The Renaissance

I love the Renaissance, but sadly I will not have time to tell all my students about it in a four hour lecture. A four hour lecture is really the only way to go. You can't do it in fifteen minutes. It's the Renaissance!

But I'm going to have to try for the sake of our art project. Which I'm still sort of figuring out. I think it's going to look something like this;

I think.

The Renaissance was a cultural movement during the 1500s that touched upon philosophy, politics, science, religion, literature, and art. All of these saw a rebirth, a rethinking, a re-seeing in the way people dealt with them. The common denominator with all these new ways of seeing was the individual. 

Before the Renaissance, Europe worked under the Feudal System. That is basically the modern day Caste System in India. You are born in a group,. You stay in that group. Your name is not important. Your group is important. You cannot get into another group. You stay in the group you are. That is important. 

Labels suck. No one wants a label. 

The Renaissance gave rise to the individual. The individual was not more important than the background and the group. The individual could now change the world all on his own. In short, this strand of humanism gave rise to each of the revivals the Renaissance was responsible for. 

So, because I can't talk forever, (which is a tragedy) because I can't do that, I must sum up all of of my four hour lecture in fifteen minutes so everyone has enough time. What better way then to do it how the Renissance taught us. With an individual.

Meet Leonardo Da Vinci

The Renaisssance Man. 

Leonardo Da Vinci sums up pretty much everything the Renaissance is about. Da Vinci is the embodiment of the Renaissance. I can teach everything for him. 

Wikipedia, the most accurate source on the internet, says Leonardo Da Vinci was 'an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist,mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.'

I think I can do it. I think we can all get it. I might even stick up my manifesto of the Renaissance on here anyways, so everyone can see it. We shall see...