HISTORY OF IDEAS: The Renaissance

The Renaissance is a historical period with some important lessons to teach us about how to improve the world today. We need to study it not for its own sake, but for the sake of our collective futures. Please subscribe here: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7
Help us to continue making films by visiting our online shop: http://theschooloflife.com/shop
Brought to you by http://www.theschooloflife.com

Produced in collaboration with a man who is a genius: Signor Mike Booth
http://www.youtube.com/somegreybloke
Thank you So much Mike.

HISTORY

THE RENAISSANCE

The phenomenon known as The Renaissance
is one of the standard stops on any tour

through the history of Western culture.
It encompasses a roughly 300 year period

in Europe. Where architects, poets, and
philosophers reconnected with the style

and ambitions of ancient Greek and Roman
civilization. The reasons for studying

the Renaissance nowadays are often left
a bit unclear. To the high-minded and

respectful, the rationale may seem
utterly obvious; or, to the more impatient

or technologically focused, the exercise
can equally well appear a complete waste

of time. We believe that the main reason
to study history is to rescue certain

good, provocative, and inspiring ideas
that have been lost in the past. In order

to put them to use in relation to the
dilemmas and problems of our own times.

Our tour of the Renaissance, while
seemingly at some old long dead guys

will hence really be about us.

Florence, Italy, 1469. A twenty year old
nobleman from one of the grandest

families of Florence, Lorenzo de Medici,
takes over the family business, The

Medici Bank, that's been going since 1397
and is the most respected financial

institution in Europe with flourishing
branches in Florence, Venice, Rome, and

Geneva. Lorenzo, like his uncles and his
father before him, has a great gift for

business. During his lifetime, the bank
will open new outposts in Basel, Bruges,

Avignon, and Pisa. And lend significant
sums of money to Royal Courts,

aristocrats, and entrepreneurs.

Lorenzo and his family are
typical of the Florentine upper classes

of his age in honoring the business of
making money without any of the

traditional suspicion of trade found in
most Christian societies. But not only

are the Medicis interested in making
money they are also extremely ambitious

about how to spend money. They believe
that the express purpose of what we

would now called philanthropy is to
promote beauty, truth, and wisdom in the

world.

Lorenzo de Medici's grandfather had
started the collection of books that

became known as the Medici library and
Lorenzo now expanded it decisively.

With his researchers scouring Europe's
monasteries, courts, and libraries for

lost or overlooked text from antiquity.
Lorenzo was a patron of many philosophers

including Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano,
and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

Under his guidance these philosophers
undertook pioneering researches

into Greek philosophy. They
absorb the ideas of Epicurus, Zeno, and

Aristotle and tried to harmonize Plato's
theories with Christianity. Lorenzo was

perhaps best known as a patron of art.

His court artists included Verrocchio,
Leonardo, Bottecelli, Ghirlandaio and

Michelangelo. The patronage was extremely
intimate and involved. Michelangelo lived

with Lorenzo in his family for five
years.

Dining at his table and participating in
discussions led by Marsilio Ficino.

Although the Medici were quite rich, by
modern standards their fortune was a

relatively moderate one. Across four
crucial decades from the 1430s to 1470s

it's estimated that the Medici
family spent the equivalent of around

half a billion US dollars on
intellectual, patronage, architecture, and

art works. Which is a huge sum by
comparison with average incomes, but it's

not very substantial by comparison with
the wealth of the richest people today.

The Medici family resources
would be roughly those of

Rosetta Cafferata, whose wealth from the
fisheries business in Peru is around

1.5 billion US dollars. She's at present
the 1200th richest person in the world.

Lorenzo would seem economically
unimpressive next to Giorgio Armani

(8.5 bn) and a non-entity next Bill Gates
(79 bn.) Money was important to what

Lorenzo and his family achieved, no doubt.
So in that respect the world is

amazingly well placed to continue in his
footsteps. There's no shortage of money

to do the sorts of things he did, but
what's holding us back today is a

shortage of vision. For the price of this
yacht, Lorenzo fueled the Renaissance for

thirty years.

The secret to the Medici's impact was that
they didn't see themselves as there

simply to hand over the cash to allow
artists, architects, and scholars to do

whatever they wanted. The Medicis had a
vision, a mission for the arts and

philosophy, and were extremely direct
and didactic in putting it forward;

usefully so. Guided by his philosopher
friend Ficino, Lorenzo thought of art

the kind of education under his
patronage artists were therefore asked

to illustrate key philosophical truths
about, say, the importance of kindness and

compassion. They promoted serenity and
glorified the best qualities of the state

of good leadership the Renaissance would
never be remembered if its leading

members had simply made piles of cash. No
one cares about that for any length of

time. The real source of its glory was
the imagination and intelligence with

which it's great bankers and financiers
set about spending their money.

Monestry of Fulda, Germany, January 1417.
An Italian scholar and humanist,

Poggio Bracciolini, is on a tour of Germany
and Switzerland looking for lost Greek

and Roman manuscripts. He is spending a few
weeks in a Benedictine monastery hunting

around the dusty shelves of its great
library when in a forgotten look he

makes one of the great discoveries of
the whole Renaissance. He comes across

what still remains the only surviving
manuscript of 'Lucretius De rerum natura'

On the Nature of Things which gives us the
most complete account we possess of the

philosophy and world view of the Greek
philosopher Epicurus. Bracciolini and his

circle are astonished. Epicurus has hugely
valuable ideas about the human passions,

happiness, religion, communal life, and
science. This is only the highlight of a

career spent rescuing lost manuscripts.
In time Bracciolini is to go on to

discover key text by Cicero, Quintilian,
and Vitruvius. When he couldn't buy text,

he wasn't averse to a little skullduggery
to get what he wanted. He famously bribed

a monk to obstruct a copy of Livy the
Roman historian from the library of

Hersfeld Abbey in Germany. Bracciolini was
hugely interested in Classical texts but

he was not a scholar as we would
understand the term. That is, someone who

wants to investigate the past for its own
sake and respects the inherent inability

of old books. The Renaissance attitude
to history and philosophy was very

different. Its intellectual leaders took
a relentlessly practical view of things.

They wanted first and foremost to run
their society successfully, to make their

people wise, and to build magnificent
cities. The Epicurean philosophy

Bracciolini dug up, with its emphasis on
friendship, simplicity, and acceptance of

limitations

wasn't exciting to him because it was
old. But because its wisdom was still

needed. He wasn't looking for ancient
ideas so he could fill in missing details

about how the past used to be, perhaps in
order to gain a professorship in a

university. Bracciolini was
urgently searching for help in creating

better ways of thinking for the present.

Central Florence, 1484.
Michelozzo de Bartolomeo, one

of Cosimo de Medici's favorite architects,
completes the family home,

the Palazzo Medici, just near the city's
new cathedral. Michelozzo has studied

Roman antiquities closely, and the
building's tripartite elevation

beautifully expresses the characteristic
Renaissance spirit of rationality, order,

and harmony.

This is a golden age of construction in
Florence. Leon Battista Alberti has done

the facade of the church of Santa Maria
Novella. Brunelleschi has put up the

Ospedale degli Innocenti and the city's
new cathedral dome and many less well

known names competing squares fountains
and thoroughfares. The same is true for

the other great Renaissance cities of
Siena, Venice, Sabino, Vantover and Rome.

City fathers across the Italian peninsula
have fallen in love with a remarkable

new idea. That their cities should be the
focus of an unparalleled attention to

beauty. It's slightly embarrassing to
contrast these efforts with our own mess

A sentimental view says that the
Renaissance city fathers made nice

places because they weren't lucky. They
didn't need to plan for cars, they didn't

have zoning laws, and they happened to
have access to good quality building

materials; like lovely stone you can get
from Corey's outside Florence. However,

successful urbanism is never an accident.
For the Renaissance, it was a

philosophical mission. The Renaissance
built such great cities because of an

idea. That we are to a large extent
shaped by the character of the buildings

around us, making sure that the public
realm conveys dignity and calm is more

than a luxury. It can help to ensure
the sanity, vigor, and happiness of a

whole population. What's more, the
urbanist and architects believed in

rules. They didn't think it was chance
that a city looked good they wrote volumes

codifying what works and what must be
avoided. In their efforts to systematize

and in that careful thinking about what
makes a good street corner pavement or

bench. They put our own efforts at
urbanism to shame

They believed in ideal dimensions
for squares, that a square should be

small enough that a mother can call from
another window to her child playing at

the other side they thought that all
good squares should have large elaborate

fountains in the middle, but that the
surrounding buildings should mostly be

fairly plain; they knew that building
should be around five stories in height;

and that there should be graceful covered
arcades so that citizens could amble in

all kinds of weather. Renaissance leaders
like the Medici were marked by the views

of the ancient Roman historian Sallust,
who had been deeply hostile to a situation

that had developed in the decadent periods
of Rome. Where there had been, in his

words; publice egestas privatim opulenta,
public squalor and private opulence.

Sallust believed, and the Renaissance
leaders hugely embraced, his

idea that in a healthy society the
public's fear itself should be opulent.

That is, beautiful, refined, and
appealing. That way, the richer people in

society will never be tempted to withdraw
and concentrate exclusively on their own

private estates and comforts, and all
citizens will be uplifted by a pleasing

vision of communal life. It's a tribute
to these efforts, but there are still very

few cities on earth

nicer than those created over a few
hundred years on the Italian peninsula.

But it's also testimony to our desperate
lack of ambition and vision that we can

count on one hand the number of cities
constructed since the Renaissance that

are prettier than, say, Florence and
Venice. Ideally, we wouldn't have to be so

impressed by Renaissance cities, we'd be
inspired to rival and equal their

achievements in the architectural idiom
of our own times.

Friari Church, Venice, 1488.

A 58 year old Venetian painter
Giovanni Bellini completes a triptych.

Featuring in the central panel baby
Jesus and his mother. Christian artists

have been painting the scene for many
centuries, but things have only become

this powerful and convincing in the last
hundred or so years.

Hitherto, Mary and her little boy have
looked stiff, often gaunt and wooden.

But with Belinni, Jesus is just like a
real little boy, a kind we might see

looking at sea gulls on the Lido. Down to
his stocky legs, slightly swollen tummy,

and searching eyes. Mary feels equally
alive, vibrant, and deeply attractive and

interesting. We can imagine her
melancholy thoughts

and intuit her kind sympathetic and
dignified nature. If there was some child

care available it might be lovely to
invite around to the gelateria Grom

just a few steps away from the Friari
Church. It's often been remarked how

odd and wondrous it is that so many
geniuses of art came to the fore in such

a short period in one place.

Renaissance Italy gave world civilization:
Donatello, Fra Angelico, Uccelo

a statue of liberty P Leonardo
Michelangelo Raphael Titian and so on

how did it happen how'd you get so much
talent in one go it's arguable that

every age has roughly similar amounts of
latent talent among its artists what

makes certain ages extraordinary one
thinks of the golden age of Athens

Holland nineteenth-century France and
his sixties america is that they know

what to do with the talent they give
artists emission they have a clear sense

of what artists for and they therefore
reward and invest in artist properly

what distinguishes the renaissance is
not there for a freakish preponderance

of artistic skill it's an intensely
clear vision of what card should be for

the Renaissance could be described as a
heroic age of advertising get the focus

was not on selling consumer goods it was
on selling beauty truth and wisdom the

energy we still feel behind that part

arose from a coherent ideological
program the Renaissance wanted to put

painting in the service of ideas and to
make these ideas palpable effective and

life-changing one thing the Renaissance
was constantly advertising his

philosophy philosophers were in the
minds of many then as now rather

abstract and remote figures to the
Renaissance got one of its most talented

artist Rafael to lend them a bit of life
on the walls of the vatican two shows

Aristotle and Plato and others as
belonging to a group of glamorous

fascinating individuals for his part

tuition was employed to confess central
philosophical message about the brevity

of life in his three ages of man
existence is depicted as desperately

fleeting the child as soon as adults and
adults ages and in retrospect it all

seems to have occurred incredibly fast
which makes it essential that we use our

time properly that we forgive one
another for frailties and focus on a

potential while there is still time

time petition and his patrons knew that
most people don't care to think about

how life is art comes in and has a huge
advantage over philosophy should start

with things that everyone in the
Renaissance already liked sexy couples

and cute baby angels the picture is
designed to take you without you even

noticing it's happening into an interest
in philosophy so that you naturally

start to engage with matters of life and
death

the move is a bit like that made by the
best adverts of today that hope to get

you subliminally interested in buying a
chocolate bar or an SUV while charming

you with a beautiful couple or sublime
landscape only in the Renaissance the

philosophical end goal of art was worth
the effort

the Renaissance concept of artist
advertising for the great truths was

underpinned by an ideology worked out
with the philosophy of it she know the

figure who took the reins at amici and
spoke to michelangelo a dinner every day

for many years pacino argued that we are
all creatures who live and love is

attracted first to beauty so whatever we
wish people to love you must first make

beautiful and beauty first encountered
as sexiness so the path to the highest

possible human ideals tends to go down a
complex route first two sacks then to

beauty and then to laugh with such a
theory to hand and its impact on the art

of the Renaissance cannot be
overestimated Pacino was able to use

what we might turn sexiness last glamour
and celebrity to serve the most noble

and high-minded intellectual ambitions
rather than being relegated as they

often are in our own times to selling
handbags or mobile phones never before

or since have so many big ideas

been so beautifully and often sexily
treated by great artists pacino Lorenzo

de Medici with fascinated by the idea of
getting bottecelli to engage our

sexuality in order to excite us about
ideas that they thought were most useful

to humanity that's why there are an
awful lot of very cute people in Portage

rallies work the hugely alluring figures
in his Primavera are for example

thoughtful kind serious and sometimes
rather

had their filled with tenderness towards
human saris and failings and a keen to

remind us of the need to appreciate
cycle of life also highly seductive you

don't have to believe in the virtues to
want to be like them but because you

instinctively want to be like them you
will therefore aspire to be virtuous

this genius move shared by philosophers
likely Chino rich political leaders like

Lorenzo an artist like bottecelli was to
line up a basic desire on the side of

the good so that we become a kind and
sweeter and more intellectually

ambitious not because we've rejected all
the charms of the world which hardly

anyone ever can but with the help of all
the charms of the world instead of

abandoning beauty and sexiness to vanity
and silliness the leaders of the

Renaissance deeply scholarly in earnest
people sees these and use them to their

own ends its this move above all that
helps to give the art of the Renaissance

its mission Dr incoherence and means the
artist still so charming to us today in

our society

the Renaissance has a lot of prestige we
think we're being true to it by going

around its main cities memorizing dates
and taking off key works but this isn't

really what paying tribute to the
Renaissance should meet its not about

looking at their world through our eyes
it's about using their eyes to look at

our world we should be trying to
generate a renaissance in our own

societies with the help of these
geniuses learning lessons from them

about how to spend big money perhaps
aren't in finance wisely how to use the

humanities to improve our lives rather
than to impress a scholarly community

how to devote proper energy to creating
Liverpool beautiful cities and how to

harness the power of art to make the
good things in the world

tractive and desirable if rather than
being just beautiful tourists we learn

to absorb the ambitions of Renaissance
leaders we might come away from a study

of the Renaissance ready as all the
great Renaissance figures would have

wanted us to be to do the thing that
really matters

try to change our world for the better