"Que sais-je?

“Don’t discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose. If you belittle yourself, you are believed. If you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.”

– Michel de Montaigne [1533-1592]

when art became status symbol

 

reboot

“Scribble out the world since it was not to your liking and make up a new one, something better.”

– Alice McDermott [born 1953]

the abode of God

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Beatrice and Dante move up to the final zone, the Empyrean, the mind of God which exists beyond time and space – the real home of the angels, and of all the spirits in celestial heaven.

Source here.

wide distribution

Gabriel Metsu, “Man Writing a Letter”

Desiderius Erasmus [1466-1536] translated the NewTestament from ancient Greek to Latin taking it out of the hands of Priests to the common people.

popularized the essay

"... on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own behind."
- Michel de Montaigne [1533-1592]

what the Renaissance was about

Piero della Francesca [1420-1492]

"The Renaissance was about the rebirth of many things but youth and good looks, health and money lay at the heart of them."
- Charles Van Doren

father of the renaissance

"I propose to build for eternity."

- Filippo Brunelleschi [1377-1446]

Europe's 1st modern painter

- Giotto

first female renaissance artist

Propertia de Rossi

... the preeminent genius

Because Leonardo da Vinci was restricted to no one silo.

bargin

Michelangelo's fee for Julius II's tomb was 10,000 ducats, which in current dollars approximates 1.4 million USD. 

birth of the rebirth

"Dante [1265-1321] was a madman, and his work was a monstrosity. He has many commentators, and therefore cannot be understood. His reputation will go on increasing, for no one ever reads him."
- Voltaire [1694-1778]

“It's better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”
- Niccolò Machiavelli

"Everybody deserves a fresh start every once in a while."
- Bugsy Siegel

youth

africa

In 1486 a giraffe was released into Florence. It roamed freely for three weeks before dying.

sums up the Renaissance

Balance, confidence, humanism. An era when the common individual becomes art worthy.

Where to eat in Hamilton, Ontario

Shakespeare's; technically English Tudor Renaissance not Medieval.


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renaissance painter, architect, biographer

Giorgio Vasari [1511-1574], Renaissance Florence

"Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands."

-- to Leonardo da Vinci 

"I wish to be of service to the artists of our own day, by showing them how a small beginning leads to the highest elevation, and how from so noble a situation it is possible to fall to utmost ruin, and consequently, how these arts resemble nature as shown in our human bodies."

Buy here Vasari's Lives of the Artists first published in 1550; "a book which has come to be recognised as the single most important contemporary source of information on hundreds of artists of the Italian Renaissance."