Renaissance was the period of European history from about the middle of the fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. Scholars, however, did not reach a consensus on this chronology, with considerable variations in the dates according to the author. Although the transformations are very evident in culture, society, economy, politics and religion, characterizing the transition from feudalism to capitalism and signifying an evolution in relation to medieval structures, the term is most commonly used to describe its effects on the arts, philosophy and in the sciences.
It was called Renaissance because of the intense revaluation of the references of Classical Antiquity, which guided a progressive slowing down of the influence of religious dogmatism and mysticism on culture and society, with a concomitant and increasing appreciation of rationality, science and nature. In this process the human being was clothed with a new dignity and placed in the center of Creation, and for that reason the main stream of thought of this period was given the name of humanism.
The movement manifested itself first in the Italian region of Tuscany, with the main centers of the cities of Florence and Siena, from where it spread to the rest of the Italian peninsula and then to virtually all Western European countries, driven by the development of the press and by the circulation of artists and works. Italy has always remained the place where the movement presented its most typical expression, but Renaissance manifestations of great importance have also occurred in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Iberian Peninsula. The international diffusion of Italian references has generally produced an art very different from its models, influenced by regional traditions, which for many is better defined as a new style, Mannerism. The term Renaissance was first recorded by Giorgio Vasari in the sixteenth century, a historian who endeavored to place Florence as the protagonist of all major innovations, and his writings exerted a decisive influence on later criticism.
For a long time the period was seen in the United States and Europe as a homogeneous, coherent and ever progressive movement, as the most interesting and fruitful period since Antiquity, and one of its phases, the High Renaissance, was consecrated as the apotheosis of the long previous search for the most sublime expression and the most perfect imitation of the classics, and his artistic legacy was considered an unsurpassable paradigm of quality. However, studies carried out in the last decades have revised these traditional opinions as immaterial or stereotyped, and have seen the period as much more complex, diversified, contradictory and unpredictable than has been supposed for generations. The new consensus, however, recognizes the Renaissance as an important milestone in European history as a phase of rapid and relevant change in many areas, such as a constellation of cultural signs and symbols that defined much of what Europe was up to the French Revolution, and which continues to exert great influence even today in many parts of the world, both in academic circles and in popular culture.
