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The "Renaissance" began in Europe when artists, writers, sculptors, philosophers and architects of Italy started to look back at Greeks and Romans some of whom lived hundreds of years B.C. (before Christ). Look up these names in the More Important People section, or your library encyclopedia: Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy. Also look up these writers whose works greatly influenced the early Italian Renaissance: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio.
More Important People ALBERTI, LEON BATTISTA (1402-72). Italian who wrote first modern work on architecture and first treatise on painting. "I look upon a picture with no less pleasure...than I read a good history. They both indeed are pictures, only the historian paints with words, and the painter with his pencil. " ARBEAU, THOINOT (1519-95). Frenchman who compiled dance instruction book with musical and rhythmic illustrations, Orchesography. ARIOSTO, LODOVICO (1474-1533). Italian writer whose great epic poem Orlando Furioso has a passage which predicts man's landing on the moon. ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC). A student of Plato. He differed from his teacher in believing that knowledge came from scientific investigation and personal, hands-on experience. He developed a method for clear thinking which could be applied to many fields of study. He was the most widely read of the Greek philosophers. BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI (1313-75). Was one of the first Italian writers to use his native language instead of Latin. His most famous book Decameron, was popular then and is still widely read today. It was one of the first books to portray human behavior in a realistic way. It tells the story of 10 young aristocrats who flee the plague in Florence. They set up a court of pleasure and entertain each other with 100 stories of trickery, survival and self-reliance. Variations of these stories have been used by other writers for centuries. BORGIA FAMILY (from 1455-1519). Roderigo used unscrupulous means to become Pope Alexander VI. His son Cesare was a merciless soldier and ruler who did not hesitate to doublecross his own men. His daughter Lucrezia was married three times before she was 20. Her father annulled the first; her second husband was murdered (they say), at the order of her brother. But it was the career of Cesare that connected the family name with greed and treachery.
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