As trade made several Italian city-states prosperous, the cities became magnets for ambitious people from across Europe. Merchants came seeking opportunity, artists came seeking patrons, and young men traveled to universities such as Bologna and Padua to study law, medicine, and philosophy. As people and ideas flowed into Italy, its cities became centers of learning, culture, and innovation. When travelers returned home, they carried Renaissance ideas with them, helping spread the movement far beyond the Italian peninsula.
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The Power of Print
Travelers could carry only the ideas they remembered. Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press made it possible to share the same knowledge with thousands of people. Before the printing press, books were copied by hand and were expensive. Most Europeans never traveled far from home, and few had access to books or schooling. Once printers could reproduce books quickly and cheaply, more people learned to read and gained access to new ideas.
The Low Countries
Northeast of Italy, present-day Belgium and the Netherlands are known as the Low Countries because the land rises only slightly above sea level. The Low Countries region was home to prosperous trading centers such as Antwerp and Amsterdam. As in Italy, wealthy merchants in these cities supported artists and learning. The Catholic Church continued to pay artists to create religious works, but many merchants in the region embraced Calvinism, a branch of Christianity that believed churches should be simple and free of decoration. As a result, merchants often bought portraits, landscapes, and scenes from everyday life.
While many Italian artists painted saints, biblical stories, and figures from classical mythology, artists of the Low Countries often painted farmers, festivals, and village life. The paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder provide a valuable glimpse into everyday life in sixteenth-century Europe.
The English Renaissance
Northwest of continental Europe, English merchants earned fortunes exporting wool and cloth to markets across Europe. As cities grew and universities such as Oxford and Cambridge attracted students, Renaissance ideas spread throughout England. As more people learned to read and write, they supported writers, printers, and theaters. English men and women flocked to large open-air theaters such as the Globe near London to watch plays by William Shakespeare and other dramatists.
Exploration and trade made Spain a wealthy nation. The most famous writer of the later Spanish Renaissance was Miguel de Cervantes, whose novel Don Quixote remains one of the most widely read books in the world.
A Transformed Continent
The Renaissance took different forms across Europe as new wealth mixed with local traditions and customs. In some places, merchants supported painters. In others, they supported writers, theaters, universities, and printers. By 1600, Europe was becoming a more commercial, connected, curious, and educated place than it had ever been before—a transformation that laid the foundation for the modern age.
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Mr. Donn has an excellent website that includes a section on the Renaissance.