Renaissance Art, Literature, and Science

3.1 Architecture

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446)

Brunelleschi solved the engineering problem of the Florence Cathedral dome. The Duomo (Florence Cathedral, completed 1436) — with its self-supporting double-shell brick dome — remains an engineering marvel. He also invented linear perspective in painting, transforming visual representation permanently.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72)

Theorist and architect who articulated Renaissance principles. His treatise De Re Aedificatoria (On the Art of Building) applied classical proportions to modern architecture.

3.2 Visual Arts — Key Masters

Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510)

• The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–86) and Primavera (c. 1477) — mythological subjects as vehicles for humanist ideas
• Neoplatonic philosophy embodied in sensuous imagery

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) — PYQ 2021

• Born in Vinci, near Florence; trained under Verrocchio
• The Last Supper (c. 1494–99): 15ft × 29ft mural at Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan; revolutionary perspective and psychological expression of all 13 figures at the moment Christ announces his betrayal
• Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19, Louvre Paris): Portrait of Lisa Gherardini; sfumato technique (smoky, blurred outlines); the most visited artwork in the world
• Scientific notebooks: anatomical drawings of 30+ human bodies; designs for helicopters, tanks, solar power concentrators, hydraulic machines
• Exemplified the Renaissance ideal of the uomo universale — universal man

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564)

• David (1501–04, marble, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence) — 17-foot statue; idealized male form
• Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508–12, Vatican): Depicting the Book of Genesis — The Creation of Adam is the most famous panel; painted lying on his back
• Pietà (1498–99, St. Peter's Basilica): Mary holding the dead Christ; technical mastery at age 24
• Architect of St. Peter's Basilica dome (designed 1546)

Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520)

• School of Athens (1509–11, Vatican Palace): Fresco depicting ancient Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euclid) assembled together — the supreme visual statement of Renaissance humanism
• The Sistine Madonna (1512, Dresden); numerous Madonnas admired for grace and harmony

3.3 Literature

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)

The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–20) — epic poem in three parts (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso); written in the Tuscan vernacular. Dante is called the "Father of the Italian Language."

Francesco Petrarch (1304–74)

"Father of Humanism"; recovered lost manuscripts of Cicero. His Canzoniere — love sonnets to Laura — is a landmark of Italian poetry. He was also the first person to articulate the concept of the "Dark Ages" as a contrast to classical Greco-Roman civilisation.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75)

Decameron — 100 stories told by ten nobles fleeing the Black Death; the first masterpiece of Italian prose. It influenced Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and later novelists across Europe.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

The Prince (Il Principe, 1513, published 1532) — a treatise on political power. Key ideas:

• The ruler should be a fox (cunning) and a lion (strong)
• "It is better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both"
• Machiavellianism became synonymous with amoral pragmatism in statecraft

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

English Renaissance's greatest literary figure. His output:

• 37 plays: tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth), comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream), histories (Henry V, Richard III)
• 154 sonnets
• Works explore the full range of human psychology and experience

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)

Spanish Renaissance; Don Quixote (1605–15) — the first modern novel. A parody of chivalric romances that explores idealism vs. reality.

3.4 Philosophy

Thomas More (1478–1535)

English Christian humanist; Utopia (1516) described an ideal commonwealth on a fictional island. Features included rational social organization, religious tolerance, and no private property. More coined the word "utopia" (Greek: "no place").

Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Novum Organum (1620) replaced Aristotelian deductive logic with the inductive method (observation → experimentation → generalisation). Bacon founded the empirical scientific method. His motto: "Knowledge is Power."

René Descartes (1596–1650)

Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am") — philosophical method of radical doubt. His Discourse on the Method (1637) began modern philosophy and laid foundations of rationalism.

3.5 The Scientific Revolution

The Renaissance's intellectual revolution extended naturally into natural science, producing a complete transformation of how Europeans understood the cosmos.

Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543)

Polish astronomer; De Revolutionibus (1543) proposed the heliocentric (sun-centred) model of the solar system, displacing the medieval Ptolemaic earth-centred model. Publication was posthumous — he feared Church condemnation.

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)

Discovered the three laws of planetary motion:

• Elliptical orbits
• Equal areas in equal times
• T² ∝ R³

These laws confirmed and mathematised Copernicus's heliocentric model.

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

Used the telescope to observe Jupiter's moons and mountains on the Moon — empirical proof against the perfect, unchanging heavens of medieval theology. He was condemned by the Inquisition in 1633, forced to recant, and placed under house arrest.

Andreas Vesalius (1514–64)

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) — first detailed, empirically verified human anatomy based on dissections. Corrected errors in Galen's 2nd-century anatomy that had been treated as authoritative for 1,300 years.

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