Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, the largest, work of his career; the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality, he was influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models.
His career falls into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria a period of about four years absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke; the reputation of the court had been established by Federico da Montefeltro, a successful condottiere, created Duke of Urbino by Pope Sixtus IV – Urbino formed part of the Papal States – and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments, his poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, Early Netherlandish artists as well.
In the small court of Urbino he was more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but visited, they became good friends, he became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both cardinals, were becoming well known as writers, would be in Rome during Raphael's period there.
Raphael mixed in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however, his mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven, he continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity, his father's workshop continued and together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello the court painter, Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother".
The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, has been disputed—eight was early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495. Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters; the Perugino workshop w
Renaissance architecture
Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 14th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture. Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style spread to other Italian cities; the style was carried to France, England and other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact. Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion and the regularity of parts, as they are demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture, of which many examples remained. Orderly arrangements of columns and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes and aedicula replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings.
The word "Renaissance" derived from the term "la rinascita", which means rebirth, first appeared in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani The Lives of the Artists, 1550–60. Although the term Renaissance was used first by the French historian Jules Michelet, it was given its more lasting definition from the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, whose book, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien 1860, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860, English translation, by SGC Middlemore, in 2 vols. London, 1878) was influential in the development of the modern interpretation of the Italian Renaissance; the folio of measured drawings Édifices de Rome moderne. Erwin Panofsky and Renascences in Western Art, The Renaissance style was recognized by contemporaries in the term "all'antica", or "in the ancient manner". Italy of the 15th century, the city of Florence in particular, was home to the Renaissance, it is in Florence that the new architectural style had its beginning, not evolving in the way that Gothic grew out of Romanesque, but consciously brought to being by particular architects who sought to revive the order of a past "Golden Age".
The scholarly approach to the architecture of the ancient coincided with the general revival of learning. A number of factors were influential in bringing this about. Italian architects had always preferred forms that were defined and structural members that expressed their purpose. Many Tuscan Romanesque buildings demonstrate these characteristics, as seen in the Florence Baptistery and Pisa Cathedral. Italy had never adopted the Gothic style of architecture. Apart from the Cathedral of Milan, few Italian churches show the emphasis on vertical, the clustered shafts, ornate tracery and complex ribbed vaulting that characterise Gothic in other parts of Europe; the presence in Rome, of ancient architectural remains showing the ordered Classical style provided an inspiration to artists at a time when philosophy was turning towards the Classical. In the 15th century, Florence and Naples extended their power through much of the area that surrounded them, making the movement of artists possible; this enabled Florence to have significant artistic influence in Milan, through Milan, France.
In 1377, the return of the Pope from the Avignon Papacy and the re-establishment of the Papal court in Rome, brought wealth and importance to that city, as well as a renewal in the importance of the Pope in Italy, further strengthened by the Council of Constance in 1417. Successive Popes Julius II, 1503–13, sought to extend the Pope’s temporal power throughout Italy. In the early Renaissance, Venice controlled sea trade over goods from the East; the large towns of Northern Italy were prosperous through trade with the rest of Europe, Genoa providing a seaport for the goods of France and Spain. Trade brought wool from England to Florence, ideally located on the river for the production of fine cloth, the industry on which its wealth was founded. By dominating Pisa, Florence gained a seaport, maintained dominance of Genoa. In this commercial climate, one family in particular turned their attention from trade to the lucrative business of money-lending; the Medici became the chief bankers to the princes of Europe, becoming princes themselves as they did so, by reason of both wealth and influence.
Along the trade routes, thus offered some protection by commercial interest, moved not only goods but artists and philosophers. The return of the Pope Gregory XI from Avignon in September 1377 and the resultant new emphasis on Rome as the center of Christian spirituality, brought about a boom in the building of churches in Rome such as had not taken place for nearly a thousand years; this commenced in the mid 15th century and gained momentum in the 16th century, reaching its peak in the Baroque period. The construction of the Sistine Chapel with its uniquely important decorations and the entire rebuilding of St Peter's, one of Christendom's most significant churches, were part of this process. In wealthy republican Florence, the impetus for church-building was more civic than spiritual; the unfinished state of the enormous cathedral dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary did no honour to the city und
Renaissance art
Renaissance art is the painting and decorative arts of the period of European history, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature and science. Renaissance art, perceived as the noblest of ancient traditions, took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, but transformed that tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of Northern Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Renaissance art, with Renaissance Humanist philosophy, spread throughout Europe, affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic sensibilities. Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval period to the Early Modern age. In many parts of Europe, Early Renaissance art was created in parallel with Late Medieval art. Renaissance art, sculpture, architecture and literature produced during the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries in Europe under the combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, a more individualistic view of man.
Scholars no longer believe that the Renaissance marked an abrupt break with medieval values, as is suggested by the French word renaissance “rebirth.” Rather, historical sources suggest that interest in nature, humanistic learning, individualism were present in the late medieval period and became dominant in 15th- and 16th-century Italy concurrently with social and economic changes such as the secularization of daily life, the rise of a rational money-credit economy, increased social mobility. The influences upon the development of Renaissance men and women in the early 15th century are those that affected Philosophy, Architecture, Science and other aspects of society; the following list presents a summary, dealt with more in the main articles that are cited above. Classical texts, lost to European scholars for centuries, became available; these included Philosophy, Poetry, Science, a thesis on the Arts, Early Christian Theology. Europe gained access to advanced mathematics which had its provenance in the works of Islamic scholars.
The advent of movable type printing in the 15th century meant that ideas could be disseminated and an increasing number of books were written for a broad public. The establishment of the Medici Bank and the subsequent trade it generated brought unprecedented wealth to a single Italian city, Florence. Cosimo de' Medici set a new standard for patronage of the arts, not associated with the church or monarchy. Humanist philosophy meant that man's relationship with humanity, the universe and with God was no longer the exclusive province of the Church. A revived interest in the Classics brought about the first archaeological study of Roman remains by the architect Brunelleschi and sculptor Donatello; the revival of a style of architecture based on classical precedents inspired a corresponding classicism in painting and sculpture, which manifested itself as early as the 1420s in the paintings of Masaccio and Uccello. The improvement of oil paint and developments in oil-painting technique by Dutch artists such as Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes led to its adoption in Italy from about 1475 and had lasting effects on painting practices, worldwide.
The serendipitous presence within the region of Florence in the early 15th century of certain individuals of artistic genius, most notably Masaccio, Ghiberti, Piero della Francesca and Michelozzo formed an ethos out of which sprang the great masters of the High Renaissance, as well as supporting and encouraging many lesser artists to achieve work of extraordinary quality. A similar heritage of artistic achievement occurred in Venice through the talented Bellini family, their influential in-law Mantegna, Giorgione and Tintoretto; the publication of two treatises by Leone Battista Alberti, De Pitura, 1435, De re aedificatoria, 1452. In Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the sculpture of Nicola Pisano and his son Giovanni Pisano, working at Pisa and Pistoia shows markedly classicising tendencies influenced by the familiarity of these artists with ancient Roman sarcophagi, their masterpieces are the pulpits of the Cathedral of Pisa. Contemporary with Giovanni Pisano, the Florentine painter Giotto developed a manner of figurative painting, unprecedentedly naturalistic, three-dimensional and classicist, when compared with that of his contemporaries and teacher Cimabue.
Giotto, whose greatest work is the cycle of the Life of Christ at the Arena Chapel in Padua, was seen by the 16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari as "rescuing and restoring art" from the "crude, Byzantine style" prevalent in Italy in the 13th century. The painters of the Low Countries in this period included Jan van Eyck, his brother Hubert van Eyck, Robert Campin, Hans Memling, Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes, their painting developed independently of Early Italian Renaissance painting, without the influence of a deliberate and conscious striving to revive antiquity. The style of painting grew directly out of medieval painting in tempera, on panels and illuminated manuscripts, other forms such as stained glass; the medium used was oil paint, which had long been utilised for painting leather ceremonial shields and accoutrements, because it was flexible and durable. The earliest Netherlandish oil paintings are detailed like tempera paintings; the material lent itself to the depiction of
Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch/Netherlandish draughtsman and painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school, his work contains fantastic illustrations of religious narratives. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands and Spain, copied his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell. Little is known of Bosch's life, he spent most of it in the town of's - Hertogenbosch. The roots of his forefathers are in Aachen, his pessimistic and fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder being his best-known follower. Today he is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity's desires and deepest fears. Attribution has been difficult. Another half dozen paintings are confidently attributed to his workshop, his most acclaimed works consist of a few triptych altarpieces, including The Garden of Earthly Delights. Hieronymus Bosch was born Jheronimus van Aken.
He signed a number of his paintings as Jheronimus Bosch. The name derives from his birthplace,'s-Hertogenbosch, called "Den Bosch". Little is known of Bosch's training, he left behind no letters or diaries, what has been identified has been taken from brief references to him in the municipal records of's-Hertogenbosch, in the account books of the local order of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. Nothing is known of his thoughts on the meaning of his art. Bosch's date of birth has not been determined with certainty, it is estimated at c. 1450 on the basis of a hand drawn portrait made shortly before his death in 1516. The drawing shows the artist at an advanced age in his late sixties. Bosch was lived all his life in and near's - Hertogenbosch, a city in the Duchy of Brabant, his grandfather, Jan van Aken, was a painter and is first mentioned in the records in 1430. It is known that Jan had five sons, four of whom were painters. Bosch's father, Anthonius van Aken, acted as artistic adviser to the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady.
It is assumed that either Bosch's father or one of his uncles taught the artist to paint, but none of their works survive. Bosch first appears in the municipal record on 5 April 1474, when he is named along with two brothers and a sister.'s-Hertogenbosch was a flourishing city in 15th-century Brabant, in the south of the present-day Netherlands, at the time part of the Burgundian Netherlands, during its lifetime passing through marriage to the Habsburgs. In 1463, four thousand houses in the town were destroyed by a catastrophic fire, which the thirteen-year-old Bosch witnessed, he became a popular painter in his lifetime and received commissions from abroad. In 1488 he joined the respected Brotherhood of Our Lady, a devotional confraternity of some forty influential citizens of's-Hertogenbosch, seven thousand'outer-members' from around Europe. Sometime between 1479 and 1481, Bosch married Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meerveen, a few years his senior; the couple moved to the nearby town of Oirschot, where his wife had inherited a house and land from her wealthy family.
An entry in the accounts of the Brotherhood of Our Lady records Bosch's death in 1516. A funeral mass served in his memory was held in the church of Saint John on 9 August of that year. Bosch produced at least sixteen triptychs, of which eight are intact, another five in fragments. Bosch's works are organised into three periods of his life dealing with the early works, the middle period, the late period. According to Stefan Fischer, thirteen of Bosch's surviving paintings were completed in the late period, with seven attributed to his middle period. Bosch's early period is studied in terms of his workshop activity and some of his drawings. Indeed, he taught pupils in the workshop; the recent dendrochronological investigation of the oak panels by the scientists at the Bosch Research and Conservation Project led to a more precise dating of the majority of Bosch's paintings. His most famous triptych is The Garden of Earthly Delights whose outer panels are intended to bracket the main central panel between the Garden of Eden depicted on the left panel and the Last Judgment depicted on the right panel.
It is attributed by Fischer as a transition painting rendered by Bosch from between his middle period and his late period. In the left hand panel God presents Eve to Adam; the figures are set in a landscape populated by exotic animals and unusual semi-organic hut-shaped forms. The central panel is a broad panorama teeming with nude figures engaged in innocent, self-absorbed joy, as well as fantastical compound animals, oversized fruit, hybrid stone formations; the right panel presents a hellscape. Set at night, the panel features tortured figures and frozen waterways; the nakedness of the human figures has lost any eroticism suggested in the c
The School of Athens
The School of Athens is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican; the Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, The School of Athens, representing Philosophy, was the third painting to be finished there, after La Disputa on the opposite wall, the Parnassus. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance"; the School of Athens is one of a group of four main frescoes on the walls of the Stanza that depict distinct branches of knowledge. Each theme is identified above by a separate tondo containing a majestic female figure seated in the clouds, with putti bearing the phrases: "Seek Knowledge of Causes," "Divine Inspiration," "Knowledge of Things Divine", "To Each What Is Due." Accordingly, the figures on the walls below exemplify Philosophy, Poetry and Law.
The traditional title is not Raphael's. The subject of the "School" is "Philosophy," or at least ancient Greek philosophy, its overhead tondo-label, "Causarum Cognitio", tells us what kind, as it appears to echo Aristotle's emphasis on wisdom as knowing why, hence knowing the causes, in Metaphysics Book I and Physics Book II. Indeed and Aristotle appear to be the central figures in the scene. However, all the philosophers depicted sought knowledge of first causes. Many lived before Plato and Aristotle, hardly a third were Athenians; the architecture contains Roman elements, but the general semi-circular setting having Plato and Aristotle at its centre might be alluding to Pythagoras' circumpunct. Commentators have suggested that nearly every great ancient Greek philosopher can be found in the painting, but determining which are depicted is difficult, since Raphael made no designations outside possible likenesses, no contemporary documents explain the painting. Compounding the problem, Raphael had to invent a system of iconography to allude to various figures for whom there were no traditional visual types.
For example, while the Socrates figure is recognizable from Classical busts, the alleged Epicurus is far removed from his standard type. Aside from the identities of the figures depicted, many aspects of the fresco have been variously interpreted, but few such interpretations are unanimously accepted among scholars; the popular idea that the rhetorical gestures of Plato and Aristotle are kinds of pointing is likely. But Plato's Timaeus –, the book Raphael places in his hand – was a sophisticated treatment of space and change, including the Earth, which guided mathematical sciences for over a millennium. Aristotle, with his four-elements theory, held that all change on Earth was owing to motions of the heavens. In the painting Aristotle carries his Ethics, which he denied could be reduced to a mathematical science, it is not certain how much the young Raphael knew of ancient philosophy, what guidance he might have had from people such as Bramante, or whether a detailed program was dictated by his sponsor, Pope Julius II.
The fresco has recently been interpreted as an exhortation to philosophy and, in a deeper way, as a visual representation of the role of Love in elevating people toward upper knowledge in consonance with contemporary theories of Marsilio Ficino and other neo-Platonic thinkers linked to Raphael. According to Vasari, the scene includes Raphael himself, the Duke of Mantua and some Evangelists. However, to Heinrich Wölfflin, "it is quite wrong to attempt interpretations of the School of Athens as an esoteric treatise... The all-important thing was the artistic motive which expressed a physical or spiritual state, the name of the person was a matter of indifference" in Raphael's time. Raphael's artistry orchestrates a beautiful space, continuous with that of viewers in the Stanza, in which a great variety of human figures, each one expressing "mental states by physical actions," interact, in a "polyphony" unlike anything in earlier art, in the ongoing dialogue of Philosophy. An interpretation of the fresco relating to hidden symmetries of the figures and the star constructed by Bramante was given by Guerino Mazzola and collaborators.
The main basis are two mirrored triangles on the drawing from Bramante, which correspond to the feet positions of certain figures. The identities of some of the philosophers in the picture, such as Plato and Aristotle, are certain. Beyond that, identifications of Raphael's figures have always been hypothetical. To complicate matters, beginning from Vasari's efforts, some have received multiple identifications, not only as ancients but as figures contemporary with Raphael. Vasari mentions portraits of the young Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, leaning over Bramante with his hands raised near the bottom right, Raphael himself, he was writing over 40 years after the painting, never knew Raphael, but no doubt reflects what was believed in his time. Many other popular identifications of portraits are dubious. Luitpold Dussler counts among those who can be identified with some certainty: Plato, Socrates, Euclid, Zoroaster, Raphael and Diogenes of Sinope. Other identifications he holds to be "more or less speculative".
A more comprehensive list of proposed identifications is given below: 1: Zeno of Citium 2: Epicurus 3: unknown 4: Boethius or Anaximander 5: Averroes 6: Pythagoras 7: Alcibiades or Alexander the Great or Pericles 8: Antisthe
County of Flanders
The County of Flanders was a historic territory in the Low Countries. From 862 onwards the Counts of Flanders were one of the original twelve peers of the Kingdom of France. For centuries their estates around the cities of Ghent and Ypres formed one of the most affluent regions in Europe. Up to 1477, the area under French suzerainty was located west of the Scheldt River and was called "Royal Flanders". Aside from this the Counts of Flanders from the 11th century on held land east of the river as a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, an area called "Imperial Flanders". Part of the Burgundian Netherlands from 1384, the county was removed from French to Imperial control after the Peace of Madrid in 1526 and the Peace of Ladies in 1529. In 1795 the remaining territory within the Austrian Netherlands was incorporated by the French First Republic and passed to the newly established United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815; the former County of Flanders, except for French Flanders, is the only part of the medieval French kingdom, not part of modern-day France.
Flanders and Flemish are derived from the Frisian *flāndra and *flāmisk, the roots of which are Germanic *flaumaz meaning "overflow, flooding". The coastal area of Flanders was flooded twice per day from the 3rd century to the 8th century by the North Sea at the time when the coast was visited by Frisian traders and largely inhabited by Frisians; the Flemish people are first mentioned in the biography of the Vita sancti Eligii. This work was written before 684, but only known since 725; this work mentions the "Flanderenses", who lived in "Flandris." The geography of the historic County of Flanders only overlaps with present-day region of Flanders in Belgium, though there it extends beyond West Flanders and East Flanders. Some of the historic county is now part of France and the Netherlands; the land covered by the county is spread out over: Belgium: two of the five Flemish provinces: West-Flanders and East-Flanders part of the Flemish province of Antwerp: the land of Bornem part of the Walloon province of Hainaut: Tournaisis and the region around Moeskroen France: French Flanders the French westcorner: the region around Dunkirk and Bailleul, an area where Flemish used to be the main language Walloon Flanders, where the Picard language related to French, was spoken.
Artois: removed from Flanders in 1191 and created as independent county in 1237 Netherlands: Zeelandic Flanders, a region between Belgium and the Western Scheldt in the southern part of the modern province of Zeeland, which from 1581 formed part of the Generality Lands under control of the Dutch Republic. The arms of the County of Flanders were created by Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders from 1168 to 1191. In the story about the Battle of the Golden Spurs, the arms and its corresponding battlecry Vlaendr'n den leeuw plays a crucial role in the forming of a Flemish consciousness, popularised in recent times by the book De Leeuw van Vlaanderen by Hendrik Conscience; as a result, the arms of the county live on as arms of the Flemish Community. It is said that Philip of Alsace brought the lion flag with him from the Holy Land, where in 1177 he conquered it from a Saracen knight, but this is a myth; the simple fact that the lion appeared on his personal seal since 1163, when he had not yet set one step in the Levant, disproves it.
In reality Philip was following a West-European trend. In the same period lions appeared in the arms of Brabant, Holland and other territories, it is curious that the lion as a heraldic symbol was used in border territories and neighbouring countries of the Holy Roman Empire. It was in all likelihood a way of showing independence from the emperor, who used an eagle in his personal arms. In Europe the lion had been a well-known figure since Roman times, through works such as the fables of Aesop; the future county of Flanders had been inhabited since prehistory. During the Iron Age the Kemmelberg formed an important Celtic settlement. During the times of Julius Caesar, the inhabitants were part of the Belgae, a collective name for all Celtic and Germanic tribes in the north of Gallia. For Flanders in specific these were the Morini, the Nervii and the Atrebates. Julius Caesar conquered the area around 54 BC and the population was romanised from the 1st to the 3rd century; the Roman road that connected Cologne with Boulogne-sur-Mer was used as a defense perimeter.
In the south the Gallo-Romanic population was able to maintain itself, while the north became a no-mans land that suffered from regular floods from the North Sea. In the coastal and Scheldt areas Saxon tribes appeared. For the Romans, Saxon was a general term, included Angles, Saxons and Erules; the coastal defense around Boulogne and Oudenburg, the Litus Saxonicum, remained functional until about 420. These forts were manned by Saxon soldiers. From their base land Toxandria the Salian Franks further expanded into the Roman empire; the first incursion into the lands of the Atrebates was turned away in 448 at Vicus Helena. But after the murder of the Roman general Flavius Aëtius in 454 and Roman emperor Valentinianus III in 455, the Salic Franks encounterd hardly any resistance. From Duisburg, king Chlodio conquered Cambrai and Tournai, he reached the Somme. After his death two Salic kingdoms
Renaissance in Poland
The Renaissance in Poland lasted from the late 15th to the late 16th century and is considered to have been the Golden Age of Polish culture. Ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland participated in the broad European Renaissance; the multi-national Polish state experienced a period of cultural growth thanks in part to a century without major wars – aside from conflicts in the sparsely populated eastern and southern borderlands. The Reformation spread peacefully throughout the country, while living conditions improved, cities grew, exports of agricultural products enriched the population the nobility who gained dominance in the new political system of Golden Liberty; the Renaissance movement, whose influence originated in Italy, spread throughout Poland in the 15th and 16th century. Many Italian artists arrived in the country welcomed by Polish royalty, including Francesco Fiorentino, Bartholommeo Berecci, Santi Gucci, Mateo Gucci, Bernardo Morando, Giovanni Battista di Quadro and others, including thinkers and educators such as Filip Callimachus, merchants such as the Boner family and the Montelupi family, other prominent personalities who immigrated to Poland since the late 15th century in search of new opportunities.
Most of them settled in Kraków, the Polish capital until 1611. The Renaissance values of the dignity of man and power of his reason were applauded in Poland. Many works were translated into Polish and Latin from classical Latin and Hebrew, as well as contemporary languages like Italian; the Cracow Academy, one of the world's oldest universities, enjoyed its Golden Era between 1500 and 1535, with 3,215 students graduating in the first decade of the 16th century – a record not surpassed until the late 18th century. The period of Polish Renaissance, supportive of intellectual pursuits, produced many outstanding artists and scientists. Among them were Nicolaus Copernicus who in his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium presented the heliocentric theory of the universe, Maciej of Miechów, author of Tractatus de duabus Sarmatis... – the most accurate up to date geographical and ethnographical account of Eastern Europe. Young Poles sons of nobility, who graduated from any one of over 2,500 parish schools and several academies traveled abroad to complete their education.
Polish thinkers, like Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, Johannes Dantiscus or Jan Łaski maintained contacts with leading European philosophers of the Renaissance, such as Thomas More and Philip Melanchthon. Poland not only partook in the exchange of major cultural and scientific ideas and developments of Western Europe, but spread Western heritage eastwards among East Slavic nations. For example, printing process, Latin language and art with the syllabic versification in poetry in Belarus and Ukraine, from where it was transmitted to Russia, which began to increase its ties with western Europe in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion of Rus; the first four printed Cyrillic books in the world were published in Kraków, in 1491, by printer Szwajpolt Fiol. Incentives for development of art and architecture were many. King Sigismund I the Old, who ascended to the throne in 1507, was a sponsor of many artists, begun a major project - under Florence architect Bartolommeo Berrecci - of remaking the ancient residence of the Polish kings, the Wawel Castle, into a modern Renaissance residence.
Sigismund's zeal for Renaissance was matched not only by his son, Sigismund II Augustus, but by many wealthy nobles and burghers who desired to display their wealth and cultural savvy. In 1578, chancellor Jan Zamoyski begun construction of the ideal Renaissance city, sponsoring the creation of Zamość, which soon became an important administrative and educational town of Renaissance Poland. Two largest contemporary Polish cities - Kraków and Gdańsk - gained the most in the era, but many other cities spotted new Renaissance constructions. Renaissance painting was introduced in Poland by many immigrant artists, like Lucas Cranach, Hans Dürer and Hans von Kulmbach, practiced by such Polish painters as Marcin Kober; the works of the portraitists created an impressive gallery representative of those who could afford to be immortalized in them. The centre of musical culture was the royal residence at Kraków, where the royal court welcomed many foreign and local performers; the most significant works of the Renaissance in Poland include compositions for lute and organs, both vocal and instrumental, from dances, through polyphonic music, to religious oratorios and masses.
In 1540 by Jan of Lublin released the Tablature, in which he collected most known European organ pieces. Nicolaus Cracoviensis composed many masses, songs and preludes. Mikołaj Gomółka was the author of musical rendition of Kochanowski's poems (Melodies for
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