Renaissance Era – Foundation of Modern Age

Renaissance era became a period of self awareness in the history of mankind. It slowly entered in the life of people at Florence, Italy and gradually spread rest of the Europe. This revolutionary era influenced the intellectual level of medieval people. As a cultural movement it encircled the various elements that affect human lives in some way including humanism, art, science and religion. Let us discuss these aspects one by one which transformed the live of mankind.

Humanism – Some says it a philosophy and for some it is a learning process but the fact is Humanism gave a right direction to intellectuals of revolutionary period. Philosophers of politics like Thomas More revitalize the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers and applied them to the political situation of that era. Some humanist advocated the civic humanism. The author Palmieri wrote about the qualities of ideal citizen, in his book he had wrote about how citizen and ruler can maintain the prosperous public life and conduct morally.

During those days the basic ideology of humanist was to transcend to afterlife with intellectual and physical excellence for that one need to be well educated, sound mind and functionally honorable. To get more innovative ideas on humanism, humanist leaned towards classic learning.

Art – The era of reawakening nurtured the lives of European people, marked as cultural rebirth it gave birth to many jewels in between fourteenth to seventeenth century belonging to the various fields of art. A realistic form of artistry developed in this stage for instance Giotto di Bondone said about a painting as a window into space. The paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael remained matchless; their designed masterpieces are still copied by many modern day artists. The enraptured the beauty of nature in canvasses and unfolded the fundamentals of aesthetics.

However many renaissance artist were remained orthodox as well, if they advocated for the new ideas or new wave in artistry at the same time they also kept some notions and symbols of medieval past.

Science – Invention of printing press and inclination towards classical learning revolutionized the democratic ideas. New learning found a faster way for spreading in form of press. Until the time period when Leonardo da Vinci started making observatory drawings on human anatomy and nature, science and art were always intermingled. This one genius did experiments in field of water flow, medical dissection and aerodynamics. There were others to follow including Christopher Columbus who changed the people’s perception of world-viewing.

Religion – The newly coined notions of humanism and fastest development in the field of science brought magnanimous changes the way people treat religion and church especially in mannerism of seeing relationship between god and a human. Moreover this period had aroused debate over secular and contemporary way of treating religion.

The golden age of self-reliance and awareness brought the medieval people more close to reality, scientific and industrial developments, leading to origination of new fresh era called modern Age. No-a-days people in USA celebrate ren-fairs attired in renaissance festival costumes to celebrate the spirit of ‘period of cultural movement’ which gifted modern people secular and democratic world.