renaissance part 2

Painters used perspective - using shadow and depth to create the illusion of three dimensions  

They sometimes painted Frescoes...

• a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid,  wet lime plaster
• the pigment merges with the plaster, so the painting becomes an integral part of the wall (or ceiling!)
• This is a detail from Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel
  • Writers wrote in the vernacular - their native language
  • Previously, most scholarly (“important”) writing was in Latin or Greek
  • Now, literature was more accessible to the masses
  • They wrote to express their own thoughts and feelings
  • A few examples:
  • Shakespeare (English playwright and poet) wrote in English
  • Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy) wrote about Hell in Italian
  • Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in Italian
  • the theme of Machiavelli’s The Prince was that the aims of princes—such as glory and survival—can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends
    The ideas and attitudes about the Renaissance moved from Italy northward
    Up north, the classical (Greek and Roman) learning and the humanistic approach was combined with religious ideas
    Learning spread rapidly, mostly due to one major invention...