Renaissance

Something happened in Italy and later in the rest of Europe after about 1300 (until about 1650).

Interest in classical learning from Greece and Rome
- Aristotle
- Ptolemy
  - Knowledge of Ptolemy's astronomy kept alive in Arab cultures for hundreds of years.
  - Almagest , "the greatest of books," translated to Latin from Arabic (~1200 AD)
Humanistic attitudes: appreciation of the human and the natural, in contrast to the devine.
Change (progress?) in science and art.

Imagine a strole through a virtual art galary. Note the difference between 1,2,3 and 4,5:

Here is a nice painting [Pietro Lorenzetti : Christ before Pilate (c. 1335); Vatican Museum, Rome]
Here is another [Sano Di Pietro : Predella panel - The Nativity (c. 1445); Vatican Museum,Rome]
There are lots like this one [Bernardo Daddi : Madonna and Child (c. 1335); Vatican Museum, Rome]
This one is a little different [Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus (c. 1480); Uffizi Gallery, Florence])
So it this one [Sandro Botticelli: Spring (c. 1480); Uffizi Gallery, Florence]

Some Renaissance Dates

~1500: Botticelli, L. da Vinci, Michelangelo
~1500: N. Machiavelli, The Prince
1517, Martin Luther posts Ninety-five Theses on church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Reformation begins.
1543: N. Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
c. 1600: Tycho Brahe's observations
c. 1600: W. Shakespeare, Hamlet
1609: J. Kepler New Astronomy
1610: Galileo Galilei, Starry Messenger
1632: Galileo Galilei, Dialogue on the Great World Systems
1687: I. Newton, Principia

Davison E. Soper, Institute of Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403 USA soper@bovine.uoregon.edu