The Renaissance
Narrator : Florence, Italy. The birthplace of an incredible period of history we call the Renaissance. In fact, everywhere you look in Italy, you can find reminders of the Renaissance and its impact on the modern world.
By the late 1300s, Italy was enjoying a time of health and wealth. Nobody really worried about war and survival. They began to be interested in the future and paid more attention to the arts. By 1434, powerful families, like the Medici family, ruled Italian cities.
Italy grew in wealth and fame, and soon became the center of art, literature, and culture in Europe.
In the past, the work of great scholars and artists mainly dealt with ideas about God. But during the Renaissance, many people became interested in the art of the ancient Greeks and Romans. A new, original, way of thinking was born, focused on humans themselves.
In this time, Italian artists created extraordinary art that showed the beauty of man and nature, and the challenges of the human experience. One of these artists, Michelangelo, completed the lovely statue of David, and covered the Vatican's Sistine chapel with amazing stories and designs.
Then there was Leonardo da Vinci---artist, scientist,and inventor. To make his art feel more real, Leonardo studies the human body carefully. The faces he drew were both life-like and mysterious.
By the 1500s, Italy had become a model for the rest of Europe and other countries became interested in building knowledge as well. For example, all over Europe, So, they looked at science and reason for answers.
For example, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to say that the Earth invented the thermometer, was the first to use a telescope to look up at the skies, and saw that Copernicus's ideas were right.
It is great minds like Copernicus and Galileo that began the scientific revolution and a thirst for knowledge that has continued until our modern times.