Art, printing and new ideas of the person

Realism in art. Artists were inspired by the remains of ancient Roman art and tried to make their work as true to life as possible:

• The sculptor Donatello (1386 to 1466) broke new ground with lifelike statues.
• Artists were helped by science. Andreas Vesalius (1514 to 1564), a professor of medicine at Padua, was the first to dissect the human body; studying anatomy let artists show bones and muscles accurately.
• Painters used geometry to show perspective (depth on a flat surface), studied how light falls, and used oil paints for richer colour.
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519) was interested in botany, anatomy, mathematics and art; he painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, dreamed of a flying machine, and signed himself 'Leonardo da Vinci, disciple of experiment'. Albrecht Durer of Germany drew with the same precision.
• This combination of anatomy, geometry, physics and a strong sense of beauty is called realism.

Architecture. In the fifteenth century, Rome revived after the popes, now settled there again, encouraged study of its past. Archaeologists excavated the ruins of ancient Rome, inspiring a 'classical' style based on Roman buildings. Popes and rich merchants employed architects who were often also painters and sculptors:

• Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 to 1564) painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, carved the statue called The Pieta, and designed the dome of St Peter's Church in Rome.
• Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 to 1446) designed the great Duomo of Florence.
• For the first time, artists became known by name, as individuals, not just as anonymous craftsmen.

Printing. Paintings and buildings could be seen only where they stood; books could travel. Europeans had learnt printing technology from the Chinese, through contacts at Mongol courts (they also learnt about the magnetic compass and gunpowder this way).

• The German Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanical printing press, and in 1455 produced 150 copies of the Bible, in the time it once took a scribe to copy a single book.
• By the end of the fifteenth century, many classical texts, mostly in Latin, had been printed in Italy, and printed books spread humanist ideas across the Alps to the rest of Europe.

New ideas of the person. Humanist culture loosened the Church's hold on people's minds:

• Francesco Barbaro argued, against the Church's view, that acquiring wealth was a virtue.
• Lorenzo Valla, in On Pleasure, defended the enjoyment of pleasure against Christian disapproval of it.
• Humanists stressed good manners: how to speak politely, dress well and behave in society.
• Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince (1513), argued that people act mainly out of self-interest, a hard-headed view of human nature.

Women's lives. The new ideals of citizenship left women out. In rich families, men made the decisions, sons were educated for business and public life, and daughters' dowries were invested in family businesses; women who could not be given a dowry were sometimes sent to convents. In merchant families, though, wives often helped run the business and managed it when husbands were away. A few women stood out: Cassandra Fedele of Venice, a scholar of Greek and Latin, argued that women should be educated; Isabella d'Este, the Marchesa of Mantua, ruled the state while her husband was away and made her court a centre of learning.