The Renaissance
Italian scholars and artists reach past a thousand years to antiquity, and change what a person is.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 100 years
- Known to
- ± 30 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
From the fourteenth century, humanists recover, edit and imitate classical texts, and artists rediscover linear perspective, anatomy and contrapposto. Brunelleschi's dome in Florence, finished in 1436 without centring, is a technical feat nobody could explain. Alberti, Leonardo and Michelangelo work across art, engineering and anatomy without regarding these as separate. The period's lasting shift is an emphasis on human capability and this-worldly achievement.