneous style and showed a sensuous and unscrupulous nature.