Historian Answers Renaissance Questions | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm historian Alex viaka let's answer your questions from the internet this is Renaissance support a question from the US historian subredit seriously though what actually is the Renaissance the European Renaissance is a period in history when Scholars and artists rediscovered culture of classical Antiquity of ancient Greece and Rome and they created art that was inspired by the Pagan past and while the Renaissance began in Italy it soon spread all over Europe This was also a period however of political instability Italy itself was fragmented and so the Renaissance is also a period of warfare and great Violence new technologies such as artillery were transforming the battlefield and new ideas such as the ideas of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation were fragmenting Europe and causing new forms of division and conflict from the history subreddit we have what event marks the beginning of the Renaissance great question for this one I'm going to need my trusty timeline because the Renaissance is a cultural and intellectual movement it is hard to pinpoint a single date on which it started in 1345 the poet franisco PKA petrarch goes to the Verona Cathedral library and discovers a forgotten manuscript of Cicero the ancient orator and this starts the race to recover other manuscripts of classical Antiquity in 145 53 Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Empire and a new era begins in the Middle East it's also when we have the development of movable type and of the printing press in 1492 Columbus makes his first journey to the Americas and in 1498 the Portuguese explorer vasod deama arrives in India and in 1517 Martin Luther makes his protest against the Catholic church in his 95 thesis which set off the Protestant Reformation in 1599 the Globe Theater in London is built where Shakespeare staged many of his most important plays when we periodize history we usually say that with the end of the 16th century the Renaissance Era ends and the Baroque Period Begins by the time we get to the beginning of the 30 Years War in 1618 which is a conflict that involves all of Europe we're definitely not in the Renaissance anymore at G graceful says why is the Mona Lisa so popular I literally don't give a she's ugly first of all rude to think of the Mona Lisa as the equivalent of a Renaissance pinup is the wrong way of approaching this painting Leonardo's portrait of this wife of a Florentine silk Merchant is one he worked on for much of his life the djondo family who had commissioned it never actually received the painting which was found in his Atelier in France the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in history so why is that I'm going to give you two reasons one has to do with Leonardo technique which is known as fumat he layered glaze over glaze over glaze so that all of the different colors blend into each other so that there's no trace of the brush work of course this painting is completed after he's done his studies of anatomy so he understands how the musculature of the lower face works when he gives her that mysterious hot smile it's deliberate Leonardo has his sitter almost completely still she's immobile and yet she's bursting with life all we want to know is what she's thinking and that is the power of Leonardo's portraiture that he can convey so much interiority with so little motion now if you go to the lou you might be disappointed that you won't get a close encounter with Mona Lisa because she is so popular if you're ever in Washington DC you can have an encounter with the first woman that Leonardo portrayed Geneva de Beni and you can have her probably all to yourself genevra Dei called herself a mountain tiger she was the original Ice Queen as you can tell by looking at this painting and getting to see it up close is one of the pleasures of the National Gallery you can see Leonardo's brush work for example the beautiful way in which the Pearl hovers over her chest as it buttons together her very fine blouse the Nintendo Creator asks what were common people's diets like in Renaissance Era Europe their diets were pretty terrible the diet of an ordinary person would really have been based around a staple crop in Europe it was mostly wheat that would give them the calories they needed to get through the day and this they would have eaten in the form of bread or perhaps GRL which is a kind of porridge made with old bread so not very exciting not very delicious even the rich people were not eating many of the things that we consider characteristic of European Cuisine for example the tomato is one of the many products that came from the Americas and that was not available in Renaissance Europe so what even is Italian food without the Tomato likewise Peppers corn squashes avocados also pineapples and uh most depressingly perhaps cacao so no chocolate in Renaissance Europe in addition to this something that is essential to many of us coffee was not yet known in Europe so all of the achievements of the Renaissance they were all achieved without caffeine eventually however these Goods start to trickle in and they start to decorate the tables of by the end of the 16th century of Elite households and in 17th century art we see many beautiful Still Life paintings that depict all of these rich and wonderful agricultural products that are coming into Europe from all over the world at Foster Hunter art asks what hidden message does Leonardo DaVinci is the Last Supper haed The Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci is a fresco that is found in Milan on a wall of the dining hall of the Dominican Convent of Santa Maria de gra many people have read read the D Vinci Code and have developed conspiracy theories about this painting specifically they think that the Apostle John the youngest Apostle who's seated to the right of Jesus Christ is actually a secret depiction of the Mary Magdalene this is nonsense the fact that JN looks slightly androgynous is actually entirely characteristic of Leonardo's art Leonardo painted androgynous or we might say gender fluid young man throughout his entire career there's no coded message there but there's a lot to love about this painting for one the use of linear perspective the ability to make a flat surface seem like it has spatial depth and this is something that was not practiced in medieval art but he makes very elegant use of it here by centering all of the spatial lines in the painting on the face of Jesus Christ because this was painted on a large wall and Leonardo had to keep track of the design he actually used a nail in the center of the face of Jesus Christ and there's still a trace of it he chooses a specific and very dramatic moment to depict which is the moment immediately after Christ has said one of you will betray me and what we see is the extraordinary psychological shock that ripples through the group of the Apostles as they process this information all of their different responses expressed with their hand gestures except of course for Judas who is leaning forward knowingly the movements of the body can Cony the movements of the Soul OG SSX asks if social media existed in different historical eras which period would have the spiciest posts my money is on the Renaissance the Renaissance is an age of rivalry first and foremost between different princes between the courtiers who are competing for their favor at court it's also an age of rivalry in the Arts Leonardo D Vinci and Michelangelo famously did not get along when they were commissioned to paint two different walls in the same room in the Center of Florence so you can imagine how that went the medich are a family of merchants who become wealthy Bankers they're Bankers to the pope they sponsor a lot of artists and Lorenzo de Michi Lorenzo the magnificent in particular is famous for living like a Renaissance Prince one of the the artists who worked for Lorenzo for example was Sandro boticelli who's famous for the birth of Venus at Zer says can you all art people explain to me why of all the great Sandra Bellis it's the birth the Venus that seems to grasp Pop Culture by the neck weird well it's true that there are many great paintings by Sandra belli but I think there's good reason that the birth of Venus is one of the most famous it is quite a sexy painting so most of belli's earlier paintings are religious scenes Virgin Mary's and other Saints so this turn to Pagan subjects really marks a change in the history of art Venus is the ancient Pagan Roman goddess of love and she's emerging according to myth out of the waters fully formed and being welcomed by a gentle breeze in Renaissance Florence there were sometimes debates about how much nudity was appropriate to be displayed in public places so a painting like this would definitely have been for the inner rooms of a palace where only a select number of people would have been able to view it at H lanella Tanda says just realized that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were named after a Ian Renaissance artists that's right Michelangelo Donatello rapael and Leonardo Donatello is slightly earlier than the others and was a sculptor Michelangelo is both a sculptor and the painter of the cistin chapel Raphael is an Exquisite painter who's a contemporary of mikelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci of course everyone knows as a painter a draftsman an engineer aristocra from Reddit asks is it true that during the Renaissance some women used belladon in their eyes for a dilated attractive effect belladon is a highly toxic plant that was used in the Renaissance not so much to dilate the pupils as to make the complexion paler women in the Renaissance were obsessed with having pale skin and they used a variety of means to make their skin more fair some of these were highly toxic including a lead Mercury subl and arsenic they also bleach their hair because of the importance of Beauty in a patriarchal world for many women their marriage prospects were one of the most important determinants of their lives when we laugh at them for these efforts we shouldn't assume that they were always unaware of the side effects of the products that they use and there are indeed some examples of women poisoning their husbands with their Cosmetics showing that they were extremely able both to understand that these were toxic chemicals and to put them to lethal use next question at yab boy dlg says more important to mankind you johanes Gutenberg or Steve Gutenberg no shade to Steve Gutenberg but I'm going to go with Johannes here Johannes Gutenberg is associated with one of the most important technological breakthroughs in Renaissance Europe the printing press here is a smallscale model of Gutenberg Press Printing had been known in China for centuries but it was block printing it wasn't printing with movable type so the key breakthrough here is having different characters for each lad made out of lead that can be recombined and this makes it much more economical to produce many many pages of text in a short time and of course the abundance of paper which again is a Chinese technology that becomes increasingly common in Europe paper is made by pulping old rags it's made of Underpants if you will and it's much cheaper than the animal HIDs on which people wrote earlier in the Middle Ages the Press itself is modeled on a wine press this is where we would put the piece of paper fasten it so that it doesn't move here we would screw together all of our type so that it stays tight then we would place it and we would ink it using ink balls it would be covered with the viscous ink and then rolled here under the press and then the strongest man in the print shop would screw it down and make an impression of a page and this process can be repeated again and again so that you can make many impressions of a single page the very first book to be made with this new combination of Technologies is gutenberg's Bible it imitates a medieval manuscript book in every possible way including that they've had someone by hand decorate the initial letters in the 50 years from the invention of the printing press some 6 million books were produced in Europe in about 40,000 editions which is probably more books than had been produced in Europe in the preceding Millennium one of the many effects of the printing press can be seen in the Protestant Reformation which starting with Luther's thesis of 1517 relied on the ability of reformers to print out their ideas and to distribute them quickly it almost became a form of Renaissance social media without the existence of print it's hard to imagine that the new ideas of the Reformation would have traveled as widely or reached as many people as they did at Wonderboy genius asks wait was MLK named after Martin Luther actually yes Martin Luther King Jr's father traveled to Germany as a Baptist pastor and was so inspired by what he learned about Martin Luther that he changed his own name and he changed his 5-year-old son's name as well and it's not difficult to see why a Baptist preacher of the 20th century might have been inspired by the figure of the 16th century augustinian frier that stood up to the Roman Catholic Church Luther's Reformation came from a very deep spiritual Insight which is that works that is good deeds charitable Deeds are not what leads to Salvation it's faith that leads to Salvation and that undermines the whole edifice of pilgrimage and of indulgences and all of these ways in which late medieval Christianity was telling people that they could get to heaven Luther's initial intention was to change the church from within not to break from it over the course of the three years after he first published his criticisms in 1517 he realized that Schism was inevitable and this great uh division between Catholics and as they were called by their critics Protestants led to Wars of Rel religion that lasted almost 150 years at Vin Brown asks what's with the sea monsters on Old Maps if you've ever looked at a Renaissance map such as this one you'll have noticed figures of Fantastical sea monsters the first thing to consider is that these Maps were not made for Navigators these are maps for people who like to imagine distant places so part of the function of the sea monsters is to make these Maps beautiful the sea monsters also tell us about ideas people had the Monstrous was a category of thought where people dumped things that they couldn't otherwise explain this is a map of the Caribbean and of coastal South America the people of the Americas were of extreme interest to Europeans the tupinamba people of Brazil were depicted here wearing feathers and engaging in an act of cannibalism because Europeans heard that cannibalism was practiced in Brazil and this became one of their most enduring obsessions even in relative absence of evidence of this practice at JT talk says OMG the cistin chapel is unbelievable a human did that no way way many individuals collaborated together to make this Splendid place of worship in St Peter's in Rome of course the most famous is Michelangelo who painted the ceiling and the back wall Michelangelo was a sculptor and he was initially skeptical when approached by Pope Julius II one of the great Renaissance popes to paint the ceiling wasn't sure he wanted to invest that much time into this endeavor he was famous in his time for his sculpture including the David facing Goliath depicted as a handsome Youth and that you can still visit in Florence eventually Michelangelo was persuaded and he painted a ceiling with scenes from Genesis that is still one of the most astonishing ceiling paintings that you can see anywhere and that immediately sent out ripples through Renaissance Rome as other artists came to admire this work the most famous section of the painting is at center it's God creating Adam Michelangelo suffered a lot to make this ceiling he was up on a scaffolding it used to be thought that he lay on his back but we actually have a doodle that Michelangelo did in the margin of a letter to a friend in which he shows himself standing upright painting several decades later in a very different political climate he was brought back by a different Pope to paint the back wall that's when he created the last judgment which is an extraordinary scene filled with hundreds of bodies one detail that's worth noticing in the last judgment is St Bartholomew holding his own flayed skin because that skin is thought to be a self-portrait of Michelangelo jescar from Reddit asks in a Renaissance eara world what resource would be really important in trading and worth fighting for we might think of gold or Ivory but the one that maybe is most important to consider is spices cinnamon from Sri Lanka ER from the Malibar Coast the south coast of India cloves and Nutmeg from The Spice Islands in Southeast Asia these were things that could not be produced in Europe and that had to be imported at Great expense they were transported across the Indian Ocean by Muslim merchants when in the 15th century the Portuguese start sailing along the coast of Africa and eventually reach India by 1498 one of the main reasons for their journey is to disrupt the spice trade to cut out the middleman the Muslim middlemen and to make themselves masters of this trade which indeed they managed to do and which leads to a period of Portuguese domination of the high seas and of global trade that connects Europe all the way to Japan in order to be able to do this the Portuguese had to make breakthroughs in Open Sea navigation Vasco deama sailed out into the open ocean in order to be brought back by the currents and that is also how the Europeans first ended up in Brazil when they sailed out a little too far off the coast of Africa this is the context for Columbus's Voyage in 1492 and his subsequent ones and of course it begins a new era of colonialism at silent asks what is inside Leonardo Davinci's notebook DaVinci's notebooks are to my mind as much of a masterpiece as his paintings Leonardo used his notebooks to put down things that he observed Leonardo participated in dissections where dead bodies were cut up this allowed him to study all of the organs of the human body including as you see here a uterus with a dead fetus inside it Leonardo believed that the human body was a microcosm of the universe and nowhere is this idea better expressed than in his famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man inspired by a passage in the Roman architect vitruvius's book what vitrus says is that the ideal human body can fit both in the perimeter of a circle and of a square Cent entered at its Naval because the Renaissance was a time of warfare Leonardo spent a lot of time imagining war machines this is a machine surrounded by sides that it can operate as it moves that will slice down anyone who comes near he designed tanks and Siege weapons and all kinds of other Machinery most of which was never realized and in fact when Leonardo did get a close-up look at Warfare the real thing he thought it was terrible Leonardo was also interested in the flight of birds and he applied his insights to trying to devise a flying machine for human beings mostly based on flapping mechanisms later in life he designed some gliders as well and here too most of these machines were never realized we have to think about them less as inventions and more as thought experiments ways of trying to penetrate how aerodynamics work Leonardo's notebooks are written in a very peculiar way from right to left in something that we call mirror script now people have thought this was a c that Leonardo was trying to conceal what he was writing it has a simpler explanation Leonardo was left-handed and if he had written from left to right the back of his hand would have smudged the ink on every line that he wrote so he solved the problem by simply writing in the other direction here's a question from quora was Leonardo DaVinci Wealthy by the standards of the day Leonardo was born the legitimate son of a small town notary so no he was not born wealthy and as a child he was Apprentice to a painters Workshop in Florence where he had to learn his craft a great way for a scholar or an artist to make a living in the Renaissance was to receive the patronage of a prince Leonardo eventually moves to Milan and seeks the patronage of the de facto ruler of Milan and he writes a letter which we still have which reads like a cover letter of a resume today in which he lists all the things he can do and nine out of 10 of the main points pertain to military engineering because remember the Renaissance is a time of warfare and Leonardo is saying I can make astonishing machines for example for Siege Warfare that will help you and make you more powerful and then after he's made this long list at the very end he sort of casually adds oh and by the way I can paint as well as anyone else to at Live to Tell X says does anyone know why Tupac Keep referencing makavelli in his music tupek Shakur is just one of many admirers of Nicolo makavelli the Florentine dip Diplomat historian politician who has become so famous in particular for one short book that he wrote called the prince his main argument is that the ruler has to be willing to be beastial to do immoral things in order to hold on to power in fact even today the adjective makavelian indicates someone who will go to any length in order to achieve their goals melli in fact was a more careful thinker than that he was not saying that we all get a free pass in immoral Behavior he was concerned with the fragility of politics in Italy during this time and he was trying to offer a solution not just for the prince himself but for how stability could be maintained at B4 we kiss says wait did makavelli and Leonardo DaVinci really team up # super team yes this is the Renaissance equivalent of a superhero crossover makavelli and Leonardo were in Florence at the same time in the early 1500s and both of them were serving the city government in different capacities they collaborated on a project to reroute the river Arno which flows from Florence towards the Mediterranean Sea through the port city of Pisa now Pisa had been under Florentine rule but it had rebelled and so to punish Pisa Leonardo mavelli thought it might be possible to do a gigantic project of Hydraulic Engineering and reroute the river in the end the project proved beyond the capacities of the florentines and was abandoned here's a question from the renfair subreddit quick I need an outfit for the ren fair tomorrow if you want to go to the Renaissance Fair and be historically accurate here are some of the things to keep in mind first you need to choose a fabric for your clothing that was available in the Renaissance cotton uh was not widely available in Europe until centuries later wool in particular is what makes the fortunes of a place like England which exports its wool and a Florence which processes the wool and turns it into fine and expensive textiles the wealthy person would wear fine materials wool shot through with Silver Thread for example or fine velvets and embroideries by contrast ordinary people might save money not so much on the Fabrics themselves but on the dyes that they use red for example can be obtained from matter this is a a cheaper but dollar red whereas rich people will use kermas which creates a brilliant Crimson so the Robes of the Holy Roman Emperor which you can still see in Vienna have a brilliant crimson and the same is true of blue which can be produced with WOD which is a cheaper die or the imported Indigo which makes a very Brilliant Blue in the Renaissance people Express their social identity through what they wore so a frier looked different from a duchess who in turn looked different from a merchant there was a lot of anxiety about the idea that if you changed clothes you might confuse people about who you were so people passed sumary laws trying to regulate clothing the other reason for sumy laws was to try to T down on luxury and to prevent especially women from overdoing it as you may guess these sump laws were ineffective people found ways around the regulations to express their status to express their wealth to express their love of color and ornament octava 1 says Leonardo DaVinci wasn't gay people said he was as a a joke Leonardo sexuality is something that people have speculated about for centuries Leonardo surrounded himself with attractive young man and he was himself a very pleasing attractive elegant person it is said that he walked the streets of Florence in rose pink Leonardo never married and when he died he left his property to some of these friends these young men all of the evidence suggests that they these relationships were also uh intimate ones and this is something that was not unconventional in Lawrence at this time especially for an older man to have an intimate relationship with a younger one this something that was frowned upon but it nevertheless it happened quite frequently having said that in this time period there's no concept of homosexuality as we might have today and so it's always very uncomfortable to label somebody from the past with a concept that they wouldn't have used to designate themselves at Viper 2024 asks why is Nicholas kernus considered the father of astronomy he can be considered the father of modern astronomy not of all astronomy cernus theorized that the Sun and not the Earth was at the center of the solar system until that moment into the Renaissance the predominant theory was that the Earth was at the center of the universe surrounded by the sun and the planets on fixed orbits known as fears cernus is model which was published as he was on his deathbed in 1543 contains this diagram which shows the Sun at the center and he he waits until he is very old to publish this nowadays we talk about the cernic revolution but it wasn't a revolution in the 16th century it's only really with the observations of tiob the work of Kepler and of Galileo about 50 60 years after cernus that the heliocentric model of the solar system really erupts on the scene and changes how people think about the universe among the reasons why the heliocentric theory was so shocking is is that it displaces the earth and the humans within it and it's a very humbling experience to be demoted from being in the center of a perfect Universe to being just one planet in an imperfect one the geocentric model lasted for such a long time because it corresponded to the way the world is described in the Bible in the 17th century Galileo famously said that religion teaches you how to go to heaven not how Heaven goes from the as Bulan subreddit what do you think about the fall of Constantinople and why do you think it fell the city of Constantinople falls to the ottoman Army in the year 1453 this fall ends the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and therefore a legacy that goes all the way back to ancient Rome the Byzantine Empire was already weakened had already lost many territories to the Ottoman Empire which is a growing Muslim empire the city itself was conquered by using all of the technology of Siege Warfare including tunnels including Cannon and of course a very large ottoman Army after less than two months the city was overpowered but this wasn't the end of the line for Constantinople it flourished as the capital of the Ottoman Empire known nowadays as istambul the Ottomans saw themselves as the inheritors of Rome as much as the people of Italy did at this time they called themselves roomi that is Romans because they had conquered Rome this is a 17th century pocketbook that you could carry with you to read in idle moments and it is a description of the near East for European readers it focuses especially on the Arab lands but it described also travel to Jerusalem and istambul and it's just one of many examples of Western European curiosity about the Ottoman Empire and the people of Islam at this time from whom they knew they had much to learn all we know art how did brunesci build a dome that defied gravity and defined the Renaissance philippo Brun leki designed the gigantic Dome of the Florentine Cathedral to this day still the largest masonry dome in the world it expresses the ambition of the city which was newly Rich from trade now baliski was given a huge engineering challenge there was a giant octagonal space where the Dome was to be built to prevent the Dome from buckling under its own weight he surrounded it with what you could consider to be the equivalent of barrel Hoops so a series of rings inside between the two structures that hold it together and absorb that pressure second he actually built two domes not one there is an inner Dome and an outer doome and this means it was much lighter and finally one of the big challenges here was how is it going to support itself while it is being built he studied ancient Roman architecture and he noticed that they laid brick in a herring bone pattern and so all of the brick work is inspired by this Roman technique of Herring bone because the Herring bone pattern is much stronger than laying bricks flat the brick work sustained itself and didn't need to be supported till they were finally able to connect the brick work at the top of the Dome test 0314 asks was Renaissance European hygiene really as bad as some say and everyone walked around very unclean and smelly this is a slightly unfair picture of the Renaissance world people cared a lot about beautiful scents they bought expensive perfumes and they sought even exotic Goods that would give them Pleasant Sensations and the reason this was important was because they believed that disease could be transmitted through something called a miasma essentially a bad smell so smell was very important in the Renaissance because it conveyed information it told you is something healthy or unhealthy the wealthy could surround themselves with fragrant Gardens and have a much more fragrant lifestyle here's a question from the OS historian subreddit did people before the age of Modern Dentistry all have bad teeth in the Renaissance people cared about having beautiful teeth about as much as we do today there were no dentists however in the Renaissance if you needed a tooth pull you went to your neighborhood Barber who was also your surgeon the era before modern anesthesia the best surgeon is the fastest surgeon and the best dentist is the one who can pull your aching tooth the fastest and causing you the least amount of pain having said that already in Antiquity people were making dentures and bridges to improve people's smiles and hide the gaps in their teeth so too in the Renaissance the barber surgeon ambz par for example makes a set of Dentures for the French King Charles the9th out of gold and silver at sorry it's Vic says wait was Shakespeare real Shakespeare was a real person and Shakespeare is also the person who wrote the plays we have plenty of evidence both of Shakespeare's existence and no reason to believe that he is not the author of the place when we think of the Renaissance we think first of it but in fact the ideas of the Renaissance quickly spread all over Europe Shakespeare took inspiration from Italy and read about it he even set some of his most famous plays there the Renaissance was not just an Italian phenomenon but a European one it was a moment of cultural creativity of new ideas in all domains of life that changed Urban civilization all over the European continent at that time so those are all the questions for today thank you for watching renissance support

2025-02-26 22:32

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