The Renaissance followed right after the Middle Ages, it literally means rebirth. Many scholars moved to big and powerful cities, this led to the rebirth of greek and roman ideas that were lost during the Middle Ages. The Renaissance was a time of learning and new inventions and trade. Many people became powerful and wealthy, there was a clear division between rich and poor. From Italy the new humanist spirit and the Renaissance it engendered spread north to all parts of Europe, aided by the invention of printing, which allowed literacy and the availability of Classical texts to grow explosively. It was in art that the spirit of the Renaissance achieved its sharpest formulation. Art came to be seen as a branch of knowledge, valuable in its
