Michelet's Renaissance
The European Renaissance remains one of the most important but misunderstood events in the history of western culture. The term 'Renaissance' - referring to the revolution in cultural and artistic life that took place in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries - was first applied as late as the 19th century, when the French historian Jules Michelet used it in his History of France of 1855.
'For Burckhardt, the Renaissance was a specifically Italian phenomenon...'
The Renaissance '...went from Columbus to Copernicus, from Copernicus to Galileo, from the discovery of the earth to that of the heavens. Man re-found himself', according to Michelet. For him the voyages of Columbus in the 15th century, and the scientific achievements of Copernicus and Galileo in the 16th, defined a decisive shift from the narrow, religious world of the Middle Ages, and anticipated the modern world of science, technology and rationalism.
Michelet's invention of the Renaissance was refined and established by the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, in his book The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). For Burckhardt, the Renaissance was a specifically Italian phenomenon, nurtured in the city-states of the 15th century, where the artistic talents of the likes of Leonardo, Botticelli, Mantegna and Brunelleschi flourished.
Like Michelet, Burckhardt believed that the cultural achievements of the period heralded a 'rebirth' (the French 'renaissance') of the classical Greek and Roman values of literary purity and aesthetic beauty. Both these historians believed that the Renaissance represented a questioning of religious authority, and a new spirit of artistic experimentation and scientific curiosity, which would ultimately give birth to modern, secular man (according to this perspective, there was little space for women in the Renaissance).
Published: 2003-04-03
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