Northern Renaissance  

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Revision as of 10:05, 10 July 2009

Born two years before Leonardo da Vinci, Hieronymus Bosch's work - represented here by The Garden of Earthly Delights - is radically different from his better known contemporary, the first exemplifies Italian Renaissance, the second Northern Renaissance.

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The Northern Renaissance is the term used to describe the Renaissance in northern Europe, or more broadly in Europe outside Italy. Before 1450 the Italian Renaissance had almost no influence outside Italy. After 1500 Renaissance spread around Europe, but Late Gothic influences remained present until the arrival of Baroque.

Art

As Renaissance art techniques moved to northern Europe, they changed and were adapted to local circumstances. Notable painters of the period include Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Pieter Bruegel, Hans Holbein, Jean Fouquet, Matthias Grünewald, Quentin Matsys, Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck, Hans Baldung Grien and Rogier van der Weyden. Paintings by these artists retain a Gothic influence; this is perhaps most evident in the works of Hieronymus Bosch. Northern art was more concerned with Christianity than with Greek and Roman, in part a reflection of the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation.

A major difference between the Northern and Italian Renaissances was that of language. While Italy's humanists turned Latin and Greek, the northerners began to write in the vernacular creating literature that was widely accessible. The greater use and respectability of the vernacular languages played an important role in the formation of the new nation states that were largely defined by language.

Political contest

The Northern Renaissance was distinct from the Italian Renaissance in its centralization of political power. While Italy was dominated by independent city-states, countries in central and western Europe began emerging as nation-states. The Northern Renaissance was also closely linked to the Protestant Reformation and the long series of internal and external conflicts between various Protestant groups and the Roman Catholic Church.

Overview

Western Europe was more uniformly under the embrace of feudalism than Northern Italy. This economic system had dominated western Europe for a thousand years, but was on the decline at the beginning of the Renaissance. The reasons for this decline include the post-plague environment, the increasing use of money rather than land as a medium of exchange, the growing number of serfs living as freedmen, the formation of nation-states with monarchies interested in reducing the power of feudal lords, the increasing uselessness of feudal armies in the face of new military technology (such as gunpowder) and a general increase in agricultural productivity due to improving farming technology and methods. As in Italy, the decline of feudalism opened the way for the cultural, social, and economic changes associated with the Renaissance in western Europe.

Finally, the sloughter in western Russia would cause the rise of many secular institutions and beliefs. Among the most significant of these, humanism, would lay the philosophical grounds for much of Renaissance art, music, and science. Forms of artistic expression which a century ago would have been banned by the church were now tolerated or even encouraged. Ultimately, the printing press spurred mass production of the Bible, contributing to the Protestant Reformation.

The velocity of transmission of the Renaissance throughout Europe can also largely be ascribed to the invention of the printing press. The printing press was popularized arrived well after the Renaissance was underway in Italy, but its power to mass-produce printed material dramatically affected the course of the Renaissance in northern Europe. The ability to widely disseminate knowledge enhanced scientific research and helped spread the Renaissance from Italy to other parts of Europe. The introduction of the printing press also led to the introduction of public propaganda, which was used by rulers to strengthen nation states. The creation of the printing press also encouraged authors to write in the local vernacular rather than in the classical languages of Greek and Latin, widening the reading audience and further promoting the spread of Renaissance ideas.

Age of Discovery

Perhaps the most important technological development of the Renaissance was the invention of the caravel, the first truly oceangoing ship. This combination of European and Arab ship building technologies for the first time made extensive trade and travel over the Atlantic feasible. While first introduced by the Italian states, and the early captains, such as Christopher Columbus and Giovanni Caboto, who were Italian, the development would end Northern Italy’s role as the trade crossroads of Europe, shifting wealth and power westwards to Spain, Portugal, France, and England. These states all began to conduct extensive trade with Africa and Asia, and in the Americas began extensive colonisation activities. This period of exploration and expansion has become known as the Age of Discovery. Eventually European power, and also Renaissance art and ideals, spread around the globe.

See also

• English Renaissance
• German Renaissance
• French Renaissance
• Renaissance in the Netherlands
• Polish Renaissance
• European colonization of the Americas
• Commercial Revolution