During the renaissance, what did artist return to do?

This is mostly quoted of from a website some parts I did write ut this is mostly off of the website.

"The origins of Renaissance art can be traced to Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. During this period, Italian scholars and artists saw themselves as reawakening to the ideals and achievements of classical Roman culture. Writers like Petarch and Giovanni Boccaccio looked back to ancient Greece and Rome and sought out to revive the languages, values and traditions of those cultures after the long period of stagnation that had followed the fall of the Roman Empire."

Government taxes ? i guess