Chapter 2, Section 6 Notecards

Front 1

Dante

Back 1

Florentine writer, author of the "Divine Comedy"

Front 2

Petrarch

Back 2

Florentine exile, wrote many sonnets and letters

Front 3

Boccaccio

Back 3

Florentine author who wrote the "Decameron", a series of tales designed both to entertain and impart a certain wisdom about human character and behavior.

Front 4

Salutati

Back 4

A humanist who became chancellor of Florence in 1375. He glorified Florentine liberty and identified it with the liberties of ancient republican Rome before the Caesars.

Front 5

Bruni

Back 5

Wrote a history of Florence which marked a new achievement in historical writing, when compared with the annals and chronicles of the Middle Ages. He saw the past clearly as past, different from but relevant to the present; wrote his history in a flowing narrative form; and used the history for a practical purpose.

Front 6

Valla

Back 6

Became a founder of textual criticism. He studied Latin historically and found that its characteristic words and expressions varied from one time to another. He used this knowledge to help the king of Naples in a dispute with the pope. He showed, by analysis of the language in the document, that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery

Front 7

Machiavelli

Back 7

Wrote, "The Prince", the most lasting work of the Italian Renaissance. He realized that the new centers of culture were fading out of Italy and into other countries of Western Europe.

Front 8

Donatello

Back 8

A Florentine sculptor

Front 9

Massacio

Back 9

An Italian painter, one of the first to employ the techniques of vanishing point

Front 10

Brunelleschi

Back 10

An Italian architect and engineer

Front 11

Bellini

Back 11

An Italian painter

Front 12

Medicis

Back 12

A powerful Italian banking family that ruled Florence

Front 13

Lorenzo de' Medici

Back 13

He used his great wealth to govern, but is chiefly remembered as a poet, connoisseur, and lavish patron of art and learning.

Front 14

Christine de Pisan

Back 14

Her writings helped to spread humanist themes in France during the early 15th century, and also demonstrated that women could participate in the debates of European intellectual life.

Front 15

Castiglione

Back 15

Author of the "Book of the Courtier", which was a sort of manual on court etiquette

Front 16

Cicero

Back 16

Roman orator whose writings became highly relevant because they provided an ethics independent of the Christian and medieval tradition.

Front 17

Pico della Mirandola

Back 17

Italian renaissance philosopher, claimed that, at the age of 23, he could summarize all human knowledge into 900 theses

Front 18

Renaissance

Back 18

French word meaning "rebirth", referring to the time period after the Middle Ages, when society resumed civilization like that of the Greco-Romans

Front 19

Quattrocento

Back 19

Italian term for the fifteenth century

Front 20

artisan

Back 20

a skilled worker

Front 21

virtu

Back 21

the quality of being a man

Front 22

humanism

Back 22

the literary movement in Renaissance Italy, so called because of the rising interest of humane letters.

Front 23

perspective

Back 23

Used in paintings to create a three dimensional effect

Front 24

Book of the Courtier

Back 24

Described what a good courtier should do, how he should act, speak, come from, etc.

Front 25

rhetoric

Back 25

the way a courtier should talk

Front 26

city-states

Back 26

individual cities which controlled their town and the surrounding countryside