The roots of the secular autobiography are to be found in the books of ricordanze (memoranda) kept by Italian professional and business men from the late 13th century. From bare accounts of land purchases and marriage settlements, these personal notebooks could develop into family histories which might also contain soul-searching and self examinations, like those of the early 15th century Florentine merchants Goro Dati and Giovanni Morelli, or the Zibaldone quaresimale of Giovanni Rucellai (1457-85). Records of business ventures and public offices were the starting point for autobiographies of external action: while the Cronica of Jacopo Salviati is a fairly wooden account of captaincies and embassies 1398-1411, that of Buonaccorso Pitti is a lively narrative of fortunes won and lost through trading and gambling (written 1412-22). The Commentaries of Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Pius II) similarly concentrate on events, leaving the character of the author to be deduced from his actions. The supreme example of the (apparently) unconsciously revealing autobiography is the famous Life of Cellini: of the deliberately revealing one, that of Cardano.
The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies.
A struggle between factions within the major ruling guilds triggered the uprising. Members of the lower classes, called upon to take part in the revolt in late June, continued to agitate on their own during the month of July. They presented a series of petitions to the Signoria (executive council of Florence) demanding a more equitable fiscal policy and the right to establish guilds for those groups not already organized. Then, on July 22, the lower classes forcibly took over the government, placing one of their members, the wool carder Michele di Lando, in the important executive office of gonfaloniere of justice. The new government, controlled by the minor guilds, was novel in that for the first time it represented all the classes of society, including the ciompi, who were raised to the status of a guild.
But the ciompi were soon disillusioned. Their economic condition worsened, and the new government failed to implement all their demands. Conflicting interests of the minor guilds and the ciompi became evident. On August 31 a large group of the ciompi that had gathered in the Piazza della Signoria was easily routed by the combined forces of the major and minor guilds. In reaction to this revolutionary episode, the ciompi guild was abolished, and within four years the dominance of the major guilds was restored.
The first mercenary armies in Italy (often called free companies) were made up of foreigners. The earliest (1303) was composed of Catalans who had fought in the dynastic wars of the south. In the mid-14th century the Grand Company, composed mainly of Germans and Hungarians, terrorized the country, devastating Romagna, Umbria, and Tuscany. It was one of the first to have a formal organization and a strict code of discipline, developed by the Provençal adventurer Montréal d' Albarno. The Englishman Sir John Hawkwood, one of the most famous of the non-Italian condottieri, came to Italy in the 1360s during a lull in the Hundred Years' War and for the next 30 years led the White Company in the confused wars of northern Italy.
By the end of the 14th century, Italians began to raise mercenary armies, and soon condottieri were conquering principalities for themselves. The organization of the companies was perfected in the early 15th century by Muzio Attendolo Sforza, in the service of Naples, and his rival Braccio da Montone, in the service of Perugia. Muzio's son, Francesco Sforza, who won control of Milan in 1450, was one of the most successful of all the condottieri.
Less fortunate was another great condottiere, Carmagnola, who first served one of the viscounts of Milan and then conducted the wars of Venice against his former masters but at last awoke the suspicion of the Venetian oligarchy and was put to death before the palace of St. Mark (1432). Toward the end of the 15th century, when the large cities had gradually swallowed up the small states and Italy itself was drawn into the general current of European politics and became the battlefield of powerful armies--French, Spanish, and German--the condottieri, who proved unequal to the gendarmery of France and the improved Italian troops, disappeared.
The soldiers who fought under the condottieri were almost entirely heavy-armoured cavalry and were noted for their rapacious and disorderly behaviour. With no goal beyond personal gain, the armies of the condottieri often changed sides, and their battles often resulted in little bloodshed.
Several major historic waves of foundations can be distinguished. (1) Compagnie dei disciplinati or dei laudesi, i.e. flagellant confraternities, which were conformist offshoots of the partly heterodox flagellant movement of 1260. The Venetian scuole grandi were especially prestigious examples. By the 16th century, although flagellant practices were retained in some cases, these functioned more as mutual aid societies and as administrators of charitable funds. (2) Confraternite del Rosario, which spread in the 15th century, being primarily promoted by the Dominicans. (3) A group of confraternities which spread from the mid-15th century, commonly called either Compagnia di S. Girolamo or Compagnia del Divino Amore ('Company of Divine Love'; perhaps the first example was the Florentine Buonuomini di S. Martino), associated with certain specialized charitable enterprises, in the first place relief of the poveri vergognosi or 'shamefaced poor', i.e. respectable people who had to be aided discreetly. In the 16th century they also promoted hospitals of the incurabili, primarily for syphilitics, convents of convertite, i.e. reformed prostitutes, and refuges for maidens. To this movement belonged the famous Roman Company or Oratory of Divine Love, founded c. 1514 in S. Dorotea in Trastevere. This recruited some leading churchmen and papal officials (as a confraternity it was unusual in its heavy clerical membership), but many ascriptions of leading church reformers to it are without sound foundation and there is no basis for its reputation as a seminal body in the Catholic reform movement. The new congregation of the Clerks Regular called Theatines was, however, an offshoot and these took the lead in propagating Compagnie del Divino Amore in Italy. Other types of confraternity were those of the buona morte, which accompanied condemned prisoners, and those which aided imprisoned debtors, e.g. the Florentine Neri.
Confraternities commonly had chapels in parish churches or in the churches of religious orders, but sometimes had their own premises, e.g. the splendid ones of the Venetian scuole grandi; in Florence, the hall of Orsanmichele housed a devotional and almsgiving confraternity as well as being a grain dispensary. Great confraternities might exercise public functions: certain Florentine ones concerned with welfare became effectively state magistracies, while the Venetian government, in addition to giving them a ceremonial role, relied upon the scuole grandi to distribute funds. Confraternities, notwithstanding their location, tended to be manifestations of lay piety independent of ecclesiastical institutions, or at least outside the framework of the parish and the diocese.
In a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature.
(2) To have the distinction of one's deeds recognized in life and to be revered for them posthumously: this was glory. The nature of true gloria was much discussed, whether it must be connected with the public good, whether the actions that led to it must conform with Christian ethics, how it differed from notoriety. The concept did not exclude religious figures (the title of the church of the Frari in Venice was S. Maria Gloriosa), but it was overwhelmingly seen in terms of secular success and subsequent recognition, as determining the lifestyles of the potent and the form of their commemoration in literature, in portraits and on tombs. As such, it has been taken as a denial of medieval religiosity ('sic transit gloria mundi'), and thus a hallmark of Renaissance individual ism; as a formidable influence on cultural patronage; and as spurring on men of action, as well as writers and artists, to surpass their rivals - including their counterparts in antiquity.
In thinking of Nicola (d. c. 1284) or Giovanni Pisano (d. after 1314) there is same danger of forgetting what had happened in French sculpture half a century or more earlier, and likewise it is hard to remember that the spectacular achievements of early Renaissance art are a singularly localized eddy in the continuing stream of late gothic European art. By northern European standards few Italian works of art can be called gothic without qualification, and the story of 13th and 14th century Italian architecture is as much one of resistance to the new style as of its reception, whether directly from France or through German or central European intermediaries. In sculpture and in painting, the Italian reluctance to distort the human figure, conditioned by a never wholly submerged awareness of the omnipresent antique heritage, gives a special quality to the work of even those artists such as Giovanni Pisano or Simone Martini who most closely approached a pure gothic style.
Nevertheless, the vitalizing role of Northern gothic art throughout the early Renaissance and the period leading up to it should never be underestimated. The artistic, like the cultural and commercial, interaction was continuous and much of the Italian achievement is incomprehensible if seen in isolation. It is not merely at the level of direct exchanges between one artist and another, or the influence of one building; painting, manuscript or piece of sculpture upon another, that the effects are to be felt. The streaming quality of line which is so characteristic of Brunelleschi's early Renaissance architecture surely reflects a sensitivity to the gothic contribution which is entirely independent of, and lies much deeper than, the superficial particularities of form.
The counterflow of influence and inspiration from South to North must likewise not be underrated. In particular, the contribution of Italian painters from Duccio and Simone Martini onwards is central to the evolution of the so-called International Gothic style developing in Burgundy, Bohemia and north Italy in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
Factional struggles had existed within the Italian states from time immemorial, the parties taking a multitude of local names. In Florence, however, Guelf and Ghibelline were applied to the local factions which supposedly originated in a feud between the Buondelmonte and Amidei clans, c. 1216. In 1266-67 the Guelf party, which had recruited most of the merchant class, finally prevailed over the predominantly noble Ghibellines; after this, internal factions in Florence went under other names, like the Blacks and the Whites who contested for control of the commune between 1295 and 1302. Meanwhile the Parte Guelfa had become a corporate body whose wealth and moral authority as the guardian of political orthodoxy enabled it to play the part of a powerful pressure group through most of the 14th century. After the War of the Eight Saints, the influence of the Parte declined rapidly. Although its palace was rebuilt c. 1418-58 to the designs of Brunelleschi, it had no part in the conflicts surrounding the rise of the Medici régime.
These Christian heresies had in common an attachment to the ideal of apostolic poverty, which came to be seen by the ecclesiastical authorities as a challenge to the institutionalized Church. The Waldensians or Valdesi (not to be confused with Valdesiani, the followers of Juan de Valdes, d. 1541) took their origin from the Poor Men of Lyons, founded by Peter Valdes or Waldo in the 1170s. They were distinguished by a strong attachment to the Bible and a desire to imitate Christ's poverty. At first approved by the Papacy as an order of laymen, they were condemned in 1184. Likewise condemned was the rather similar Lombard movement of the Humiliati. One stream of these remained as an approved order within the Catholic Church, while others merged with the Waldensians. The Waldensians came to teach that the sacraments could be administered validly only by the pure, i.e: only by Waldensian superiors or perfecti practising evangelical poverty. Alone among the heretical sects existing in Italy they were organized as a church, and regarded themselves as forming, together with brethren north of the Alps, one great missionary community. They spread all over western and central Europe but in the long term they came to be largely confined to the Rhaetian and Cottian Alps (the Grisons and Savoy). The Italian Waldensians in the 16th century resisted absorption by Reformed Protestantism.
The early Franciscans might be regarded as a movement, similar in character to the Poor Men of Lyons, which was won for the cause of Catholic orthodoxy. However, divisions within the order over the issue of poverty led to religious dissidence. The Spirituals held up the ideal of strict poverty as obligatory for Franciscans and, indeed, normative for churchmen; following the Papacy's recognition of the Franciscan order as a property-owning body in 1322-23, their position became one of criticism of the institutional Church as such. Their heresies came to incorporate the millenarian doctrines of the 12th century abbot Joachim of Fiore. He had prophesied a coming age of the Holy Spirit ushered in by Spiritual monks; his heretical followers prophesied a new Spiritual gospel that would supersede the Bible. Joachimite Spiritualists came to see the pope, head of the 'carnal Church', as Antichrist. The main impact of the movement upon the laity was in southern France; in Italy it was an affair of various groups of fraticelli de paupere vita (little friars of the poor life), mainly in the south.
Humanism is a 19th century coinage, invented to describe the programme of studies, and its conditioning of thought and expression, that was known from the late 15th century as the province of the umanista, the teacher of the studia humanitatis or arts syllabus in schools and universities. This had by then come to include the study of Latin (and to a much lesser extent, Greek) texts dealing with grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. Such a programme was secular, concerned with man, his nature and his gifts, but Renaissance humanism must be kept free from any hint of either 'humanitarianism' or 'humanism' in its modern sense of a rational, non-religious approach to life.
Much of the material for humanism had been latent in the Middle Ages in the form of well-known classical literary texts, those of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Sallust, Seneca among them. What was needed to so redirect interest as to amount to a revival of imaginative understanding of these authors was, first, a new appreciation of their purely literary quality and an awareness of how they achieved their effects, then a clearer vision of the writers themselves and of the times in which they had lived. Interest of this sort is observable in Padua, Verona and Naples in the first third of the 14th century With Petrarch humanism is in being: sensitiveness to quality and purpose, an apprehension of personality and historical distance, an itch to restore the original quality of classical works by editing them, and to discover others that had lain neglected or forgotten in monastic libraries; finally an urge to emulate classical literary achievements that, by producing a form of ambition at odds with Christian otherworldliness, caused a perturbed mental stocktaking that was to make the relationship between the present and the ancient past an increasingly selfconscious one.
As text by text - Catullus, more Cicero, more Livy, Vitruvius, Quintilian - the imaginative reconstruction of the ancient world proceeded, its relevance became clearer. Their sense no longer obscure, their personalities restored, replaced in the context of their own society, the authors of antiquity presented a view of a civilization, vast in extent and time, which had not only the clarity of a clearly perceived remoteness but the wholeness of a completed cycle, from obscurity through Empire - first Greek, then Roman - to barbarian chaos. Though distant in time; this civilization was attractively near in space to a people whose ploughs turned up Roman coins and statues and whose southern lands contained Greek-speaking communities. And the combination enabled them to see the ancient world as a source of models from whom to learn about statecraft, the waging of war, the creation of works of art - and the more important art of bearing up under adversity. The challenge of these models was all the easier to accept because of the feeling of pride in contemporary cultural achievement such as was expressed in 1492 by Ficino: 'it is undoubtedly a golden age which has restored to light the liberal arts that had almost been destroyed: grammar, eloquence, poetry, sculpture, music.'
Recent formulations stress the theme of relevance: 'civic humanism' the role of authors like Cicero in encouraging the individual to participate in government; 'humanist educational theory' the preparation for a life of action; 'artistic humanism' the adaptation of classical forms; 'scientific humanism' the rehabilitation of ancient, especially Greek, texts as guides; 'utilitarian humanism' as an invitation to copy, as in military or agricultural affairs, methods that could help the present. But in the 16th century, as in the 13th century, the core of humanism was the private preoccupation of the umanista with getting his text right: unless the word 'humanism' retains the smell of the scholar's' lamp it will mislead - as it will if it is seen as in opposition to a Christianity its students in the main wished to supplement, not contradict; through their patient excavation of the sources of ancient God-inspired wisdom.
Elements of style which were generally wide-spread, did not belong to any particular country and were characteristic of art in courts. In the second half of the 14th century, models appeared in court art in the circle of French-Flemish artists serving at French courts and Bohemian regions of the Emperor's Court which determined works of art all over Europe at the end of the century. Human figures, landscapes and spaces in a realistic approach were accompanied by a peculiar quality of dreams, decorative dynamism and deep emotional charge. It is called as a soft style on the basis of lyrical expressions and drapes: it is more than a simple system of formal motifs, it denominates a kind of behaviour. Artists of the period were engaged in learning the human soul until their attention was attracted to the world (e.g. Donatallo, Masaccio and Jan van Eyck).
Given the admiration for the men and artefacts of ancient Rome, the stress on individual character, the desire for fame and the penchant for summing up temperament in symbols and images, it is easy to understand how quickly the fashion for commissioning medals spread. Its pioneer executant was Pisanello. The precedents before he began to cast medals in 1438-39 had been few and excessively coin-like. Within 10 years he had established the form the medal was to retain until the influence was registered of the reverseless, hollow-cast and wafer-thin medals of the 1560s and 70s made by Bombarda (Andrea Cambi). Pisanello's approach was first echoed by the Veronese Matteo de' Pasti (d. 1467-688). It was, perhaps oddly, not until the works from 1485 of Niccolò Fiorentino (Niccolò di Forzore Spinelli, 1430-1514) that Florence produced a medallist of the highest calibre. Other specialists in the medium included Sperandio (Sperandio Savelli, c. 1425-1504), L'Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, c. 1460-1528), Caradosso (Cristoforo Caradosso Foppa, 1452-1526/27). The work of these men, and of the many, often anonymous, who reflected them, is still coveted because it avoided the two medallistic errors: making a medal look like either an enlarged piece of money or a small sculptured plaque.
Alberti described the palace as a city in little, and, like cities, Italian Renaissance palaces vary in type according to differences of climate, tradition and social structure. On to these regional stocks were grafted new architectural strains, reflecting theoretical reinterpretations of antiquity and individually influential examples.
The atrium and peristyle house described by Vitruvius and now known from Pompeii did not survive antiquity, and much of the interest of Renaissance designs lies in creative misunderstandings of Vitruvius's text. Medieval palace architecture probably inherited the insula type of ancient apartment house, related to the modest strip dwellings which never disappeared from Italian cities. In Florence a merchant palace developed from fortified beginnings, with vaulted shop openings on the ground floor, and the main apartments above, reached by internal stone staircases opening from an inner court. Renaissance developments regularized without changing the essential type, although large cloister-like courtyards were introduced, while shops came to be thought undignified. At Michelozzo's Medici Palace (1444) a square arcaded courtyard with axial entrance lies behind a façade of graduated rustication, with biforate windows, a classical cornice replacing the traditional wooden overhang. The apartments on the 'piano nobile' formed interconnecting suites of rooms of diminishing size and increasing privacy. The classical orders which Alberti introduced to the façade of the Palazzo Rucellai (c.1453) were not taken up by the conservative Florentines, who continued to build variations on the Medici Palace (Palazzo Pitti; Palazzo Strozzi). In the 16th century rustication was reduced to quoins and voussoirs, and large windows appeared on the ground floor, 'kneeling' on elongated volutes.
At Urbino the Ducal Palace (1465) reflected Alberti's recommendations for the princely palace, and was in turn influential on late 15th century palaces in Rome (e.g. the Cancelleria). A harmonious Florentine courtyard and ample staircase replace the embattled spaces of medieval seigneurial castles, of which vestiges remain only in the towers flanking the balconies of the duke's private apartments, designed as a scholarly retreat. In the absence of a merchant class or a cultured nobility in 15th century Rome, the architectural pace was set by the papal court. Papal incentives to build, and large households, meant less compact plans for cardinals' palaces, often built next to their titular churches. Renaissance forms appear in the unfinished courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia (1460s), with its arcade system derived from the nearby Theatre of Marcellus, and in the delicately ordered stonework of the Cancelleria (1485). In the 16th century vestigial corner towers and shops disappear from cardinals' palaces, and Antonio da Sangallo's Palazzo Farnese (1516) introduces symmetrical planning and Vitrivuan elements, like the colonnaded vestibule, behind a sober Florentine façade, enlivened by Michelangelo's cornice. A smaller palace type supplied the needs of an enlarged papal bureaucracy, more ambitious for display than for domestic accommodation. Bramante's 'House of Raphael' sets the façade style not only for this new type, but also for Renaissance houses all over Europe. Raphael and Peruzzi made ingenious use of difficult sites (Palazzo da Brescia; Palazzo Massimi), and their sophisticated façades flattered the architectural pretensions of patron and pope (e.g. Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila).
Movement of patrons and architects, especially after the Sack of Rome, meant a diffusion of Roman forms to central and northern Italy, where Sanmicheli's palaces in Verona, and Palladio's in Vicenza, adapted Roman types to suit local conditions. Palladio's 4-columned atrium is a Vitruvian solution to the traditionally wide Veneto entrance hall, and his plan for the Palazzo da Porto-Festa contains explicit references to Vitruvius's House of the Greeks. In Venice, defended by its lagoon and a stable political system, the hereditary aristocracy built palaces open to trade and festivity on the Grand Canal. The traditional Venetian palace has a tripartite structure: long central halls above entrance vestibules used for unloading merchandise are lit on the canal façade by clusters of glazed windows (rare elsewhere), and at the back from small courts with external staircases (as in the Ca' d'Oro). Codussi's palaces introduced biforate windows and a grid of classical orders into the system, while Sansovino's Palazzo Cornaro retains vestiges of the Venetian type (small courtyard; tripartite façade) despite its Bramantesque coupled orders and licentious window surrounds. Other cities, like Genoa, evolved influential types. Through engravings and the illustrated treatises, Italian Renaissance ideas of palace planning, originally evolved in response to specific conditions, came to be applied all over Europe.
A number of matters, notably the making of appointments to especially wealthy sees and abbacies, or the incidence of taxation, could lead to conflict with secular authorities. This in turn led to the practice whereby monarchs retained the services of cardinals sympathetic to their national policies, so that they might have a voice at court, as it were, to influence popes in their favour. The choice of popes became increasingly affected by the known political sympathies of cardinals, and the pressure and temptations that could be applied to them. So onerous, various and inevitably politicized an office was not for a saint. The pious hermit Celestine V had in 1294 crumpled under its burden after only a few months.
The identification of the Papacy with Rome, which seems so inevitable, was long in doubt. The insecurity of the shabby and unpopulous medieval city, prey to the feuds of baronial families like the Orsini, Colonna and Caetani, had already forced the popes from time to time to set up their headquarters elsewhere in Italy. For the greater part of the 14th century (1309-77) the Papacy funetioned out of Italy altogether, at Avignon, building there (especially the huge Palace of the Popes) on a scale that suggested permanence. Though they were by no means in the pockets of their neighbours the kings of France, criticism of undue influence steadily mounted. Provence ceased to be a comfortingly secure region as the Hundred Years War between England and France proceeded. Finally the breakdown of central authority in the Papal State, despite the efforts there of such strenuous papal lieutenants as Cardinal Albornoz (in 1353-67), prompted Gregory XI to return to Rome in 1377.
The period of authority and cultivated magnificence associated with the Renaissance Papacy was, however, to be long delayed. The return to Rome was challenged by a group of cardinals faithful to France. On Gregory's death in 1378 their election of a rival or antipope opened a period of divided authority, further complicated in 1409 by the election of yet a third pope. This situation deepened the politicization of the papal office (for support to the rivals was given purely on the basis of the dynastic conflicts in Europe) and confused the minds, if it did no serious damage to the faith, of individuals. But the remedy was another blow to the recovery of papal confidence and power. To resolve the problem of divided authority, protect the faith from the extension of heresy (especially in the case of the Bohemian followers of John Huss), and bring about an improvement in the standards of education and deportment among the Church's personnel, it was at last resolved to call together a General Council of the Church. It was argued that such a council, which met at Constance 1414-18, would, by being representative of the Christian faithful as a whole; possess an authority which, in the eyes of God, could supersede that of a pope. In this spirit Huss was tried and executed, a number of reforms relating to the clergy were passed and, above all (for this was the only measure with permanent consequences), two of the rival popes were deposed and the other forced to abdicate; Martin V being elected by a fairly united body of cardinals.
There remained; however, the challenge to his authority represented by the conciliar theory itself: that final authority could be vested as well in a group (if properly constituted) as in an individual. This view was expressed again by the Council of Basle, which lasted from 1431 until as late as 1449. Not until 1460 did a pope feel strong enough to make rejection of the theory an article of faith, as Pius II did in his bull 'Execrabilis'. By then, however, in spite of further absences from Rome, notably that of Eugenius IV (1431-40), who governed the Church chiefly from Florence, the acceptance of the city as the most practical - as well, from the point of view of its religious associations, the most appropriate - base for the Papacy had been made clear in the plans of Nicholas V for improving it. Thenceforward the creation of a capital commensurate with the authority of the institution it housed continued steadily. As at Avignon, fine buildings and a luxurious style of life were, as such, considered perfectly suitable for the role played by the head of the Church: a view exemplified in episcopal and archiepiscopal palaces all over Europe. However, the creation of a cultural capital, through lavish patronage of artists, scholars and men of letters, as well as a governmental one, not only contributed to an atmosphere of worldliness that aroused criticism, but may also have diverted the popes from registering the true import of the spiritual movements that were to cause the Reformation conflict of faiths. The fortunes of the Papacy from its return to Rome can be followed in the biographies of its outstanding representatives.
Large claims have been made in the field of the arts and of human sensibility for the influence of plague. In Florence and Siena from 1348 to 1380, religious feeling and the art which mirrors it seem to assume more sombre forms and to reflect less the human and more the divine, transcendent and threatening aspects of faith. Yet the black rat and its plague-bearing flea could find a more hospitable environment in the hovels of the poor than in the stone-built houses of wealthy patrons of the arts (who, moreover, were often able to remove themselves from areas where plague had broken out). For this reason, perhaps, it is difficult to find, outside Tuscany, evidence of cultural change which could be attributed to plague, and in the Italy of the 15th and 16th centuries the main effect of the disease in art is to be found only in the frequent portrayal of the plague saints, Rocco and Sebastian. It is none the less interesting to recall that it was against a stark background of continual menace from plague that the human achievements of the Renaissance came into being.
Plato's philosophy has a distinctly other-worldly character, emphasizing the spiritual and non-material aspects of reality. In contrast with Aristotle, he gives knowledge and philosophy an intuitive and intellectual basis, not so much dependent upon sense experience as on inspiration and direct mental contact with the supra-sensible sources of knowledge. Thus empirical science does not have a central role in Plato's thought, though mathematics is consistently stressed as being an important gateway to the natural world. Such themes as poetic inspiration and harmony, as well as the rigorous analyses of central moral doctrines such as justice and happiness, have ensured that his works were widely read for many centuries. Rather unsystematic, with many internal contradictions and points left unresolved, his works were already subjected to critical analysis and amplification by his earliest followers. Plotinus, the greatest of his ancient disciples, systematized and added to what Plato had done, turning the tradition in an even more mystical and spiritual direction, while at the same time giving the philosophy a more coherent form. 'Neo-Platonism' resulted from these modifications and those of other ancient Platonists.
Only a small proportion of Plato's works was known during the Middle Ages in western Europe, though indirect knowledge of Platonic doctrine through many late ancient sources secured a significant fortuna down to the 15th century. Petrarch favoured Plato over Aristotle as an authority and set the tone for the great Renaissance revival of interest in Platonism. The real re-emergence of Plato began around 1400, when Greek manuscripts of most of his works came into Italy from Constantinople. Latin translations of several works were made in the early 15th century, but only with Ficino were the entire writings first made available in Latin (published 1484). Ficino was also the founder of the informal Platonic Academy which met at the Medici villa at Careggi, near Florence. Ficino's interpretation went far beyond what could be found in the text of Plato, and he utilized many other writings, including those of Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus and a range of pseudonymous texts, among them those attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and Orpheus, and the Chaldaic Oracles, all of which he also translated into Latin. He emphasized the close kinship between the Platonic philosophy and the Christian religion, seeing them as parallel paths to the truth connected at source, and holding that Plato had had access to the Pentateuch and absorbed some ideas from it: he agreed with Numenius (2c. AD) that Plato was a 'Greek-speaking Moses'.
Ficino's translations of Plato and the neo-Platonists were reprinted frequently and were the standard sources for knowledge of Platonism for several centuries. Among his Italian followers Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Francesco da Diacceto (1466-1522) were perhaps the most important, and Agostino Steuco (c. 1497-1548) developed Christian Platonism into a 'perennial philosophy'. The impact of Ficino's work gradually made itself felt be yond the confines of Italy, for example with Symphorian Champier (c. 1472-c. 1539) and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (c. 1460-1536) in France and John Colet (c. 1467-1519) and Thomas More (1478-1535) in England.
The first Greek edition of Plato's works was published by Aldus at Venice in 1513 , but the later edition published at Paris in 1578 by Henri Estienne achieved perhaps even greater fame. A new Latin translation, prepared by Jean de Serres (1540-98) to accompany Estienne's edition, partially, but not completely, replaced Ficino's. There was no complete translation into a vernacular language during the Renaissance, though various dialogues were rendered into Italian and French, the translations of Louis Le Roy (d.1577) becoming particularly popular. Unlike the case of Aristotle, the interest in Plato and neo-Platonism was largely outside the universities. It was especially in a number of academies in France and Italy that there was a focused reading of Platonic texts. The numerous editions and translations show that there was a wide general demand for his writings. Plato was read in the universities, if on a very limited scale: for example various dialogues were read from time to time as part of Greek courses. In the 1570s special chairs of Platonic philosophy were established at the universities of Pisa and Ferrara. The latter was held for 14 years by Francesco Patrizi of Cherso, one of the most forceful and original Platonic philosophers of the Renaissance.
The equestrian portrait, based on antique statues such as the Marcus Aurelius monument (Rome, Campidoglio), was revived in the 14th century. Two examples in fresco are Simone Martini's Guidoriccio (c. 1328; Siena, Palazzo Pubblico) and the posthumous portrait of Sir John Hawkwood (1436; Florence, Cathedral) by Uccello, which gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional statue seen from below. The Venetian Republic ordered imposing monuments from Donatello (1447; Gattarnelata, Padua) and Verrocchio (14799; Colleoni, Venice), whilst other statesmen ordered their own images to be erected in public places, directly relating themselves to the military heroes of ancient Rome. Another form of political portraiture derived from antiquity was the commemorative portrait medal designed by artists such as Pisanello.
The carved or painted profile portrait became popular in the 1450s. The realism of the clear, flattened image, painted under the influence of Flemish examples by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, was superseded by the three-quarter and frontal portrait, psychologically more complex, such as Leonardo's enigmatic Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) with her momentary smile or Andrea del Sarto's arresting Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery). The 16th century portrait became generalized, Lotto's Andrea Odoni (1527; Royal Collection) being an idealized concept of a collector rather than an individual. Group portraits, decorating whole rooms, include the narrative scenes of the Gonzaga court painted by Mantegna (completed 1474; Mantua, Palazzo Ducale) and the elaborate schemes commissioned by the Farnese family in Rome from Vasari (1546; Palazzo della Cancelleria) and Salviati (after 1553; Palazzo Farnese). Portraits were also incorporated into religious narratives, as in Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle painted for Giovanni Tornabuoni in S. Maria Novella, Florence (1486-90).
Outstanding preachers of the 15th century whose sermons are extant are the Franciscans S. Bernardino da Siena and Bernardino da Feltre (d. 1494), together with the Dominican Savonarola. For the 16th century there are the Capuchin Ochino; the Franciscans Franceschino Visdomini (1514-73), Cornelio Musso (1511-74), bishop of Bertinoro and Bitonto, and Francesco Panigarola (1548-94), bishop of Asti; the Augustinian Canon Gabriele Fiamma (1533-85), bishop of Chioggia; and, from the secular clergy, Borromeo. The call to repentance was a major feature of Lenten sermons: here Bernardino da Feltre stood out for his harsh, minatory exhortations; Savonarola and Musso, in their appeals for communal religious renewal, took on the dramatic role of Old Testament prophets as if laying claim to divine inspiration. Mendicants of the 15th century castigated the vices of society, not least those of statesmen and prelates, but 16th century ones were more cautious here.
The styles of S. Bernardino da Siena and Bernardino da Feltre were earthy, abrasive even; Savonarola's by contrast was cultivated and his last sermons were complex and arcane; Ochino's unadorned style was peculiarly limpid and conveys a winged emotionality. The sermons of Visdomini, Musso and Panigarola on the other hand often strain after emotional effect by accumulation of rhetoric and largesse of poetic vocabulary; Panigarola is particularly noted for his literary conceits and has been viewed as a significant precursor of the literary Baroque. Fiamma's sermons, however, are not florid in style; his forte was allegorical explication of scriptural references. The flow of Borromeo's grandiose and sometimes emotive style shows how he, by contrast with the mendicant preachers, was versed in classical and patristic rhetoric. In general 16th century sermons were very free in their formal organization and in no way bound to the principles of construction laid down in medieval preaching manuals.
The Benedictines, who had no overall organization originally, were mostly grouped into congregations by the 16th century. The Silvestrines, Celestines and Olivetines were old congregations. That of S. Giustina, Padua, which was to become the main Italian one, developed from 1419 under the leadership of the Venetian Lodovico Barbo. He was particularly concerned to develop sacred studies and eventually there were certain designated houses of study for the entire congregation, the most notable being S. Benedetto, Mantua. In 1504, having absorbed St Benedict's original monastery, it became the Cassinese congregation. The Camaldolese were an offshoot of the Benedictines. Founded by St Romuald c. 1012, they followed a distinctive eremetical rule of life, rather on the model of Eastern monasticism, with hermitages linked to matrix monasteries. In the second decade of the 16th century Paolo Giustiniani led a movement for a revival of the strict eremetical ideal; hence the formation of the Monte Corona congregation.
Canons Regular of St Augustine follow a rule and are basically monks; they are to be distinguished from secular canons who serve cathedral and collegiate churches. Two major congregations arose from reform movements in the 15th century: that of S. Salvatore, Bologna (1419), and the Lateran one (1446) which grew from S. Maria di Fregonaia, Lucca. A body genuinely monastic and contemplative in spirit, although technically of secular canons, was the congregation of S. Giorgio in Alga, Venice (1404), whose foundation is especially associated with Gabriel Condulmer (later Eugenius IV) and S. Lorenzo Giustiniani, the great patriarch of Venice. The Hermits of St Augustine and the Carmelites were originally contemplative eremetical orders which turned to the active life of friars. The Hermits of St Jerome (Hieronymites or Gerolimini) appeared from the 15th century and included the Fiesole and Lombard congregations and that of Pietro Gambacorta of Pisa.
The Friars Minor (Franciscans) had been split after their founder's death by disputes between the Spirituals, with their ideology of an absolute apostolic poverty, and their more institutionalized brethren, the Conventuals. After the repression of the Spirituals, the great dispute in the order was primarily a legalistic one: the division was between the Conventuals, whose friaries were corporate property-owners; and the generally moderate Observants; whose friaries were technically non-property owning, their resources being in the hands of trustees. 'The Observance' did not necessarily designate a very straitened rule of life but in the 15th century a strict movement of the Observance developed whose leading figures were S. Bernardino of Siena, S. Giovanni da Capestrano and Giacomo della Marca. In 1517, the bull 'Ite vos' of Leo X instituted the Great Division between Friars Minor (Conventual) and Friars Minor of the Observance; various groups were fused in the latter body, which was given precedence over the Conventuals. The Conventuals, however, continued to hold the order's great basilicas. The same bull provided for special friaries within the Observance for those dedicated to a very strict interpretation of the Rule. Failure to implement this clause caused a splinter movement of zealot groups which finally coalesced into the Capuchins and the Reformed (canonically recognized in 1528 and 1532 respectively). The Order of Preachers (Dominicans) underwent similar if less serious crises over the issue of poverty and a body of the strict observance was established in the late 14th century; however, the Dominicans were substantially reunited under the generalate of the great Tommaso di Vio da Gaeta (1508-18). Other orders of Friars were the Minims, founded by S. Francesco da Paola in 1454 on the primitive Franciscan model, and the Servites following the Augustinian rule.
The 16th century produced the Jesuits (founded in 1541) and several rather small congregations of clerks regular, who had many of the marks of secular clergy but who lived a common life. Generally they were devoted to pastoral and welfare work. The first, the Theatines, founded by Giampietro Caraffa (later Paul IV) and the Vicentine aristocrat S. Gaetano da Thiene, emerged from the Roman Oratory of Divine Love in 1524. The Somaschi were founded at Somasca near Bergamo in 1532 by S. Gerolamo Aemiliani, a Venetian noble castellan turned evangelist; this congregation specialized in the upbringing of orphan boys. The Barnabites were founded at Milan by S. Antonio Maria Zaccaria in 1533, while the Congregation of the Oratory was founded in Rome in the 1560s by S. Filippo Neri. One of the few significant innovations among the female orders were the Ursulines, an offshoot of the Brescian Confraternity of Divine Love, founded in 1535 by S. Angela Merici. S. Angela's intention was that they should be a congregation of unenclosed women dedicated to the active life in charitable and educational work; however, the ecclesiastical authorities forced the Ursulines into the mould of an enclosed contemplative order. While the friars basically remained attached to scholastic philosophy and theology, certain sections of contemplative orders were distinguished for humanist studies and related forms of religious scholarship; most notably the Cassinese Benedictine congregation, the Lateran Canons (especially of the Badia Fiesolana) and the Camaldolese, who included Ambrogio Traversari in Florence and a group of scholars at S. Michele in Isola, Venice.
For Petrarch the challenge to understand and celebrate the achievements of ancient Rome led him to scorn the intervening centuries which had neglected them; he saw them as an age of intellectual sleep, of 'darkness', and his own as potentially one of light, of an energetic revival of interest in, and competition with, too long forgotten glories. Thanks to his fame not only as a scholar but also as a poet and a voluminous correspondent, this sense of living in an age of new possibilities was rapidly shared by others who worked within the intellectual framework which came to be known as Humanism. Perhaps the sense of living in a new mental atmosphere can be compared to the exhilaration that followed the realization that Marxist analysis could be used to look afresh at the significance of intellectual and creative, as well as political, life. The humanistic enthusiasm lasted so long, however, because its core of energy, the historical reality of antiquity, was so vast and potent, because it was uncontroversial (save when an assassin borrowed the aura of Brutus, or a paganizing faddist mocked Christianity), and because the scholarly excitement about the need to imitate the achievements of the Roman (and, increasingly, Greek) past was sustained by evidence from contemporary art and literature that it could be done. Even when the Wars of Italy had inflicted grievous humiliations on Italian pride, Vasari could still see a process of restored vigour in the arts, which had begun early in the 14th century, as only coming near its close with the death of Michelangelo in 1564.
Vasari's Lives became a textbook of European repute. It was his contention that he was describing what followed from the rinascita or rebirth of the arts that launched the word on its increasingly inclusive career. For long, however, it was a 'renaissance' of this or that, of arts, of scholarship, of letters. Not until the publication in 1855 of the volume in Jules Michelet's Histoire de France entitled 'La Renaissance' was the label attached to a period and all that happened in it; not until the appearance of Jacob Burckhardt's still seminal Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in 1860 was it ineluctably identified in particular with Italy and more generally with a phase of human development thought to be markedly different in kind from what went before and what came after.
Thereafter, 'Renaissance' became a mercurial term: not just a label for a period or a movement but a concept, a concept redolent (in spite of Burckhardt's precautions) of Individualism, All-Roundness, even Amoralism; man had escaped from the medieval thought-dungeon, and the world (and its expanding physical and mental horizons) was his oyster; culture was linked to personality and behaviour; the Renaissance became both the scene and the work of Renaissance Man. To a northern European world (whence the alertest scholars and popularizers came), morally confined by Protestantism and social decorum, 'Renaissance' became a symbol of ways of conduct and thought that were either to be castigated (John Ruskin, whose The stones of Venice of 1851-53 had anticipated the art-morality connection) or envied (John Addington Symonds's avidly nostalgic Renaissance in Italy, 1875-86).
A term that had become so liable to subjective interpretation was bound to attract criticism. During this century it has been challenged chiefly on the following points. (1) There is no such thing as a self-sufficient historical period. Much that was characteristic of the Middle Ages flowed into and through the Renaissance. Much that was characteristic of the Renaissance flowed on until the age of experimental science, of industrialization, mobilized nationalism, and mass media. (2) Renaissance art and literature did not develop so consistently that they can be seen in one broad Vasarian sweep. There was an early, a 'high' and a late stage (all variously dated) in terms of artistic and literary aims and style. (3) There is not a true, let alone a uniform, congruence between, 'culture' and 'history' during the period; 'Renaissance' culture came late to Venice, later still to Genoa, both thriving centres of political and commercial activity. (4) To define a period in terms of a cultural élite is to divert attention unacceptably from the fortunes of the population as a whole.
Though thus challenged, mocked (the 'so-called Renaissance'), aped (the 'Carolingian' or 'Ottonian' renaissance, etc.) and genially debased ('the renaissance of the mini-skirt'), the term retains most of its glamour and much of its usefulness. It is surely not by chance that 'rebirth' rather than the 18th century and early 19th century 'revival' (of arts, letters, etc.) was the term chosen, because it applies to a society the resonance of a personal, spiritual and perhaps psychological aspiration: the new start, the previous record - with all its shabbiness - erased. It is for this additional, subjective reason a term to be used with caution. The challenges are to be accepted, however, gratefully, as having led to an enormous extension of knowledge and sensitivity.
Little known in the Middle Ages, the Sceptical position was revived in the Renaissance when the writings of Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus once again became available. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola was the first Renaissance writer to utilize Sceptical arguments in a systematic way: his lead was followed by Francisco Sanches (1552-1623 ), Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), and many others. The publication of Latin (1562, 1569) and Greek (162I) editions of Sextus Empiricus was important for later diffusion.
Most of the Italian states stood behind Urban but in Naples Queen Giovanna I of Anjou provoked a popular and baronial revolt by sheltering Clement, and for the next 20 years the kingdom was contested between, on one side, Charles III of Durazzo (d. 1386) and his son Ladislas, who recognized the Roman pope, and, on the other, Louis I (d. 1384) and Louis II of Anjou, who had the support of the Avignon pope. In northern Italy, the scene was dominated by the expansionist policies of Giangaleazzo Visconti of Milan until his death in 1402; from time to time both he and his opponents, the Florentines, flirted with the Avignon popes in the hope of obtaining French support, but with little effect.
Meanwhile the temporal power of the Roman popes survived despite Urban's gift for quarrelling with all his allies, and was considerably built up by his able successor Boniface IX (1389-1404). However, on his death the Roman papacy fell under the domination of King Ladislas of Naples, who drove north through Rome to threaten central Italy, causing the Florentines and most of the other Italian states to throw their weight behind a group of cardinals from both camps who met at Pisa and elected a third pope, Alexander V, in June 1409. It was the continued pressure of Ladislas that finally compelled Alexander's successor Baldassare Cossa (John XXIII) to summon the Council of Constance (1414-18}. This Council healed the Schism by deposing both John and the Avignon pope Benedict XIII and accepting the resignation of the Roman pope, thus leaving the way open for the election in 1417 of Martin V (1417-31), who set about the task of restoring the shattered power and prestige of the Holy See. The 39-year schism killed the supranational papacy of the Middle Ages, for; while devout Christians agonized, practical politicians (often the same people) seized the chance to extend their jurisdiction at the Church's expense. As a result, the Renaissance popes were much more dependent on their Italian resources, and therefore far more purely Italian princes, than their medieval predecessors.
None the less, in spite of Valla's insistence (in his Encomion S. Thomae of 1457) that theologians should eschew dialectic and listen anew to the sources of spiritual understanding, the gospels and the early Greek and Roman Fathers, scholastic method maintained its vitality in the areas where continuity with medieval practice was strongest, theology itself and 'Aristotelian' philosophy. Medieval scholars, moreover, notably Aquinas, were quoted with admiration even by neo-Platonic philosophers. It was because the central concerns of humanism - moral philosophy, textual scholarship, history and rhetoric - were different from those of medieval, university-based study, and were less suited to a dialectical form of exposition, that scholasticism was left, as it were, on one side. But to ignore its presence is to exaggerate the difference between the new learning and the old.
These were imported, chiefly from Flanders, into Italy. The influence of their hunting and ceremonial scenes in particular registered on Italian 'gothic' painting or illumination and stained glass, and in literature. But the Italians did not make them. The most famous of all 'Italian' tapestries, those for the Sistine Chapel designed by Raphael, were made in Brussels from the full-scale coloured patterns, or cartoons, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Nor is it clear whether imported tapestries were used habitually or simply to add grandeur to special occasions. Even when Cosimo's manufactory was in being, and working from designs by court artists of the calibre of Bronzino, Salviati and Allori, his own headquarters, the Palace of the Signoria (now the Palazzo Vecchio), was being decorated with frescoes. The subject is underexplored.
Meanwhile, in an age which did not like the idea of large numbers of victory-flushed soldiers parading through its streets, the military triumph became sublimated, as it were, into a number of less controversial forms. This was largely under the influence of Petrarch's 'Trionfi' - poems describing the processions commemorating the triumphs of love, chastity, death; fame, time and eternity. Disseminated soon after his death, they soon appeared in illuminated manuscripts, and the triumph scene became a popular one for woodcuts, decorated marriage chests and other paintings, most beautifully of all on the backs of Piero della Francesca's portraits of Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife, Battista Sforza. Other 'triumphs' were invented: of the seasons, of virtues and of the arts. Nor was the theme allowed to be simply a profane one. Just before his death Savonarola published his 'Triumph of the Cross', in which the reader was invited to imagine 'a four-wheeled chariot on which is seated Christ as Conqueror.' Before it go the apostles, patriarchs and prophets, beside it the army of martyrs, behind it, after 'a countless number of virgins, of both sexes', come the prisoners: 'the serried ranks of the enemies of the Church of Christ.' This aspect of the theme was magnificently realized in Titian's great woodcut 'The Triumph of the Faith'.
Back in the Netherlands the "Caravaggisti" were eager to demonstrate what they had learned. Their subjects are frequently religious ones, but brothel scenes and pictures in sets, such as five works devoted to the senses, were popular with them also. The numerous candles, lanterns, and other sources of artificial light are characteristic and further underscore the indebtedness to Caravaggio.
Although Honthorst enjoyed the widest reputation at the time, painting at both the Dutch and English courts, Terbrugghen is generally regarded as the most talented and versatile of the group.
The wars from 1494 do, in fact, fall into a different category from those that preceded them. Campaign followed campaign on a scale and with an unremittingness sharply different from those which had interrupted the post-Lodi peacefulness. Though foreign intervention in Italian affairs was certainly no novelty, the peninsula had never before been seen so consistently by dynastic contenders as both prize and arena. No previous series of combats had produced such lasting effects: the subjection of Milan and Naples to direct Spanish rule and the ossification of politics until the arrival in 1796 of a new Charles VIII in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. The wars were also recognized as different in kind from their predecessors by those who lived through them: 'before. 1494' and 'after 1494' became phrases charged with nostalgic regret for, and appalled recognition of, the demoted status of the previously quarrelsome but in the main independent comity of peninsular powers. And because the wars forced the rest of western Europe into new alliances and a novel diplomatic closeness, they were from the 18th century until comparatively recently seen as marking the turn from medieval to recognizably modern political times.
The wars, then, were caused by foreign intervention. In these terms they can be chronicled with some brevity. After crossing the Alps in 1494 Charles VIII conquered the kingdom of Naples and retired in 1495, leaving the kingdom garrisoned. The garrisons were attacked later in the same year by Spanish troops under Gonzalo de Cordoba, sent by King Ferdinand II of Aragon (who was also King of Sicily). With this assistance Naples was restored to its native Aragonese dynasty. In 1499 the new King of France, Louis XII, assumed the title Duke of Milan (inherited through his grandfather's marriage to a Visconti) and occupied the duchy, taking over Genoa later in the same year. In 1501 a joint Franco-Spanish expedition reconquered the kingdom of Naples. The allies then fell out and fought one another. By January 1504 Spain controlled the whole southern kingdom, leaving France in control of Milan and Genoa in the north. A third foreign power, the German Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I entered the arena in 1508 with an abortive invasion of the Veronese-Vicentino. He countered the rebuff by joining the allies of the anti-Venetian League of Cambrai: France and Aragon assisted by Pope Julius II and the rulers of Mantua and Ferrara. In 1509 their victory at Agnadello led to the occupation of the whole of the Venetian terraferma apart from Treviso.
The eastward extension of French power gained by this victory (won by a mainly French army) drove Julius and Ferdinand to turn against Louis and in 1512 the French - now also under pressure from a fourth foreign power interesting itself in Italian territory, the Swiss - were forced to evacuate their possessions in Lombardy. Louis's last invasion of the Milanese was turned back in 1513 at the battle of Novara and the duchy was restored to its native dynasty, the Sforza, in the person of Massimiliano; he ruled, however, under the supervision of Milan's real masters, the Swiss. In 1515, with a new French king, Francis I, came a new invasion and a successful one: the Swiss were defeated at Marignano and Massimiliano ceded his title to Francis. To confirm his monopoly of foreign intervention in the north Francis persuaded Maximilian I to withdraw his garrisons from Venetian territory, thus aiding the Republic to complete the recovery of its terraferma.
With the spirit of the Swiss broken, the death of Ferdinand in 1516 and of Maximilian I in 1519 appeared to betoken an era of stability for a peninsula that on the whole took Spanish rule in the south and French in the north-west for granted. However, on Maximilian's death his grandson Charles, who had already become King of Spain in succession to Ferdinand, was elected Emperor as Charles V; Genoa and Milan formed an obvious land bridge between his Spanish and German lands, and a base for communications and troop movements thence to his other hereditary possessions in Burgundy and the Netherlands. Equally, it was clear to Francis I that his Italian territories were no longer a luxury, but strategically essential were his land frontier not to be encircled all the way from Provence to Artois. Spanish, German and French interests were now all centred on one area of Italy and a new phase of the wars began.
Between 1521 and 1523 the French were expelled from Genoa and the whole of the Milanese. A French counter-attack late in 1523, followed by a fresh invasion in 1524 under Francis himself, led, after many changes of fortune, to the battle of Pavia in 1525; not only were the French defeated, but Francis himself was sent as a prisoner to Spain, and released in 1526 only on condition that he surrender all claims to Italian territory. But by now political words were the most fragile of bonds. Francis allied himself by the Treaty of Cognac to Pope Clement VII, previously a supporter of Charles but, like Julius II in 1510, dismayed by the consequences of what he had encouraged, and the Milanese once more became a theatre of war. In 1527, moreover, the contagion spread, partly by mischance - as when the main Imperial army, feebly led and underpaid, put loot above strategy and proceeded to the Sack of Rome, and partly by design - as when, in a reversion to the policy of Charles VIII, a French army marched to Naples, having forced the Imperial garrison out of Genoa on the way and secured the city's navy, under Andrea Doria, as an ally. In July 1528 it was Doria who broke what had become a Franco-Imperial stalemate by going over to the side of the Emperor and calling off the fleet from its blockade of Naples, thus forcing the French to withdraw from the siege of a city now open to Spanish reinforcements.
By 1529, defeated in Naples and winded in Milan, Francis at last allowed his ministers to throw in the sponge. The Treaty of Barcelona, supplemented by that of Cambrai, confirmed the Spanish title to Naples and the cessation of French pretensions to Milan, which was restored (though the Imperial leading strings were clearly visible) to the Sforza claimant, now Francesco II. Thereafter, though Charles took over the direct government of Milan through his son Philip on Francesco's death in 1535, and Francis I in revenge occupied Savoy and most of Piedmont in the following year, direct foreign intervention in Italy was limited to the localized War of Siena. In 1552 the Sienese expelled the garrison Charles maintained there as watchdog over his communications between Naples and Milan, and called on French support. As an ally of Charles, but really on his own account, Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, took the city after a campaign that lasted from 1554 to 1555. But in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559, by which France yet again, and now finally, renounced Italian interests, Cosimo was forced to grant Charles the right to maintain garrisons in Siena's strategic dependencies, Orbetello, Talamone and Porto Ercole.
The Wars of Italy, though caused by foreign interventions, involved and were shaped by the invitations, self-interested groupings and mutual treacheries of the Italian powers themselves. At the beginning, Charles VIII was encouraged by the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, jealous of the apparently expanding diplomatic influence of Naples, as well as by exiles and malcontents (including the future Julius II) who thought that a violent tap on the peninsular kaleidoscope might provide space for their own ambitions. And the 1529 Treaty of Cambrai did not put an end to the local repercussions of the Franco Imperial conflict. France's ally Venice only withdrew from the kingdom of Naples after the subsequent (December 1529) settlement negotiated at Bologna. It was not until August 1530 that the Last Florentine Republic gave in to the siege by the Imperialist army supporting the exiled Medici. The changes of heart and loyalty on the part of Julius II in 1510 and Clement VII in 1526 are but illustrations of the weaving and reweaving of alliances that determined the individual fortunes of the Italian states within the interventionist framework: no précis can combine them.
A final point may, however, be made. Whatever the economic and psychological strain produced in individual states by their involvement, and the consequential changes in their constitutions or masters, no overall correlation between the Wars and the culture of Italy can be made. The battles were fought in the countryside and peasants were the chief sufferers from the campaigns. Sieges of great cities were few, and, save in the cases of Naples in 1527-28 and Florence in 1529-30, short. No planned military occasion had so grievious effect as did the Sack of Rome, which aborted the city's cultural life for a decade.
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