Renaissance

Renaissance, or Renascence, the "new birth "or revival of learning and art in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, which was partly the result of the Crusades, Wycliffe's teaching, and Poggio Bracciolini's services in the study of classical Latin (1416-59), but which received a great stimulus from the influx of Byzantine scholars and manuscripts into Italy upon the fall of Constantinople (1453), from the invention of printing a few years later, and the discoveries of navigators in the last half of the 15th century. The Renaissance architecture was mainly due to the study of ancient examples by Brunelleschi of Florence (d. 1446). The Renaissance, which divides modern times from the mediaeval world, was at its height between 1475 and 1525. [Angelo, Erasmus, Hutten, Leonardo da Vinci, Bramante, Julius II., Leo X., Medici (Lorenzo).]