Talk:Renaissance

Semi-protected edit request on 19 January 2024

Suggested edit to the sentence "The term rinascita ("rebirth") first appeared in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (c. 1550), anglicized as the Renaissance in the 1830s." in the introduction section of the article.

I suggest this be changed to "The term rinascita ("rebirth") first appeared in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (c. 1550), the corresponding French word, renaissance, was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s."

Why: The term 'renaissance' is not an anglicisation but a loan word from French, also meaning "rebirth". To be a pedant, "renascence" is technically the anglicised version, with usage from the 1720s. ResplendentMackerelSky (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Got any refs for that? Johnbod (talk) 17:07, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

The French word "Renaissance" was first used by Jules Michelet in the middle of the 19th century.

 Done Sincerely, Guessitsavis (she/they) (Talk) 11:32, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

crazy postmodernism: "View of Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance"

Hi,

Anybody who's interested in the topic "renaissance", will be startled to see a HDR image among the few illustrations in the article.

What is wrong with that?

Just that is is no illustration. It doesn't illustrate anything. But instead of the period's classic images someone was able to push his / her (his) photo and place a checkmark in his weekly to do list, like, "insert a pic in the wikipedia article ✔"

The physical location does matter, but we refer to is as Italy.

The view that today's tourists can capture really don't belong in this article...

Please think about this...

(I've gotto go now)

--peter.josvai (talk) 19:04, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Correct. The template already has an appropriate image representative of Renaissance. And image of modern Florence is already at a proper place down the article. --Altenmann >talk 18:33, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

MSCS

The dash brought about many changes to European society during the 15th 16th centuries ? 2A00:F29:249:8740:A4FF:C500:66C5:45E6 (talk) 13:00, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Edit request 4 February 2025

Hi,

I'd like to suggest a few edits to this article, related to the positioning of Italy as the 'birthplace' of the Renaissance. "The Renaissance" in the 19th century (in Britain, at least) was indeed thought of as an Italian thing, but this is a debatable idea that has lost currency in contemporary scholarship. I notice that the sources for such statements in the article (where given) are from the 1990s; a lot of work has been done since then to realise the significant contributions of other parts of Europe in the development of the Renaissance. As a result, I feel the credibility of the article is compromised by its embracing the 'fact' of Italy as the origin.

The first edit I'd suggest is to remove: " the Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence, then spread to the rest of Italy and later throughout Europe." The first part of the sentence can stand alone without this (misleading) second part.

Then, I suggest an edit to, "the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe: the first traces appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century..." This could be tweaked to read: "the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe: in Italy, the first traces appear as the late 13th century..." This would remove the suggestion in the sentence that "the Renaissance" started in Italy.

In the 'period' section, we find the paragraph, "The Renaissance began in Florence, one of the many states of Italy.[13] Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors, including Florence's social and civic peculiarities at the time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici,[14] and the migration of Greek scholars and their texts to Italy following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire.[15][16][17] Other major centers were Venice, Genoa, Milan, Rome during the Renaissance Papacy, and Naples. From Italy, the Renaissance spread throughout Europe and also to American, African and Asian territories ruled by the European colonial powers of the time or where Christian missionaries were active."

I would suggest simply deleting this paragraph, since many ideas it covers are repeated in one of the following paragraphs. Many ideas it lists are actually not compatible with or needed in this 'period' section. For example, the Medici patronage of arts didn't start until the 15th century - long after the 'beginnings' of the Renaissance in the 13th century (as described in the opening section of the article). Similarly, the fall of Constantinople didn't happen until the 1430s, so can't be considered a contributing factor to argue that the Renaissance 'began' in Italy.

Sadie694 (talk) 15:02, 4 February 2025 (UTC)