What's a Renaissance? A historical digression

It's an odd thing to admit, when you're making a game about the Renaissance... that there's really no such thing.

The popular conception of the Renaissance is that in the 15th Century, starting in Florence and then spreading across Europe, there was a time of great art and culture, as people looked back to Roman times to begin developing again after the squalor of the Middle Ages. Everyone can name some of the great artists, if only because they're named after Ninja Turtles: Leonardo da Vinci, Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi, Raffaelo Sanzio da Urbino, and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. 

The problem is that none of this is really true. Well, it is true that there were some great artists named after Ninja Turtles, and that they have really amazing art. But the Renaissance stretches over a truly immense time period: some people include Dante Alighieri in the early 1300s, to William Shakespeare in the early 1600s. It presupposes that there was no art or culture before that, which is to ignore some amazing earlier Medieval art. The 'Dark Ages' were so-called because there's very little information about them, not because they were a dark time. And of course it ignores the amazing cultural advances happening in the Middle East under the Caliphate, or in China or India or any of a hundred other places around the world. The idea that this time and place was significant came originally from Giorgio Vasari, a Florentine artist himself, trying to emphasize the importance of his craft so that he could get more work! In his Lives of the Artists, he first referred to a 'Renaissance,' a rebirth of ancient ideals, but they were really never lost. People had been trying to live up to the Roman Empire ever since it fell, which is to say nothing of the Byzantine Roman Empire which endured until 1453. Furthermore, the great art of a Michelangelo or a Botticelli (who totally should have been a ninja turtle!), or the humanist ideals of Ficino or Pico, only affected the lives of a very few people. 

So if I don't actually believe that the Renaissance existed in any meaningful sense, why do I have a game based on it? Because early modern Italy had a fascinating geopolitical balance of power. Because the idea of the Renaissance is still a powerful one. It's iconic and most people have an idea of what you're talking about. Because even in the 'Renaissance', in Shakespeare's plays, Italy is seen as an exotic and romantic land. Because, even if they weren't part of a 'Renaissance', many significant changes did happen in quick succession; the most important being Gutenberg's printing press in 1453. 

That said, there's something to be said for basing your game on a more obscure time and place (which is rich for me to say!) 

If you want to read more about this, this is a fun and very accurate article comparing the Renaissance to 'Hey Ya' by Outkast. Yes, really. https://going-medieval.com/2017/07/25/on-the-concept-of-the-renaissance-and-outkasts-hey-ya/

Image: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.' Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, 1987.

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