12: The Humanist Movement
Vincenzo Foppa, A Boy Reading Cicero (Young Cicero Reading). c. 1464. Fresco, 101,6 x 143,7 cm (detached from Milan, Palazzo Mediceo)
Wallace Collection, London
“The New Learning”
- Petrarch as early famous representative
- New authors and texts
- Recovery of ancient texts
- Ancient models
Origins and definitions
Phases: in Italy
early 1300-1400; middle 1400-1500; late 1500-1600
Northern Europe: later, ca 1480-1650
15th c features of humanists
- educational program: studia humanitatis
- Grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy
- Cicero Quintilian
- professions: “man (or woman) of letters”
- notaries
- schoolteachers
- civic officials
- Writers: styles and genres based on Latin antiquity
- Editors
- Founders of libraries
- Book collectors
The early humanist movement ca. 1300
- teachers, lawyers, notaries: Padua, Florence
- leisure reading, writing of literature
- Users of multiple written languages:
Latin:
- Church business
- university scholarship
- some cities: official documents
- new: literature based on ancient models
Provencal (vernacular)
courtly literature from north of Alps
Volgare (vernacular “Italian”)
- business documents
- preaching: Dominicans, Franciscans
- new: volgare as literary language
Exx: Brunetto Latini, Dante’s teacher (d. 1294)
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Vita Nuova; Commedia
School of Giotto, portrait of Dante Alighieri |
Recent reconstruction of Dante’s face |
Boccaccio: contemporary of Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (1304 Arezzo-1374 Arquà)
portrait of Petrarch by Altichiero
Exiled Florentine family; 1312 Avignon for father’s notarial career.
Montpellier, Bologna
Avignon; minor orders, household of Giov. Cardinal Colonna til 1337
Livy
1337 first visit to Rome
1340 crowned as poet there by King of Naples
1345 Discovery of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, Brutus, Quintus. Cicero, Augustine (354-430)
Petrarch’s house in Arquà
Arquà Petrarca
Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen in 1357 autograph (Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 3358 fol. 49 recto)
Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406)
- notary. Friend of Petrarch
- chancellor of Lucca, then of Florence 1375-1406
war against Visconti in Milan
- teacher of Greek, Manuel Chrysoloras, 1397-1400
- collecting, copying mss
Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459)
- Florence to study notarial arts (age 16-17)
- In Florence: Salutati
- apostolic secretary (papal service) anti-pope John XXIII
- Handwritingreform
humanist culture after 1400
- collecting, editing manuscripts
- Greek
- public arena
- schoolteachers
- group of learned people outside universities
–first big center: Florence
 |
Michelozzo, Library, San Marco (Florence)