Main Idea: In the 1400s, northern Europeans began to adapt
the ideas of Renaissance.
A.
Background
1.
Monarch’s sponsor the arts: England, France
2.
Italian ideas mingle with northern European traditions
3.
development of distinctive features
B.
Art
1.
Flanders—artistic center of northern Europe
2.
Jan van Eyck: realistic details in individuals &
worldly pleasures
a
Used oils
3.
Pieter Bruegel: realistic details in everyday peasant life
a
Peasant Wedding (1568)
4.
Albrecht Dürer: realism in painting, woodcuts &
engravings
a
Adoration of the Trinity
b
Also wrote books on geometry & artistic theory
5.
Hans Holbein: portraits
C.
Writers
1.
Christian humanists: adopt Renaissance ideas with religious
slant: express social & religious concerns
a
Desiderius Erasmus: The Praise of Folly (1509)
b
Thomas More: Utopia (1516)
c
François Rabelais: Gargantua & Pantagruel
2.
William Shakespeare: dramatic human nature; considered the
greatest playwright of all times
3.
Elizabethan Age: Renaissance in England; named for Queen
Elizabeth I
1.
Adaptation of Chinese technology—block printing
2.
Johann Gutenberg (Germany) reinvented movable type 1440
a
printing press: machine that presses paper against a tray
full of inked movable type
b
Gutenberg Bible (1455) new ideas spread quickly & cheaply