Chapter 8 The Renaissance in Letters

So. Leonardo. Michelangelo. Raphael. Botticelli. Caravaggio. Gentileschi. Vermeer. Rembrandt. Interesting stuff, eh? But perhaps you are happy to be done with the Renaissance.

Giorgio Vasari. (1544). Six Tuscan Poets. Oil on canvas.

But wait. What’s this? Giorgio Vasari wrote his great history of Renaissance artists, right? But whom is he picturing in the group portrait above. Six great poets from the Tuscan—i.e. the region of Florence—Humanist tradition? Boccaccio? Petrarch? Dante? Did he revere writers too?

See, the thing is, the Renaissance also occurred on paper. You’ll recall that Renaissance artists were fueled by Humanist scholarship which recovered the learning of Classical Greece and Rome. Scholars and poets empowered painters and sculptors, not the other way around.

References

Vasari, Giorgio. (1544). Six Tuscan Poets [Painting]. Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Institute of Art. Jstor https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.15637413