The Renaissance is a cultural, scientific and artistic movement developed in the 15th and 16th century in Europe, originally in Italy.
The term Renaissance refers to the repercussion of the classical texts of Hellenistic culture. The works of Archimedes, Euclid, Aristarchus and other scientists and thinkers of the time were compiled by the Arabs, translated into Latin and later into the vernacular languages. In this way, the legacy of antiquity, which had been ignored during the Middle Ages, was recovered. Intellectuals, creators and scientists collected the concerns of the ancient world and applied it to their historical context.
The 15th century is a period of change in every way. A new continent appears , America, which brings progress to several areas: navigation, geography, ethnography, commerce , technical instruments and more. It can be said that the Renaissance brought a new intellectual atmosphere, especially because man becomes the axis of humanity, replacing even God, the fundamental principle of the Middle Ages.
In the new Renaissance spirit, humanists emerged, intellectuals who cared about man from various points of view. Everything that affects human beings is an object of interest to Renaissance humanists: morality , society, urbanism, art, medicine, etc.
One of the greatest contributions of this period was a new view of the world facilitated by Copernicus. This astronomer introduced a revolutionary idea: the Earth turns on itself and around the Sun, this planet being the new center of the Universe . The shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism meant much more than a simple shift in the astronomical paradigm, it established a transformation in general knowledge. The idea about the world has totally changed in a global sense and that is why we speak of the Copernican revolution.
Renaissance man is interested in science, unlike what happened in the Middle Ages, when theology was the primordial knowledge . During the 15th and 16th centuries, the first steps towards a new era, the Modern Age, appeared.
If I had to cite a prominent figure from this era, it would definitely be Leonardo da Vinci. He is a multifaceted man: artist , inventor and literate, a man who symbolizes the true spirit of the Renaissance.
