Renaissance

Cultural rebirth of Europe between about 1350 and about 1550. It originated in northern Italian city-states such as Florence, spreading across Europe to other centers. The Renaissance revived the learning of ancient Greece and Rome and the spirit of universal inquiry and experimentation in all art forms, stressing individualism and scientific observation of the natural environment. Among its great names were Masaccio, Raphael, da Vinci and Michaelangelo in art; Petrarch and Boccaccio in literature; Donatello in sculpture; Erasmus and Machiavelli in thought and politics.