At the end of the fourteenth century, gothic architecture began to wear off and renaissance architecture moved in. Europe was evolving out of the middle ages and in the Renaissance period. The beliefs in humanity were growing in popularity. Along with the changes in ways of life, politics, families ...

Renaissance the renaissance was a cultural awakening for western Europeans from about 1350 to 1600. The renaissance began in the city-states of Italy first. It was a continuation of the middle ages, but it also signaled the beginning of modern times also. From this Europeans developed new attitude...

The Development of Opera in Italy "Although opera did not originate in Venice...it found a most nurturing environment in the Most Serene Republic" (Rosand, p. 8). Much of Europe's music was dominated by Italian opera during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The ...

Pius IIPius II was born in the Sienese territory on October 18, 1405. Pius studied at the universities of Siena and Florence. He stayed in the city of Florence to become a teacher, although in 1431 he excepted the inventation to be the secretary to Domenico Capranic. Domenico Capranic was the bis...

The era known as the Renaissance began approximately around the beginning of the fifteenth century. The philosophy behind the whole movement is one of \"rebirth\" or the re-establishing of ancient classical culture. Following the collapse of the Roman civilization, much of Europe fell into decline,...

Michelangelo Buonaratti was born in Caprese, Italy during the renaissance period and lived from 1475-1564. He later moved to Florence, Italy under the Medici's family rule and was found to be a talented painter and sculptor, while also being a gifted poet. Since he was skilled in the arts, he w...

My initial motivation for traveling to Italy is my mother. Years ago she took a trip with her father to visit the villages that he had fought for in World War II as a part of the 10th Mountain Division. She is always telling stories about the food, landscape, and people that they encountered. The mo...

Saint Catherine, originally named Caterina Benincasa, was born in Siena, a city in west-central Italy south of Florence. She was born on March 25, 1347, the feast of the Annunciation. She had a twin sister who did not live long after her birth. Catherine was the youngest of twenty-five children...

Italy: A Place of Romance Picture this: You and someone you love sitting on a balcony with a view of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, sipping fine wine and watching all the beautiful lights of the city. Some people could never imagine themselves in Italy. Rumors of the m...

Raffaello Sanzio, better known by his father and the rest of the world as Raphael, was born in the great city of Urbino, Italy, on April 6, 1483. His father Giovanni de' Santi, a painter of no great merit, but of good intelligence, had in his mind from the beginning that his only son would study t...

Michelangelo BuonarrotiI was born on March 6th, 1475, in Caprese, a village where my father was briefly a Florentine government agent. I came from a family of higher rank than most other artists during my time. My father was a banker, however he was too genteel for trade and instead of being aggress...

Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his artwork. Michelangelo\'s artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that showed humanity in its natural state. Michelangelo\'s poetry was pessimistic in his response to Strazzi even though he was complimenting him. Michelangelo\'s ...

Alessandro Scarlatti was a composer during the "Baroque Era". When compared with its music predecessors, "Baroque" music is said to be have more lavish textures, and more intense. This period of music introduced Operas, Oratorio's, and Cantata's. It also brought along o...

The three pieces discussed in this essay are all closely related to popes of the Roman Catholic Church. Michelangelo\'s \"The Last Judgment,\" Raphael\'s \"School of Athens\" and Pietro da Cortona\'s \"Glorification of the Reign of Urban VIII\" not only have their relation to a particular pope in c...

Italy has been an attractive tourist destination for centuries. It offers gentle climate, beautiful mountains, picturesque sceneries, gorgeous coastline, and vibrant, historically and culturally rich cities, such as Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan to name only the four most popular tourist destina...

Peter Paul Rubens, a Flemish Baroque painter of the sixteenth and seventeenth century focused his work namely upon the nude, a typical fixation, especially with Italian-based artists during the Renaissance and Mannerism periods. Italy - particularly Florence and Rome – was at the heart of the Ren...

Raphael\'s \"School of Athens\" is considered by many art historians to be the absolute masterpiece of the Renaissance. It is the perfect pictorial counterpart to the enormous changes in thinking that came about in the 1300s as a result of economic and technological developments. Its rational perspe...