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Stories from HistoryRenaissance and ExplorationD2.His.3.3-5

The Renaissance

Renaissance means rebirth. Beginning in Italian cities such as Florence in the 1400s, artists and scholars studied the books and art of Greece and Rome and made new art, like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

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In about 1504, in the city of Florence, a young sculptor finished a statue carved from a single block of marble that other artists had given up on. It showed the shepherd boy David, about to face the giant Goliath, and it stood about 17 feet tall. The sculptor was Michelangelo, and he was not yet 30.

Key idea

Renaissance means "rebirth." Beginning in the cities of Italy in the 1300s and 1400s, scholars studied old Greek and Latin books again, and artists studied the human body, light and perspective. Rich families like the Medici of Florence paid artists and scholars, and the new ideas spread across Europe.
Artists and scholars of the Renaissance.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519) painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He also filled thousands of notebook pages with drawings of birds in flight, flowing water, plants, the bones and muscles of the body, and ideas for machines, written in mirror writing from right to left. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, lying on his back on high scaffolding, from 1508 to 1512.

Renaissance painters learned to use perspective: things far away are drawn smaller, and straight lines like the edges of a road meet at a point on the horizon. Their paintings looked deep, like windows.

The Renaissance.

Worked example: How old?

Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 and died in 1519. How old was he when he died?
  1. 1,519 − 1,452 = 67.
  2. His birthday was in April and he died in May, so he had already turned 67.

Answer: 67 years old.

Common mistake

Thinking Leonardo was only a painter. He was also an engineer, an inventor and a scientist of nature.

Try it at home

  • Draw like Leonardo: sit by a window or in the yard and draw a plant, a bird or your own hand from life, looking carefully.
  • Draw a road going away from you: make its two edges meet at one point on the horizon. That is perspective.
Going further. The Art & Drawing Ladder teaches perspective and drawing from life. The young readers' path of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet meets the Renaissance in England.

Practice

Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 2 XP.

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