III.4. Humanist Texts

So does the term “Renaissance,” meaning rebirth. The great German historian Jakob Burckhardt emphasized these contrasting terms through his influential essay published in I860, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. The expression “Renaissance man”—referring to someone who possesses a wide variety of talents—owes much to Burckhardt’s inspiration. Burckhardt distinguished “many-sided” individuals, like the Florentine statesman and patron of the arts Lorenzo de’ Medici, from those he regarded as the true prototypes of modern genius, whom he characterized as “all-sided” or “universal.” In his estimation, chief among the latter stood Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72). Noted for his gymnastic feats and prowess in horsemanship as a youth, Alberti learned music without a tutor and mastered painting, sculpture, and ultimately architecture while distinguishing himself in mathematics and physics along the way (see cat. no. 217). A master of Latin composition, he dispensed advice and portents to rulers. “Men can do all things if they will” was his indelible motto; Leonardo da Vinci, his emulator.

The emergence of such “many-sided” and “universal” prodigies issued from deeper and more pervasive shifts in the intellectual, aesthetic, and social dimensions of the cultural revival that swept over Italy, and eventually much of Europe, beginning in the mid-fourteenth century. These shifts included a radical rethinking of individual identity, a new emphasis on civic virtue, critical interest in human and political (as opposed to salvation) history, fresh insight into natural causes (in contrast to divine creation) and, not least, an idealization of classical antiquity as a source of wisdom and knowledge to complement, if not challenge, the Bible.

Infused by a new sense of human possibility, fame, freedom, and destiny, as well as new forms of mercantile organization, Italian city states provided a forum for intense cultural, commercial, and political rivalry. Among the first figures of this new age was Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who exercised great influence in the literary, political, philosophical, and even theological spheres. His Divina Commedia (cat. no. 214) recounted a visionary journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise in a novel interlocking verse form that represented an unprecedented employment of the spoken vernacular language of his native Florence to create a verbal masterpiece of universal significance. By choosing the Roman poet Virgil to be his guide through the otherworldly realms, Dante helped stimulate the reappraisal of classical antiquity, prompting successors to pursue similar acts of recovery and reappropriation in their writings, as, for example, in Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (cat. no. 240).

Petrarch (1304-74) reappropriated the classical wreath of laurel leaves literally by having himself crowned the first poet laureate in Rome in more than a millennium. He tried to outdo Dante in use of the vernacular with his Canzoniere (a collection of 366 poems dedicated to his beloved, Laura, through which he perfected the sonnet form) and his Trionfi, or Triumphs, a lengthy allegorical poem in six moralizing motifs (Love, Chastity, Fame, Death, Time, and Eternity) that reprised Dantes terza rima verse form (cat. no. 215). Still more accomplished and influential were Petrarchs numerous Latin writings, which included collections of letters, dialogues, eclogues, and epic poetry—the latter represented by his Africa, a rewriting of Virgil’s Aeneid (cat. no. 190) Petrarchs great contemporary, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75), likewise straddled the classical and vernacular, the antique and modern worlds. Yet instead of trying to legitimate the latter through the former, he situated himself contentedly in his surroundings and celebrated everyday life and love. His most famous work, the Decameron, presented a fictional account of how ten young Florentines (seven women and only three men) attempted to escape the Black Plague of 1348 by secluding themselves in a hillside villa, where they passed the time by telling each other stories over ten successive days (cat. no. 187). Some tragic, most bawdy and otherwise comical, the one hundred tales exhibited the versatility of colloquial Italian. Later in life, under Petrarch’s influence, Boccaccio penned a number of Latin works, including the first compilation of biographies of notable women, De mulieribus Claris (cat. no. 216).

Despite having gained a foothold, the vernacular would be eclipsed by Latin in succeeding centuries as the new humanistic movement gained traction through the recovery and systematic study of ancient texts, including Greek works imported by scholars, such as Manuel Chrysoloras, who migrated westward from the Byzantine Empire (cat. no. 194). One such treatise that eventually made its way to Boston is Stichoi peri zoon idiotetos (On the Characteristics of Animals), a lengthy didactic poem by Manuel Philes of Ephesus in imitation of Hellenistic Roman models (cat. no. 219).

Humanism also had a profound impact on scientific thinking and method. Ptolemaic cosmology and cartography (cat. no. 194), only recently rediscovered in the Greek-speaking world, was rapidly introduced to the Latin West. It inspired Gregorio Dati to compose a poem in Italian, adopting Boccaccio’s eight-line stanza form, titled La Sfera (7 he Spheres), which, if not accurate in its geographical content, nevertheless contained useful trade and navigational information for the expanding merchant class (cat. no. 218, see opposite). More importantly, humanistic science incited explorers such as Christopher Columbus to navigate firsthand the unknown parts of the terrestrial globe, discovering in the process a new continent that later would be named after another protege of the Italian Renaissance, Amerigo Vespucci.