hlp with 2 west cive assgn due in 16 hours

Lecture 11B: The Italian Renaissance – Art as a political tool

Patrons

So artists were creating all of these beautiful paintings and sculptures, and humanists and political theorists were writing texts based on ancient Greek and Roman thought. But it's common sense that you can only be a successful artist or author if someone buys your work. Even Renaissance artists and writers had to pay their bills. And this is where the Renaissance patron fits in. A patron is a person or a group of people who commission a piece of artwork or a text. To commission something means to pay someone to create something for you.

The people who had the disposable income necessary to commission art and literature at this time were those kings, lords, and of course, the people in charge of the churches. When a patron wanted a painting or a sculpture created, they often had a particular artist in mind who they wanted to do it. For example, in my first lecture for this week, I told you that when Pope Julius II wanted to paint the Sistine Chapel, he called on Michelangelo specifically. And as you can see from the images on your screen- the painting of Pope Julius II on the right was down by Raphael, and he also had Michelangelo sculpt his tomb in Rome. So, Pope Julius was a big patron of artists.

Pope Julius, like much of the rest of the elite commissioned art for multiple reasons. At the most basic level, they wanted something pretty to look at, of course, but there something more important at play here. By commissioning art and literature, kings, lords, and even popes demonstrated their power to others. They demonstrated that they had the wealth necessary to commission art or a piece of literature. Hoping to appear the most powerful of all, the elite of Italy often competed with each other to bring in the best artists and the best intellectuals to their court.

Dr. Carol Symes Video: Key Characteristics of Renaissance Arts and Learning During the Period

I want to show you a brief video by Dr. Symes, who explains this a bit further.

Quiz Question #6

The Formation of the Italian City-States

Let's turn now to look at the actual elite of Italy and dig further into why they wanted to show off their power. So, a couple lectures ago, we talked about the rise of cities. And I explained to you that in the 1100s and 1200s, people began giving nearby lords money in exchange for their rights as citizens of the city. Most lords accepted this exchange, but sometimes lords were not as willing to give up their claim to a nearby city, and the townspeople had to go and take it by force. And they did so by forming communes. And these communes were particularly common in north and central Italy.

In the 1200s there were over 100 of these independent communes in Italy, but over time, they began to come together to form city-states in which the largest city represented the capital of the surrounding area. Even with this idea, we see a desire on the part of people to reach back to the ancients. If you remember back towards the beginning of the semester, we talked about the city-states of Athens and Sparta in Greece. The Italian city-states borrowed this organization for themselves. This organization of city-states was different from the set up in England or France, which were unified kingdoms. And even more different, the city-states of Italy tended to have their own separate cultures and ways of doing things. The map on your screen shows the city-states of Italy in 1494. So the most powerful and wealthiest merchant families living in these Renaissance city-states often took charge and created different forms of government. The leaders of these city-states helped to bring about and expand the Renaissance because they competed to bring in the best artists and intellectuals. From their perspective, if they could turn their city-state into the cultural center of Italy, then this would demonstrate that they were the best leaders in all of Italy and all of Europe.

Quiz Question #7

The City-State of Florence

As you saw, there were quite a few city-states in Italy, but I want to focus my attention on a few specific ones to give you an idea how they differed and how they were connected to patronage and the Renaissance. Let’s start with Florence. Florence was a city-state with a theoretical Republican government. Remember, in a republican government, citizens elect representatives to make choices for them in government. But in 1434, the wealthiest merchant in Florence, Cosimo de Medici, took control of the government. He allowed elections to continue and consequently maintained an image of Florence as a Republican government. But, in reality, the only choices people had in these elections were various members of the Medici family. So in reality, if we think about the governments we discussed so far in this course, the Florence republic was really more of an oligarchy at this point. To counteract this image of tyranny, Cosimo and the other Medicis became big patrons of art and literature. By commissioning lots of artwork and literature, the Medicis shaped an image of themselves as generous and good leaders. Cosimo also commissioned art to justify his family's power in the city. For example, in the private chapel of his palace, Cosimo had artists paint him alongside the three wise men as they traveled to see the newborn Jesus Christ. You can see this picture on the right side of your screen. In doing so, Cosimo portrayed himself as similar to the ancient kings who first recognized the holiness of Christ. The Medicis' reliance on artwork and literature to maintain sole power in a Republican government in turn encouraged the spread of the Renaissance in Italy.

Quiz Question #8

The City-State of Urbino

Whereas Florence had a Republican government, this wasn't the case for all Italian city-states. Some, like the city-state of Urbino, were governed by princes. They were a monarchy. The term prince meant that the ruler of the state possessed a formal title such as Marquise, Duke, or King. So, the prince of a city-state could be of royal lineage, but not necessarily. None of these princes, however, were elected officials. In the mid-1400s, the duke of the city-state of Urbino was Federico da Montifeltro. The state of Urbino wasn't a big money maker for the duke, so he made his money by training the peasants of his state to be good soldiers, and then he hired them out to the highest bidder. In other words, the soldiers of Urbino were mercenaries. The duke’s mercenary army became very famous, and he made a lot of money off of them. He used this money to fund scholars, artists, and to build beautiful buildings for himself and his city-state. He collected Latin manuscripts, which encouraged intellectuals to come to Urbino to study them. The duke’s financing of scholarship and art meant that the state of Urbino was not only known for its military, but also its cultural significance. The Duke of Urbino wanted to have this many pretty things as the Medicis, and this competition contributed to the Renaissance in Italy.

The Papal States

The territory ruled by the Pope was situated in central Italy. And the Pope had maintained control of territory in Italy beginning centuries before when these popes began to think of themselves as the kings of the Roman Catholic Church. But when the popes moved to Avignon in France in the 1300s, they lost authority in the Papal States because they nearly bankrupted them trying to finance their new palace in France. But in the 1400s, the popes fought to retake control of the Papal States. And to demonstrate their power in the territory and throughout Italy, they, too, focused on art and literature. The popes did not want to be outdone by the merchants and lords of Italy. They wanted to show that they had the most beautiful palaces and were able to bring in the best scholars and artists. We’ve already discussed Pope Julius II and his patronage of different artists, including Michelangelo. But he certainly wasn’t the only pope. For the popes, this was about regaining their power in Europe. If they could bring in the best artists and intellectuals and possess the best works, then they were better than the regular leaders and kings. In this sense, competition was a huge contributing element to the cultural explosion of the Renaissance.

Female Political Leaders and Patrons

Now in discussing these different states, whether they had a Republican government or not, I have mentioned the names of quite a few men. But we need to note that even though the men were recognized as the official leaders of their state, the wives of these leaders often played a large role in politics and in the advancement of the Renaissance. Humanists often emphasized traditional gender roles in which men were dedicated to bettering their kingdoms and states, while women where focused on their households and remained subservient to men.

But, as we know, reality doesn’t always follow what people believe should happen. During the Renaissance, young elite women were often married off to older men who, because of their age, had managed to accumulate a lot of wealth and political clout. For example, the image of the left is a portrait of Battista Sforza, who was the second wife of Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, who we just discussed a few minutes ago. She married the Duke at the age of 14. The Duke was 24 years older than her. Similarly, the Bianca Maria Visconti married at the age of 16 to the Duke of Milan, who was also 24 years older than her. As a result, elite women were often widowed at a young age. Furthermore, the leaders of the Italian city-states were often gone for long periods of the year due to their work as merchants or military leaders. All of this gave elite women in Renaissance Italy more independence and opportunities to exercise power as political and cultural leaders. For example, both Battista Sfrorza and Bianca Maria acted as rulers of their city states when their husbands were away.

Similarly, Isabella d'Este was the wife of Francesco Gonzaga. He was the Prince of Mantua, another Italian state. And like the Duke of Urbino, the Prince of Mantua made money by hiring out his trained army, for which he was the commander. While he was away fighting battles, his wife Isabella governed Mantua, and she earned a reputation as an excellent negotiator and diplomat. And like other political leaders, she commissioned lots of art and scholarship. For example, the portrait of Isabella on your screen was done by Leonardo da Vinci.

Quiz Question #9

The Italian Renaissance in Other Parts of Europe

We've been talking primarily about Italy, which is where the Renaissance began. But over time the Renaissance spread to other European nations. European rulers who fought or studied in Italy brought back a love of Renaissance art and literature. Like Italian leaders, they began to compete to bring in the best artists and intellectuals. King Philip II of Spain, for example, was notorious for offering Italian artists lots of money to come live in his Spanish court. In addition, Italian merchants helped to spread interest in Renaissance culture as they traveled throughout Europe. And as the Renaissance spread to other kingdoms, more and more people gained an interest in the ancient Romans and Greeks, in the concept of ideal beauty, and in the ideas of Italian scholars. In turn, this interest motivated a growing demand for books. But up to this point, books were still incredibly expensive because someone writing a book had to write down each and every single word to produce that book. But when the Renaissance hit Germany, this changed.

Johannes Gutenberg and The Printing Press

In the mid-1400s, a man by the name of Johannes Gutenberg began experimenting with movable type. Gutenberg was the son of goldsmith who made coins. As you know, coins, at their most basic level, are metal disks with the same words printed over and over again. So if Gutenberg was used to printing words on coins, it’s not a huge leap to apply the concept of printing words over and over to books. Gutenberg created small metal type that could be moved around. This metal type was lead or cast-iron letter forms and punctuation marks. And he understood that by arranging this metal type into different words, you could then put ink and then transfer all those words onto a piece of paper. You could do this over and over again, producing multiple pages with the same words. Then you could move the type around and create another page of words. In doing so, you could mass produce books without having to write any words by hand. Gutenberg completed his first Bible doing this in 1455. It was the first book produced by movable type in the West. In fact, because Gutenberg was able to print so many Bibles so efficiently, 48 complete or partial copies of his Bible still survive today.

But Gutenberg's printing press may have come to nothing if not for another development, cheap paper. A new technique of creating paper arrived from Asia in the 1400s. Prior to this, the only form of paper was made of animal skins, and as you can imagine, this was pretty expensive. But in the 1400s, mills began to turn cloth rags into pulp, which could then be turned into paper. This way of making paper meant that it was a lot less expensive, and you could make a lot more of it.

So, the combination of Gutenberg's printing press and the development of cheaper, more plentiful paper meant that more books could be produced. They could be produced faster, and they were cheaper. The invention of the printing press and the introduction of this type of paper has an interesting relationship with the Renaissance. It was a product of the Renaissance spreading throughout Europe, but it also further encouraged the Renaissance. The artistic and intellectual experiments of the Renaissance were rapidly exported everywhere. Plans for innovative weapons were printed on the same presses that pumped out humanist writings. News of Columbus’s first voyage and the later conquests of the New World were all spread using the printing press. Printing not only increased the volume and speed of communication, but it also made it more difficult for those in power to censor dissenting opinions. Furthermore, it encouraged an increase in literacy during the Renaissance, and it also helped to standardize national languages. As more books were printed and more people read, the governments began to promote one official approach to spelling and grammar. For example, in England, the government began to promote the “king’s English”, which was a standard of spelling and grammar that authors began to use in their books. Following this, perhaps unsurprisingly, the first dictionary was printed in the early 1600s to demonstrate how words should be spelled and what they meant.

Quiz Question #10

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