Gold During the Renaissance

Abstract

The Renaissance, rebirth, or more strictly speaking the intellectual revival of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was marked by the advent of Humanism, a revolution in art, sculpture, and letters but with relatively little progress in natural science, and during much of the sixteenth century by the Reformation led by the son of a miner, Martin Luther (1483–1546). The Humanists devoted themselves to the study of the language, literature, and antiquities of ancient Greece and Rome, hoping to find in the past a novel form of thought about nature for the future. They considered themselves in rebellion against the scholasticism of medieval times and were preoccupied with man in relation to human society rather than to God. The foundation of the Vatican Library at Rome by Pope Nicholas V was a landmark of the Renaissance, as were also the writings of Alberti, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Shakespeare, and Luther in the fields of social and political thought, literature, and religious doctrine. In music, architecture, sculpture, and art it was the period of Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, Brunelleschi, Raphael, Donatello, Botticelli, Titian, Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Durer, Holbein, van Eyck, Breughel, and Michelangelo. As one gazes up at Michelangelo’s Creation of Man on the ceiling of the vault of the Sistine Chapel of St. Peter’s in Rome, one sees in Adam a veritable symbol of awakening Renaissance man marveling at all about him.