After studying this chapter, students should understand and be able to discuss the following:
The various schools of interpretation of the Renaissance
The phases of fifteenth-century Italian politics and diplomacy
The phases of Italian economic trends during the fifteenth century
The role of Florence as the center of the early Renaissance
The impact of the Medici family in Florentine history
The nature of the Renaissance papacy, its leaders, and their contributions
The characteristics of the early Renaissance
The characteristics and evolution of Renaissance humanism
The development of Renaissance scholarship and learning, including its leaders and their contributions
The characteristics of early Renaissance architecture, including the chief architects, their innovations, examples of their works, and their influence
The nature of early Renaissance sculpture, including its origins, the major sculptors, and their influence
The characteristics of early Renaissance painting and its impact on later styles, with references to specific painters and their innovations
The differences and similarities between the Florentine and Venetian schools of painting
The contrast among selected works of Early Renaissance architecture or sculpture or painting; the artists, what influenced them, and their contributions
The changes in music—types of works and new techniques and other innovations
The cultural changes in the areas of the arts and how these changes, including the revival of classicism, affected the arts until modern times
Historic "firsts" of early Renaissance civilization that became part of the Western tradition: textual criticism, realistic painting based on mathematical perspective, the educational ideal, called the "Renaissance man," and the drive to individual fulfillment
The role of early Renaissance civilization in transmitting the heritage of earlier civilizations: rediscovering classical art styles and redefining them, reviving Greco-Roman humanism and restoring it to the primary place in the educational curriculum, reinvigorating humanistic studies, freeing painting and sculpture from their tutelage to architecture in imitation of the classical tradition, and making skepticism a central part of the consciousness of the educated elite as had been characteristic of ancient Greece and Rome
