I’ve been studying the Renaissance and I thought it would be nice if I could share a little bit about it. The Renaissance started in Northern Italy in the mid 1400’s. It represented a new era in history. The art, philosophy and exploration was much different in the Renaissance from the Middle Ages.
The Art changed a lot from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages, art was focused on religious scenes, but during the Renaissance it shifted to scenes of every day life. Painting in the Renaissance used more colors and shading to make it look more three dimensional. Music moved from unison to having more harmony. I’ll bet it felt really amazing to hear harmony for the first time after the Middle Ages had only one pitch at a time. Architecture in the Middle Ages was intimidating and symmetrical, but in the Renaissance it didn’t have to be symmetrical and it was more inviting. The Renaissance time changed art forever.
Philosophy in the Renaissance was quite different as well. In the Renaissance, people stopped thinking about religion so much and some people called themselves Humanists. Humanists are people who study the problems facing mankind. In this time people focused more on making their current daily life like enjoyable than on studying religion and focusing on getting to heaven. They admired the ancient Greeks and Romans so they would copy their politics and loved their literature. The Renaissance way of philosophy inspires philosophers today to think the Renaissance way.
Exploration was very big in the Renaissance. Explorers only went by decorative ships with sails. People sent explorers farther away because they were realizing that they weren’t the only people on earth. It benefitted a king or queen to send an explorer out because if they found some place new, then they got to claim it and you would rule more land. It was dangerous to be an explorer because if you ran out of things and you were too far away to go back you would just die! On Magellan’s expedition almost 300 people went out on and only 18 people got back home. Even though it was dangerous, I think that being an explorer is cool because I like things that are dangerous.
Now you know that the Renaissance art, philosophy, and exploration had changed a lot from the Middle Ages. Their daily life was much better because in the Middle Ages everything was rigid, but in the Renaissance everything was more free. Every corner that you went to during the renaissance had something exciting. Life was beautiful.
