). Advances in Technology

No account of enduring late-medieval accomplishments would be complete without mention of certain epoch-making technological advances. Sadly, but probably not unexpectedly, treatment of this subject has to begin with reference to the invention of artillery and firearms. The prevalence of warfare stimulated the development of new weaponry. Gunpowder itself was a Chinese invention, but it was first put to particularly devastating uses in the late-medieval West. Heavy cannons were first employed around 1330. By the middle of the fifteenth century they were greatly improved and began to revolutionize the nature of warfare. In 1453, heavy artillery played a leading role in determining the outcome of two crucial conflicts, ending the Hundred Years’ War. Placed aboard ships, cannons enabled European vessels to dominate foreign waters in the subsequent age of overseas expansion. Guns, also invented in the fourteenth century, were gradually perfected afterward.

Other late-medieval technological developments were more life-enhancing. Eyeglasses, first invented in the 1280s, were perfected in the fourteenth century. Around 1300 the use of the magnetic compass helped ships to sail farther away from land and venture out into the Atlantic. One immediate result was the opening of direct sea commerce between Italy and the North. Subsequently, numerous improvements in shipbuilding, map making, and navigational devices contributed to Europe’s ability to start expanding overseas. Partly as a result of technology the world was thus suddenly made much smaller.

Among the most familiar implements of our modern life that were invented by Europeans in the later Middle Ages were clocks and printed books. Mechanical clocks were invented shortly before 1300 and proliferated in the years immediately thereafter. The new invention ultimately had two profound effects. One was the further stimulation of European interest in complex machinery of all sorts. But clocks ultimately became even more omnipresent because after about 1650 they became quite cheap and were brought into practically every European home. Equally if not more significant was the fact that clocks began to rationalize the course of European daily affairs. People were expected to start and end work “on time” and many came to believe that “time is money.” This emphasis on time-keeping brought new efficiencies but also new tensions. The invention of printing with movable type was equally momentous. The major stimulus for this invention was the replacement of parchment by paper as Europe’s primary writing material between 1200 and 1400. Paper brought prices down dramatically. Accordingly, it became cheaper to learn how to read and write. With literacy becoming ever more widespread, there was a growing market for still cheaper books, and the invention of printing with movable type around 1450 fully met this demand.

As soon as books became easily accessible, literacy increased even more and book-culture became a basic part of the European way of life. After about 1500 Europeans could afford to read and buy books of all sorts, and, by the eighteenth century, newspapers. Printing ensured that ideas would spread quickly and reliably; moreover, revolutionary ideas could no longer be easily extinguished once they were set down in hundreds of copies of books. The spread of books also helped stimulate the growth of cultural nationalism. Shortly after the invention of printing, however, each European country began to develop its own linguistic standards which were disseminated uniformly by books. The “King’s English” was what was printed in London and carried to Yorkshire or Wales. Thus communications were enhanced and governments were able to operate ever more efficiently.

In conclusion it may be said that clocks and books as much as guns and ocean-going ships helped Europe to dominate the globe after 1500. The habits inculcated by clocks encouraged Europeans to work efficiently and to plan precisely; the prevalence of books enhanced communications and the flow of progressive ideas. Once accustomed to reading books, Europeans communicated and experimented intellectually as no other peoples in the world. Thus it was not surprising that after 1500 Europeans could start to make the whole world their own.

The prevalent modern notion that a “Renaissance period” followed western Europe’s medieval age was first expressed by numerous Italian writers who lived between 1350 and 1550. According to them, one thousand years of unrelieved darkness had intervened between the Roman era and their own times. Almost miraculously, however, in the fourteenth century the Muses of art and literature suddenly returned and Italians happily collaborated with them to bring forth a glorious “renaissance of the arts.” Ever since this periodization was advanced, historians have taken for granted the existence of some sort of “Renaissance”. Indeed, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many scholars went so far as to argue that the Renaissance was not just an epoch in the history of learning and culture but that a unique “Renaissance spirit” transformed all aspects of life – political, economic, and religious, as well as intellectual and artistic. Today, however, most experts no longer accept this characterization because they find it impossible to locate any truly distinctive “Renaissance” politics, economics, or religion. Accordingly, when we refer to a “Renaissance period” in this chapter we mean to limit ourselves to an epoch in intellectual and cultural history.

Granted this restriction, some further qualifications are still necessary. Since the word “renaissance” literally means “rebirth,” it is sometimes thought that after about 1350 certain Italians who were newly cognizant of Greek and Roman cultural accomplishments initiated a classical cultural rebirth. In the realms of thought, literature and the arts, important distinguishing traits may certainly be found which make the concept of a “Renaissance” meaningful for intellectual and cultural history. First, regarding knowledge of the classics, there was indubitably a significant quantitative difference between the learning of the Middle Ages and that of the Renaissance. Equally if not more important was the Renaissance discovery of the literature of classical Greece. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Greek scientific and philosophical treatises were made available to westerners in Latin translations, but none of the great Greek literary masterpieces and practically none of the major works of Plato were yet known. Nor could more than a handful of medieval westerners read the Greek language. In the Renaissance, on the other hand, large numbers of Western scholars learned Greek and mastered almost the entire Greek literary heritage that is known today. Second, Renaissance thinkers not only knew many more classical texts than their medieval counterparts, but they used them in new ways. Whereas medieval writers tended to employ their ancient sources for the purpose of complementing and confirming their own preconceived Christian assumptions, Renaissance writers customarily drew on the classics to reconsider their preconceived notions and alter their modes of expression. Firm determination to learn from classical antiquity, moreover, was even more pronounced in the realms of architecture and art, areas in which classical models contributed most strikingly to the creation of fully distinct “Renaissance” artistic styles. Third, although Renaissance culture was by no means pagan, it certainly was more secular in its orientation than the culture of the Middle Ages. The evolution of the Italian city-states in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries created a supportive environment for attitudes that stressed the attainment of success in the urban political arena and living well in this world. Inevitably such secular ideals helped create a culture that was increasingly non-ecclesiastical.

One word above all comes closest to summing up the most common and basic Renaissance intellectual ideas, namely humanism. This word has two different meanings, one technical and one general, but both apply to the cultural goals and ideals of a large number of Renaissance thinkers. In its technical sense humanism was a program of studies which aimed to replace the medieval Scholastic emphasis on logic and metaphysics with the study of language, literature, history, and ethics. The broader sense of humanism lies in a stress on the “dignity” of man as the most excellent of all God’s creatures below the angels. Some Renaissance thinkers argued that man was excellent because he alone of earthly creatures could obtain knowledge of God; others stressed man’s ability to master his fate and live happily in the world. Either way, Renaissance humanists had a firm belief in the nobility and possibilities of the human race.

The Renaissance originated in Italy for several reasons. The most fundamental was that Italy in the later Middle Ages encompassed the most advanced urban society in all of Europe. Italian aristocrats customarily lived in urban centers and consequently became fully involved in urban public affairs. In Italy so many town-dwelling aristocrats engaged in banking or mercantile enterprises and so many rich mercantile families imitated the manners of the aristocracy that by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie were becoming virtually indistinguishable. The results of these developments for the history of education are obvious. Italy produced a large number of secular educators, many of whom not only taught students but demonstrated their learned attainments in the production of political and ethical treatises and works of literature. The schools of these educators, moreover, created the best educated upper-class public in all of Europe and inevitably therewith a considerable number of wealthy patrons who were ready to invest in the cultivation of new ideas and new forms of literary and artistic expression.

A second reason why late-medieval Italy was the birthplace of an intellectual and artistic Renaissance lay in the fact that it had a far greater sense of rapport with the classical past than any other territory in western Europe. The best teachers understandably sought inspiration from ancient Latin and Greek texts because politics and political rhetoric were classical rather than medieval arts. Moreover, Italians became particularly intent on re-appropriating their classical heritage in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries because Italians then were seeking to establish an independent cultural identity in opposition to a Scholasticism most closely associated with France. During the fourteenth century there was an intellectual reaction against Scholasticism on all fronts which made it natural for Italians to prefer the intellectual alternatives offered by classical literary sources. Naturally too, once Roman literature and learning became particularly favored in Italy, so did Roman art and architecture, for Roman models could help Italians create a splendid artistic alternative to French Gothicism just as Roman learning offered an intellectual alternative to French Scholasticism.

Finally, the Italian Renaissance obviously could not have occurred without the underpinning of Italian wealth. Oddly enough, the Italian economy as a whole was probably more prosperous in the thirteenth century than it was in the fourteenth and fifteenth. But late-medieval Italy was wealthier in comparison to the rest of Europe than it had been before, a fact which meant that Italian writers and artists were more likely to stay at home than seek employment abroad. Moreover, in late-medieval Italy unusually intensive investment in culture arose from an intensification of urban pride and the concentration of per capita wealth.

In surveying the greatest accomplishments of Italian Renaissance scholars and writers it is natural to begin with the work of Francis Petrarch (1304-1374), the earliest of the humanists in the technical sense of the term. Petrarch was a deeply committed Christian who believed that Scholasticism was entirely misguided because it concentrated on abstract speculation rather than teaching people how to behave properly and attain salvation. Petrarch thought that the Christian writer must above all cultivate literary eloquence so that he could inspire people to do good. For him the best models of eloquence were to be found in the ancient literary classics with ethical wisdom. So Petrarch dedicated himself to searching for undiscovered ancient Latin texts and writing his own moral treatises in which he imitated classical style and quoted classical phrases. Thereby he initiated a program of “humanist” studies that was to be influential for centuries. Petrarch also has a place in purely literary history because of his poetry. Although he prized his own Latin poetry over the poems he wrote in the Italian vernacular, only the latter have proved enduring. Above all, the Italian sonnets – later called Petrarchan sonnets – which he wrote for his beloved Laura in the chivalrous style of the troubadours, were widely imitated in form and content throughout the Renaissance period.

Because he was a very traditional Christian, Petrarch’s ultimate ideal for human conduct was the solitary life of contemplation and asceticism. But in subsequent generations, from about 1400 to 1450, a number of Italian thinkers and scholars developed the alternative of what is customarily called “civic humanism.” Civic humanists like the Florentines Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370-1444) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) agreed with Petrarch on the need for eloquence and the study of classical literature, but they also taught that man’s nature equipped him for action, for usefulness to his family and society, and for serving the state – ideally a republican city-state after the classical or contemporary Florentine model. In their view ambition and the quest for glory were noble impulses which ought to be encouraged. They refused to condemn the striving for material possession, for they argued that the history of human progress is inseparable from mankind’s success in gaining mastery over the earth and its resources. Perhaps the most vivid of the civic humanists’ writings is Alberti’s On the Family (1443), in which he argued that the nuclear family was instituted by nature for the well-being of humanity. Not surprisingly, however, Alberti consigned women to purely domestic roles within this framework, for he believed that “man [is] by nature more energetic and industrious,” and that woman was created “to increase and continue generations, and to nourish and preserve those already born.”

In addition to differing with Petrarch in their preference for the active over the solitary or contemplative life, the civic humanists went far beyond him in their study of the ancient literary heritage. Many of them discovered important new Latin texts, but far more important was their success in opening up the field of classical Greek studies. Related in his textual interests to the civic humanists, but by no means a full adherent of their movement, was the atypical yet highly influential Renaissance thinker, Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457). Valla had no inclination to espouse the ideas of republican political engagement as the Florentine civic humanists did. Instead, he preferred to advertise his skills as an expert in grammar, rhetoric, and the painstaking analysis of Greek and Latin texts by showing how the thorough study of language could discredit old verities. Most decisive in this regard was Valla’s brilliant demonstration that the so-called Donation of Constantine was a medieval forgery. Valla proved beyond the dispute that the document in question was full of non-classical Latin usages and anachronistic terms. This demonstration not only discredited a prize specimen of “medieval ignorance,” but, more importantly, introduced the concept of anachronism into all subsequent textural study and historical thought. Valla also employed his skills in linguistic analysis and rhetorical argumentation to challenge a wide variety of philosophical positions. Accordingly, in his Notes on the New Testament he applied his expert knowledge of Greek to elucidating the true meaning of St. Paul’s words, which he believed had been obscured by the Latin Vulgate translation. This work was to prove an important link between Italian Renaissance scholarship and the subsequent Christian humanism of the north.

From about 1450 until about 1600 dominance in the world of Italian thought was assumed by a school of Neo-platonists, who sought to blend the thought of Plato, Plotinus, and various strands of ancient mysticism with Christianity. Foremost among these were Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494). Ficino’s greatest achievement was the translation of Plato’s works into Latin, thereby making them widely available to western Europeans for the first time. It is debatable whether Ficino’s own philosophy may be called humanist because he moved away from ethics to metaphysics and taught that the individual should look primarily to the other world. In Ficino’s opinion, “the immortal soul is always miserable in its mortal body.” The same problem holds for Ficino’s disciple Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whose most famous work is the Oration on the Dignity of Man. Pico was certainly not a civic humanist since he saw little worth in mundane public affairs. But he did believe that there is “nothing more wonderful than man” because he believed that man is endowed with the capacity to achieve union with God if he so wills.

Hardly any of the Italian thinkers between Petrarch and Pico were really original: their greatness lay mostly in their manner of expression, their accomplishments in technical scholarship, and their popularization of different themes of ancient thought. The same, however, can by no means be said of Renaissance Italy’s greatest political philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). No man did more than Machiavelli to overturn all earlier views of the ethical basis of politics or to pioneer in the dispassionate direct observation of political life. Machiavelli’s writings reflect the unhappy condition of Italy in his time. In 1498 Machiavelli entered the service of the newly founded republic of Florence as second chancellor and secretary. His duties largely involved diplomatic missions to other states. In 1512 the Medici returned to overthrow the republic of Florence, and Machiavelli was deprived of his position. Disappointed and embittered, he spent the remainder of his life in exile, devoting his time primarily to writing. In his Discourses on Livy he praised the ancient Roman republic as a model for all time. He lauded constitutionalism, equality, liberty, in the sense of freedom from outside interference, and subordination of religion to the interests of the state. But Machiavelli also wrote The Prince in which he described the politics and practices of government, not in accordance with some lofty ideal, but as they actually were. The supreme obligation of the ruler, he avowed, was to maintain the power and safety of the country. Cynical in his views of human nature, Machiavelli maintained that all men are prompted exclusively by motives of self-interest, particularly by desires for personal power and material prosperity. The head of the state should therefore not take for granted the loyalty or affection of his subjects.

Far more congenial to contemporary tastes than the shocking political theories of Machiavelli were the guidelines for proper aristocratic conduct offered in The Book of the Courtier (1516) by the diplomat and count Baldesar Castiglione. Castiglione taught how to attain the elegant and seemingly effortless qualities necessary for acting like a “true gentleman.” He popularized the ideal of the “Renaissance man”: one who is accomplished in many different pursuits and is also brave, witty, and “courteous,” meaning civilized and learned. Castiglione was silent about woman’s role in “hearth and home,” but stressed instead the ways in which court ladies could be “gracious entertainers.” Thereby he was one of the first European male writers to offer women an independent role outside of the household. Widely read throughout Europe for over a century after its publication, Castiglione’s Courtier spread Italian ideals of “civility”, resulted in the ever-greater patronage of art and literature by the European aristocracy, and gave currency to the hitherto novel proposition that all women other nuns were not fated to passive vessels of reproduction and nutrition.

Had Castiglione’s ideal courtier wished to show off his knowledge of contemporary Italian literature, he would have had many works from which to choose, for sixteenth-century Italians were highly accomplished in the creation of imaginative prose and verse. The most eminent of sixteenth-century Italian epic poets was Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), author of a lengthy verse narrative called Orlando Furioso (The Madness of Roland). Ariosto wrote to make readers laugh and to charm them with felicitous descriptions of the quiet splendor of nature and the passions of love. His work represents the disillusionment of the late Renaissance, the loss of hope and faith, and the tendency to seek consolation in the pursuit of pleasure and aesthetic delight.

Despite numerous intellectual and literary advances, the most long-lived achievements of the Italian Renaissance were made in the realm of art. Of all the arts, painting was undoubtedly supreme. It was not until the fifteenth century that Italian painting began to attain its majority. One reason for this was that in the early fifteenth century the laws of linear perspective were discovered and first employed to give the fullest sense of three dimensions. Fifteenth-century artists also experimented with effects of light and shade (chiaroscuro) and for the first time carefully studied the anatomy and proportions of the human body. By the fifteenth century, too, increase in private wealth and the partial triumph of the secular spirit had freed the domain of art to a large extent from the service of religion. While subject matter from biblical history was still commonly employed, it was frequently infused wit nonreligious themes. The painting of portraits for the purpose of revealing the hidden mysteries of the soul now became popular. Paintings intended to appeal primarily to the intellect were paralleled by others whose main purpose was to delight the eye with gorgeous color and beauty of form. The fifteenth century was characterized also by the introduction of paining in oil. The use of the new technique doubtless had much to do with the artistic advance of this period.

The majority of the painters of the fifteenth century were Florentines. First among them was the precocious Masaccio (1401-1428), who inspired the work of Italian painters for a hundred years. His greatness as a painter is based on his success in “imitating nature,” which became a primary value in Renaissance painting. To achieve this effect he employed perspective, perhaps most dramatically in his fresco of the Trinity; he also used chiaroscuro with originality, leading to a dramatic and moving outcome in the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, he records the shame and guilt felt by the individuals in the biblical story.

The best known of the painters who directly followed the tradition begun by Masaccio was the Florentine Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510), who depicted both religious and classical themes. His work excels in beautiful and accurate depiction of natural detail; he was a master at painting the female nude. But his major contribution to Renaissance painting derives from the philosophical basis of much of his work, for he was closely associated with the Florentine Neoplatonists. Two of his most famous paintings are The Allegory of Spring and The Birth of Venus, which illustrate Neoplatonic concepts regarding the classical goddess of love, Venus or Aphrodite. Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity is a profoundly moving religious painting, in which he anticipates the end of the world.

Perhaps the greatest of the Florentine artists was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), one of the most versatile geniuses who ever lived. Leonardo was practically the personification of the “Renaissance man”: he was a painter, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, and inventor. His approach to painting was that it should be the most accurate possible imitation of nature. Leonardo was like a naturalist, basing his work on his own detailed observations of a blade of glass, the wing of a bird, a waterfall. He obtained human corpses for dissection – by which he was breaking the law – and reconstructed in drawing the minutest features of anatomy, which knowledge he carried over to his paintings. Leonardo worshiped nature, and was convinced of the essential divinity in all living things. It is generally agreed that Leonardo’s masterpiece are the Virgin of the Rocks, the Last Supper, and the Mona Lisa. The first represents not only his marvelous technical skill but also his passion for science and his belief in the universe as a well-ordered place. The Last Supper, painted on the walls of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, is a study of psychological reactions. The purpose of the artist is to portray the mingled emotions of surprise, horror, and guilt revealed in the faces of the disciples as they gradually perceive the meaning of their master’s statement. The third of Leonardo’s major triumphs, the Mona Lisa, reflects a similar interest in the varied moods of the human soul. Although it is true that the Mona Lisa is a portrait of an actual woman, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a Neapolitan, it is more than a mere photographic likeness.

The beginning of the High Renaissance around 1490 also witnessed the rise of the so-called Venetian school, the major members of which were Giovanni Bellini (c. 1426-1516), Giorgione (1478-1510), and Titian (c. 1477-1576). The work of all these men reflected the luxurious life and the pleasure-loving interests of the thriving commercial city of Venice. Most Venetian painters had little of the concern with philosophical and psychological themes that characterized the Florentine school. Their aim was to appeal primarily to the senses rather than to the mind. They delighted in painting idyllic landscapes and gorgeous symphonies of color. Their portraits were invariably likenesses of the rich and the powerful. In the subordination of form and meaning to color and elegance there were mirrored not only the sumptuous tastes of wealthy merchants, but also definite traces of Eastern influence which had filtered through from Byzantium during the Middle Ages.

The remaining great painters of the High Renaissance all accomplished their most important work in the first half of the sixteenth century. It was in this period that Renaissance Italian art reached its peak. Among the eminent painters of this period at least two must be given more than passing attention. One was Raphael (1483-1520), perhaps the most beloved artist of the entire Renaissance. The lasting appeal of his style is due primarily to his ennobling humanism, for he portrayed the members of the human species as temperate, wise, and dignified beings. Although Raphael was influenced by Leonardo da Vinci and coped many features of his work, he cultivated a much more symbolical or allegorical approach. His Disputa symbolized the dialectical relationship between the Church in heaven and the Church on earth. Raphael’s School of Athens is an allegorical representation of the conflict between the Platonist and Aristotelian philosophies. Raphael is noted also for his portraits and Madonnas.

The last towering figure of the High Renaissance was Michelangelo (1475-1564) of Florence. If Leonardo was a naturalist, Michelangelo was an idealist; where the former sought to recapture and interpret fleeting natural phenomena, Michelangelo was more concerned with expressing enduring, abstract truths. Michelangelo was a painter, sculptor, architect, and poet – and he expressed himself in all these with a similar power and in a similar manner. At the center of all of his paintings is the human figure, which is always powerful, colossal, magnificent. His achievements in painting appear in a single location – the Sistine Chapel in Rome – yet they are products of two different periods in the artist’s life and consequently exemplify two different artistic styles and outlooks on the human condition. Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel from 1508 to 1512, depicting scenes from the book of Genesis. All the panels in this series, including God Dividing the Light from Darkness, The Creation of Adam, and The Flood, exemplify the young artist’s commitment to classical Greek aesthetic principles of harmony, solidity, and dignified restraint. In the enormous Last Judgment, a fresco done for the Sistine Chapel’s altar wall in 1536, Michelangelo repudiated classical restraint and substituted a style that emphasized tension and distortion in order to communicate the older man’s pessimistic conception of a humanity wracked by fear and bowed by guilt.

In the realm of sculpture the Italian Renaissance took a great step forward by creating statues that were no longer carved as parts of columns or doorways on church buildings or as effigies on tombs. Instead, Italian sculptors for the first time since antiquity carved freestanding statues “in the round.” These freed sculpture from its bondage to architecture and established its status as a separate art frequently devoted to secular purposes. The first great master of Renaissance sculpture was Donatello (c.1386?-1466). He emancipated his art from Gothic mannerisms and introduced a new vigorous note of individualism. His bronze statue of David triumphant over the body of the slain Goliath, established a precedent of glorifying the life-size nude. Donatello’s David, moreover, represents a first step in the direction of imitating classical sculpture, not just in the depiction of a nude body but also in the subject’s posture of resting his weight on one leg. Yet this David is clearly a lithe adolescent rather than a muscular Greek athlete.

Certainly the greatest sculptor of the Italian Renaissance – indeed, probably the greatest sculptor of all time – was Michelangelo. Believing with Leonardo that the artist was an inspired creator, Michelangelo pursued this conviction to the conclusion that sculpture was the most exalted of the arts because it allowed the artist to imitate God most fully in recreating human forms. Michelangelo subordinated naturalism to the force of his imagination and sought restlessly to express his ideals in ever more arresting forms. As in his painting, Michelangelo’s sculpture followed a course from classicism to anticlassicism. The sculptor’s most noted early work, his David, executed in 1501 when he was just twenty-six, is surely his most perfect classical statue in style and inspiration. Choosing to depict a life-size male nude, Michelangelo nonetheless decided to make his own David heroic rather than merely graceful and hence conceived his nude in the purest, well-proportioned Greek terms. Deep serenity is no longer prominent in the works of Michelangelo’s middle period; rather, in a work such as the Moses of about 1515, the sculptor has begun to explore the use of anatomical distortion to create effects of emotional intensity – in this case the biblical prophet’s righteous rage. As Michelangelo’s life drew to a close he experimented ever more with exaggerated stylistic mannerisms for the purpose of communicating moods of brooding pensiveness or outright pathos. The culmination of this trend in Michelangelo’s statuary is his moving Descent from the Cross, a depiction of the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of the dead Christ, intended for the artist’s own tomb.

To a much greater extent than either sculpture or painting, Renaissance architecture had its roots in the past. The new building style was eclectic, a compound of elements derived from the Middle Ages and from antiquity. It was not the Greek or the Gothic, however, but the Roman and the Romanesque which provided the inspiration for the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. Neither the Greek nor the Gothic had ever found a congenial soil in Italy. The Romanesque, by contrast, was able to flourish there, since it was more in keeping with Italian traditions, while the persistence of a strong admiration for Latin culture made possible a revival of the Roman style. Renaissance architecture also emphasized harmony and proportion because Italian builders, under the influence of Neoplatonism, concluded that perfect proportions in man reflect the harmony of the universe, and that, therefore, the parts of a building should be related to each other and to the whole in the same way as the parts of the human body.