Claim: The Renaissance began in the 14th century.

The Renaissance -LRB- -LSB- rᵻˈneɪsəns -RSB- , -LSB- rɛnəˈsɑːns -RSB- -RRB- was a period in European history , from the 14th to the 17th century , regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history . It started as a cultural movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe , marking the beginning of the Early Modern Age .   The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its own invented version of humanism , derived from the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy , such as that of Protagoras , who said that `` Man is the measure of all things . '' This new thinking became manifest in art , architecture , politics , science and literature . Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete . Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century , the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe .   As a cultural movement , the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures , beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources , which contemporaries credited to Petrarch ; the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting ; and gradual but widespread educational reform . In politics , the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy , and in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning . Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits , as well as social and political upheaval , it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo , who inspired the term `` Renaissance man '' .   The Renaissance began in Florence , in the 14th century . Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics , focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time : its political structure ; the patronage of its dominant family , the Medici ; and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks . Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice , Genoa , Milan , Bologna , and finally Rome during the Renaissance Papacy .   The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography , and , in line with general scepticism of discrete periodizations , there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the `` Renaissance '' and individual culture heroes as `` Renaissance men '' , questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation . The art historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the concept of `` Renaissance '' :   It is perhaps no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has been most vigorously questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of civilization -- historians of economic and social developments , political and religious situations , and , most particularly , natural science -- but only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly ever by historians of Art .   Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural `` advance '' from the Middle Ages , instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity , while social and economic historians , especially of the longue durée , have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras , which are linked , as Panofsky observed , `` by a thousand ties '' .   The word Renaissance , literally meaning `` Rebirth '' in French , first appeared in English in the 1830s . The word also occurs in Jules Michelet 's 1855 work , Histoire de France . The word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements , such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century .