The Northern Renaissance

By about 1450, the Renaissance is finally starting to move outside of Italy.

• The plague has passed.

• The Hundred Years War is over.

• More money to be had for other goods.

The tone of the Northern Renaissance, however, is different from what was seen in Italy.

• While wealthy merchants and rich, independent city-states led the way in Italy, this was not the case in the north.

• Due in part to the plague and the Hundred Years War, northern Europe had strong centralized power structures in the form of monarchies. They didn’t have uppity city-states.

• Thus, it was mainly the kings and some nobles who were responsible for the Renaissance’s spread there, not wealthy patron families.

• It’s also more religious there.

• While the Italian Renaissance was not strictly secular, it was more so than the Northern flavor.

A big mover and shaker was France’s King Francis I, who reigned from 1515-1547.

• Francis became known as the Father and Restorer of Letters. He was quite the humanist.

• The two previous French kings had warred with (and therefore interacted with) Italy, but Francis was the first one to really embrace the new ideas.

• He sponsored a lot of art, and even lured Leonardo de Vinci to France.

• It was near the end of de Vinci’s life and he wasn’t that productive, but he brought his stuff with him – including such pieces as the Mona Lisa, which is France has it and not Italy.

• He was a great reader, a good poet, and greatly expanded the royal library. He even opened it up to all scholars.

• He did a lot with architecture.

The Chateau de Chambord

Chateau de St. Germain-en-Laye

Château de Fontainebleau

Rebuilt the Louvre

Art

• Art followed the Italian techniques and used a lot of perspective and realism.

• Some of the bigger names:

• Albrecht Durer

• Hans Holbein (the Younger)

Look at the detail:

• Jan van Eyck

Literature

• Writing also goes humanist, but, like with the rest, with a Christian bent, giving rise to Christian Humanism.

• Human freedom and individualism are compatible with Christianity.

• Human existence isn’t valued merely in itself.

• You see this a lot with Erasmus.

Guttenberg and the printing press

• The printing press is one of the greatest inventions in history.

• It was invented by Johann Gutenberg.

• Previously, literary works had to be transcribed by hand, usually by monks.

• It was tedious, time-consuming work and made books very expensive.

• The printing press allowed works to be cheaply mass-produced. Suddenly the written word could be accessible to the masses.

• In three years, a monk could produce one Bible… Gutenberg, 180

• The press actually derived from a modified olive press.

• It’s big thing was the durable types used and the ability to easily move around the letters.

• One of the first projects Gutenberg undertook was printing 200 copies of the Bible with 42 lines per page. Some were on vellum.

• There are currently 11 complete copies on vellum and 48 relatively intact copies on paper. They can be sold for millions (but aren’t sold that often).