Conclusion

Abstract

In this essay, the Renaissance has been defined rather more narrowly than it was by Burckhardt. It has been considered, to use Gombrich’s useful distinction, as a ‘movement’ rather than as a ‘period’ [11]. Even as a movement, it has been circumscribed fairly tightly, with an emphasis (painting apart) on the attempt to revive antiquity, rather than on the other kinds of cultural change to which Burckhardt and many other historians have drawn attention. These limitations are deliberate. For one thing, a brief essay which deals with so many branches of learning and the arts and with so many European countries would become intolerably vague if it lacked a sharp focus. Still more important, however, is the fact that almost every other characteristic attributed to the Renaissance can also be found in the Middle Ages, to which it is so often contrasted. Obviously convenient for purposes of exposition, the simple binary opposition between Middle Ages and Renaissance is in many ways seriously misleading.