Rebirth, or Cultural Renaissance, is the period of European History in which themes, ideals and techniques used during Greco-Roman antiquity, in the fields of art, science and philosophy. This cultural movement took place between the 14th and 16th centuries, mainly in some Italian cities, and was opposed to Catholic values cultivated during the Middle Ages.
The term Renaissance was possibly first used by the art critic Giorgio Vasari, around 1550, to mark the difference in relation to the Middle Ages. The difference was mainly marked by the humanism and by rationalism adopted by the Renaissance.
Humanism expressed itself mainly through anthropocentrism, seeking to place man as the center of the universe and measure of all things. In this way, it was opposed to the religious character of medieval philosophical conceptions, which had God as the center of the universe.
Renaissance rationalism was linked to the use of empirical observation and the use of mathematical knowledge, mainly for artistic production and human knowledge about the world.
The Renaissance perspective distanced itself from Catholic dogmas, but it did not completely exclude religious themes. What Renaissance artists did was to give a human character to the representation of religious stories, especially in the field of art. In this sense, it is interesting to note that most of the themes of paintings painted in the period had biblical themes, but with humanized characters, whether in their forms (body definition, expressions, feelings etc.) or in the positioning of the characters in the frames, not necessarily having a hierarchy expressed in these locations, as adopted by medieval artists (Jesus always above, the angels in places superior to the saints etc.).
In science, the opposition was more pronounced, with scientists starting to question millenary theories, such as the replacement of Ptolemaic geocentrism (the Earth as the center of the universe) by heliocentrism (the sun as the center of the universe). universe).
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The emergence of the Renaissance was linked to the new urbanization process in some European regions and the reopening of trade routes, mainly in the Mediterranean. These changes provided the enrichment and strengthening of the bourgeoisie nascent, which was able to finance the production of numerous artists, mainly through the patrons. Commercial exchanges in various parts of the Mediterranean made it possible for Europeans to come into contact with the Byzantines and the Arabs, who had preserved the works and knowledge of antiquity Greco-Roman.
Leda and the Swan, by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
In this way, the Renaissance was the first ideological manifestation of the European bourgeoisie, which intended with values such as individualism, naturalism and hedonism to differentiate themselves from cultural production medieval.
The Renaissance was divided into three phases: Trecento (14th century or the three hundred years); the Quattrocento (15th century or four hundred years); and Cinquecento (16th century or 500s). However, it was not only in Italian cities that there were Renaissance artistic productions. In England, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Germany and France there were also artists linked to the Renaissance.
Names such as Sandro Boticelli, Rafael Sanzio, Pieter Brueghel, Bosch, El Greco, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci stood out in the field of plastic arts. These last two are examples that the artists of the period were not limited to an artistic specialty, contributing to architecture and science, for example.
In literature there were names such as Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Rabelais, Miguel de Cervantes, Nicolau Machiavelli and Luiz Vaz de Camões.
In the sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Johann Kepler stood out.
By Me. Tales Pinto
