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Who birthed the Renaissance? (NEW CONCEPTS)
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berniegreen



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I'd like to propose a new discussion.

I have become convinced from various recent readings that the Renaissance never existed.

I don't mean that Leonardo, Michelangelo, Giotto, Dante etc etc didn't actually live and die and do their stuff. I mean that the story about "cultural transmission" that we have inherited is plain invention.

All the cannon of Art and Science from the ancient world had been carefully curated by the Islamic world and by 1250 (or so) was already re-translated back into Latin and was being circulated together with original Arabic, Persian and Hindu masterworks (in translation of course) around the Universities and Cathedral Schools of Western Europe.

In fact Byzantium was by no means the guardian of the ancient Greek culture. The scholars of the classical pagan world had been mainly Nestorians and Armenians who had been driven out of Byzantium by persecution from the Orthodox Church into the welcoming arms of the Abassid Caliphate.

So three questions:

(1) If the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans was not really the trigger event, what was? and

(2) Why is the history as we were taught in school written that way? and

(3) Why does it continue to be taught this way?

I have an hypothesis for question 2 but not for the others.
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Ishmael


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Many of us in this group have become skeptical of this entire period history. So much so that that the number of "givens" we can acknowledge are insufficient to support the discussion you propose.

There are others here who have more confidence in the historical record. They may take you up on your offer.
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berniegreen



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If it isn't too tiresome could you elaborate on that, please.
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Rocky



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berniegreen wrote:
If it isn't too tiresome could you elaborate on that, please.


I think what's he saying, very roughly, is that maybe the Renaissance was the Naissance. So if you think that, then you can't really have a discussion about who birthed the Renaissance.
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berniegreen



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Rocky wrote:
berniegreen wrote:
If it isn't too tiresome could you elaborate on that, please.


I think what's he saying, very roughly, is that maybe the Renaissance was the Naissance. So if you think that, then you can't really have a discussion about who birthed the Renaissance.

I take your point. There really should be quotation marks i.e. Who "birthed" the Renaissance.

But since the term Renaissance refers to the rebirth of culture from the ancient world which had been lost to Western Europe I can't see the objection. Renaissance, Naissance, Shmaissance!

If Ish means to challenge completely the historical narrative as we know it, okay. It is a position that I think is impossible to sustain but I would be very interested to understand the route by which he came to that conclusion. So I do plead, tell us more, O Canadian Big Daddy!
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Ishmael


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berniegreen wrote:
But since the term Renaissance refers to the rebirth of culture from the ancient world...

...whatever shall we make of it if there was no "ancient world" to be reborn?

I would be very interested to understand the route by which he came to that conclusion.


I am unpersuaded of your sincerity.
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berniegreen



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Ishmael wrote:
berniegreen wrote:
But since the term Renaissance refers to the rebirth of culture from the ancient world...

...whatever shall we make of it if there was no "ancient world" to be reborn?.

OK. So who wrote The Odyssey and The Iliad? Who built the Parthenon? Who sculpted Venus de Milo? and so on and on for thousands of examples.

And why do I, and countless dupes such as I, think Socrates, Plato, Diogenes and Aristotle (etc, etc) are the fount of modern western civilisation?

Ishmael wrote:
berniegreen wrote:
I would be very interested to understand the route by which he came to that conclusion.


I am unpersuaded of your sincerity.

I may well have quite an opposed position to yourself but please let me assure you that I am absolutely sincere in wishing to understand exactly what is your position and how you arrived at it.
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Rocky



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Ishmael wrote:
berniegreen wrote:
But since the term Renaissance refers to the rebirth of culture from the ancient world...

...whatever shall we make of it if there was no "ancient world" to be reborn?.

OK. So who wrote The Odyssey and The Iliad? Who built the Parthenon? Who sculpted Venus de Milo? and so on and on for thousands of examples.



The question's not "who" but "when".


The high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. Many of the art forms and methods used by the Romans--such as [blah, blah, blah]--all were developed or refined by Ancient Greek artists. One exception is the Greek bust, which did not include the shoulders. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Virtually every artistic technique and method used by Renaissance artists 1,900 year later, had been demonstrated by Ancient Greek artists, with the notable exceptions of oil colors and mathematically accurate perspective.


1,900 years later. Weird, huh.
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berniegreen



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Rocky,

The "who" is equally important as the "when", I think.

If we have a story, on the one hand, that says that, for example, Aristophanes wrote "Lysistrata" in 350?BC (don't know real date) as an anti-war satire against the Athenian-Spartan war etc. etc. and

if we, on the other hand, are saying that the "Ancient World" did not exist, then

it is just as important, surely, to explain not just when Lysistrata was written but by whom and why and also why they bothered to write it in the archaic Athenian dialect.

AND I am missing your second point - what is weird? why is it weird? Believe me, I am not being contentious. I just don't understand why you would think it weird that things were invented once, lost and later re-discovered. Happens all the time. Damn, where did I put my keys?
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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It'd be harder to dismiss the evidence of statuary lying all around than to disprove who wrote what surely. It's well known that preceding periods can be jumping off points for artistic trends, but they seem to then become something different. The political and technological (printing) stimulus of the Renaissance started, it seems, in northern Europe so why not the artistic impetus?

The Netherlands in particular were a powerhouse of talent judging by the English experience (no art at all to speak of pre-Holbein we're told) and the Spanish seemed to produce masterpieces in quick succession coinciding with the Hapsburg dynastic involvement with the Low Countries.
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Rocky



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berniegreen wrote:
Rocky,

The "who" is equally important as the "when", I think.

If we have a story, on the one hand, that says that, for example, Aristophanes wrote "Lysistrata" in 350?BC (don't know real date) as an anti-war satire against the Athenian-Spartan war etc. etc. and

if we, on the other hand, are saying that the "Ancient World" did not exist, then

it is just as important, surely, to explain not just when Lysistrata was written but by whom and why and also why they bothered to write it in the archaic Athenian dialect.

AND I am missing your second point - what is weird? why is it weird? Believe me, I am not being contentious. I just don't understand why you would think it weird that things were invented once, lost and later re-discovered. Happens all the time. Damn, where did I put my keys?


Go read a book about Roman history with pictures of works or art. You'll find that many Roman works of art are copies of Greek works, and that the original Greek works have been lost. There is this presumption that any exquisite Roman work must first have been Greek. The Dying Gaul is an example. It was sculpted in 220 BC, then it was forgotten about for many centuries, and was rediscovered in the 17th century.

Take the Laocoön and His Sons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons

This scupture was built in ancient times, and then forgotten about for many centuries until it was found c. 1500 on the Esquiline Hill by a farmer. It's almost 9 feet tall.

One scholar thinks the statue might be a forgery by Michelangelo or a contemporary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/arts/design/18laoc.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1113840145-wzV1RMkaU5mNw6XeGEoUMw

For Dr. Catterson everything was just a little too perfect about the discovery of the "Laocoön," which was in fairly good shape after presumably some 1,500 years when it was found by a farmer more or less where Pliny had predicted.


But if it was built during Michelangelo's era, maybe it's not correct to think of the statue as a forgery, but that the associated documents are forgeries.
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Angus McOatup


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For Dr. Catterson everything was just a little too perfect about the discovery of the "Laocoön," which was in fairly good shape after presumably some 1,500 years when it was found by a farmer more or less where Pliny had predicted.


Personally I'd love it if Dr. Catterson could prove her theory but...the Laocoon is stylistically very close to sculptural fragments found in Tiberius's Grotto at Sperlonga in the 1950's such as the Blinding of Polyphemus which also ties in to the discovery of an inscription bearing the name of the three Sculptors of the Laocoon that Pliny mentions in his Natural History, also from Tiberius's Grotto. Sadly...all in all...the facts point to the statue as being around at the time of Tiberius....although if it is a Roman marble copy of a Greek bronze original it is still a sort of fake...

Also the Michelangelo fake theory presupposes he was a better sculptor than he was ie his work is very static and the animated dynamism of the Laocoon was, in my opinion, beyond him, certainly for such an early date ( although his fake Bacchus is good)...which does not preclude the idea that he was making other smaller fakes, a la his faun, or at least attaching new arms and legs to newly discovered antique fragments. Although this only really became big business in the mid 18th C. to cater for the young (and culturally naive)English Milordi whilst on their Grand Tours.
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Angus McOatup


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So three questions:

(1) If the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans was not really the trigger event, what was? and

(2) Why is the history as we were taught in school written that way? and

(3) Why does it continue to be taught this way?

I have an hypothesis for question 2 but not for the others.


Hi Bernie, sorry for this but...

1. The idea of a trigger event is old-fashioned and spurious to contemporary academic thinking.

2. it is no longer written this way.

3. Thus it is no longer taught this way anymore, certainly not to me last year in a very in-depth O.U course called 'Renaissance Art Reconsidered'


...if there was a 'trigger event' for the Italian peninsular, it was all those bloomin Medici banking lieutenants going on business to the Low Countries and discovering all the brilliantly skillful Netherlandish oil paintings that were being done there, which were then posted back to their Florentine town houses to be copied by Italians all playing catch up, such as Leonardo et al. Intellectually it was people like Pogio Brachiolino going to monasteries such as St Gall and finding copies of Lecretius's De Rerum natura and then bringing them back to be copied and digested. Nor forgetting Ficino's translations of Plato etc....The renaissance was indeed very much underway by the time of the fall of Constantinople as movers and shakers such as Cardinal Bessarion had already jumped ship and were patronising the likes of Piero della Francesca etc...Lisa Jardine in 'Wordly Goods' sees the Renaissance as the birth of the consumer society ie lets go shopping (well she is a woman) people wanting to own unusual luxurious things eg illuminated manuscripts, antique object d'art, tapestries, cameos, portraits, anything unusual....If anything the 'trigger' was...greed and avarice...quelle surprise. No different than today then 'What do I want to own to signal my status?'.. something my neighbour hasn't got...


To clarify: the Renaissance undoubtedly started in the Low Countries fuelled by the vast wealth of the likes of the Dukes of Burgundy, eg the most prestigious renaissance luxury goods - tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, altarpieces and goldsmithery were all made there to feed their patronage, as well as rich travelling merchants. We have Vasari to thank for making everybody believe in the primacy of the Italian renaissance. As a Florentine working for the Medici, he was presenting an Italocentric account and wilfully ignoring the Netherlandish contribution...
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Angus, you have to get your artistic eye in (AE-style).

the Laocoon is stylistically very close to sculptural fragments found in Tiberius's Grotto at Sperlonga in the 1950's such as the Blinding of Polyphemus

OK, so the forger naturally produces something which is already 'in the lexicon'. That's just common sense on his part.

which also ties in to the discovery of an inscription bearing the name of the three Sculptors of the Laocoon that Pliny mentions in his Natural History, also from Tiberius's Grotto.

In other words the forger of that work did likewise. How do we know? Well, what are the chances of digging up three sculptures mentioned by Pliny? Overall, it's the number of sculptures ever dug up divided by the number of sculptures mentioned by Pliny (or some other Classical source) ie one in a zillion.

What are chances that a forger would produce something that is 'already in the lexicon'. One in about ... um ... one.
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Angus McOatup


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What are chances that a forger would produce something that is 'already in the lexicon'. One in about ... um ... one
.
Ah.. danke Herr Meister, jetzt sehe ich das Licht !

Thanks Mick very true....In the 18th c this sort of thing was the norm.. and come to think of it many a stately home have the same 'original' statues from the same places etc...

This reminds me of how Tom Keating was finally caught out....he had a predilection for doing Samuel Palmers, and after a few dozen new 'Palmer's appeared at auction people finally twigged.
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