Humanism

Eduardo Cortez

Period 4

Mr. Lehavi

August 30, 2015

Humanism is a renaissance movement that turned away from the medieval scholasticism and took more interest in ancient Greek and roman culture. Humanism changed art by making man the main structure of paintings and in literature it brought back ancient Greek and roman thought into writing. It led to individualism, the thought of being independent, which many people decided to follow instead of scholasticism. Although artists mainly followed individualism, during the renaissance people began to believe that the individual was more important than the church. This decline in the church and medieval scholasticism led to the rise of humanism and the Renaissances. It had the biggest impact on peasants. During the Bubonic Plague most of the population of Europe was killed. This meant that there were less workers, but bigger wages. Many peasants became rich and began dressing like lords. This challenged the feudal class structure, thus improving peasant life. It can be related to secularization, the process in which religion loses social and cultural significance in society, because humanism led to individualism which led the decline of the importance of the church. The people began to erase religion from their society (secularization) and began to follow their own footsteps, thus becoming more aware of themselves as individuals. Also it help create trading cities that connected Europe, the Byzantine Empire and the Moslem world through the Mediterranean Sea. These cites states, Venice Florence and Milan, became very powerful because the feudal system did not have much power in that region.

Humanism changed art by making man the central structure of portraits and paintings. It created individualism in art such as Michelangelo’s sculpture, David. It was the thought of having a person with the perfect body and the perfect mind. He also created the Sistine Chapel, the Birth of Adam. This painting has Adam and God in painted...