page_title: Italophilia
section_title: The Renaissance
hierarchical_section_title: Italophilia / The Renaissance
caption_attribution_description: English: Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Français&#160;: La Pietà de Michel-Ange située dans la Basilique Saint-Pierre, au Vatican.
context_page_description: Italophilia is the admiration, appreciation or emulation of Italy, its people, ideals, civilization and culture. Its opposite is Italophobia.
  The extent to which Italian civilization has shaped Western civilization and, by extension, the civilization of the whole world, is widely recognized and acknowledged. Appreciation of the legacy of Italic ideals, civilization and culture has existed for many centuries, into the present day.
context_section_description: The Italian Renaissance was to a large extent an expression of humanism, that led to one of the most productive and significant periods in human history in the arts, literature, medicine and science. Greeks fleeing the Turkish invasion of the Byzantine Empire flocked to Italy, and helped spur the Renaissance and interest in ancient Greek texts. The Italian Renaissance also transformed art and humanism across Europe, and set the stage for the Enlightenment.
  In the words of historian Will Durant (in The Story of Civilization: The Renaissance):
  From 1500 to 1600 all Western Europe acknowledged her as the mother and nurse of the new civilization of science and art and the humanities ... So the sixteenth century, when the Renaissance declined in Italy, was an age of exuberant germination in France, England, Germany, Flanders, and Spain.
  Giotto, born in 1267, is recognized as the first great artistic genius of the Italian Renaissance. His ability to portray human emotions distinguished him from the artists of the Middle Ages, and he established a style of painting that would be widely emulated in Italy and, later, elsewhere in Europe.  Italian Renaissance painters and sculptors, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, and scores of others of the first rank, were greatly admired and acclaimed, and had a widespread influence on artistic concepts and esthetic standards throughout Europe.
  Italian artists, beginning with Giotto, mastered the use of perspective and chiaroscuro (light and shadow), which had a widespread influence on Western art.  Brunelleschi, an architect, was the first to explain perspective in terms of a well-defined set of geometric rules.  Some science historians credit the mastery of chiaroscuro, together with the discovery of the rules of perspective, as of fundamental importance in the development of modern science.
  Aldus Manutius (Aldo Manuzio) (1449 – 1515) was one of the foremost intellectuals and humanists of the Renaissance, but is most renowned as an early entrepreneur and innovator in the new printing media.  In over 20 years in which his Aldine Press (established 1494) was in operation, he published many classic works from antiquity.  He was the first to publish pocket-size volumes, achieving this by using standardized typefaces.  He was the innovator of the first italic type, along with other typefaces and typographical characters.
  Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452 in Vinci,  was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any of his contemporaries, epitomized the creative energy of the Renaissance. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time, and his Mona Lisa is regarded by many to be the most famous painting in the world.  His anatomical drawings have never been surpassed in detail and accuracy, and are still in use today.
  Michelangelo was born in Florence in 1475 and, like Leonardo, was a true Renaissance man.  He was a sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.  He was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime and, since then, one of the greatest artists of all time. His two best-known sculptures, the Pietà and David, are famous throughout the world. Michelangelo also created two of the most famous and influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis covering the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Chapel.
  Renaissance architecture of the 15th and 16th centuries was a revival of elements of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. It first developed in Florence, with Brunelleschi, Alberti and Palladio being among its innovators, and soon spread to other Italian cities, and later to France, Germany, England, Russia and other parts of Europe.  The Renaissance style placed emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts as exemplified in the architecture of
caption: Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica
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