DAUGHTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE By CHRISTOPHER HARE of those classes who enjoyed wealth and leisure. This mighty intellectual impulse touched women even more deeply than men, for it not only gave them a new independence, but raised them to a high position in social life and the encouragement of art. Sharing the same learned education as the men, they had perhaps in a more marked degree, the passionate love of the beautiful, and the keen desire to collect antique sculptures, paintings, musical instruments, and rare classics brought within their reach by the new wonder of the printing-press. Thus it comes to pass that in so many a brilliant Court—of Mantua, of Urbino, of Milan, of Naples, of Ferrara, of Asola, and others—we find that a cultured woman is the central figure, who gives harmony to the whole group. So, in making a special study of women in the Italian Renaissance, we find the most typical instances amongst the princesses and great ladies of the day.
I'M Italian Issue 11 January 2021
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n the Middle Ages, scarcely left behind, the ascetic ideal of life taught that beauty and pleasure were deadly perils to the soul, and that ignorance was safer than knowledge. The Renaissance dared to rebel against this medieval preaching, to set free the reason of man, and to awaken in him a passionate appreciation of the glories of art and nature, and of all the beauty of this living
world. The prison doors were thrown open, and in the newly awakened joy of life, the men of the Renaissance raised their eyes from contemplation of the cloister and the grave, and cried aloud in exultation,“ It is good for us to be here !“ Then a wonderful thing happened. At this moment of new intellectual birth, of enfranchisement from old prejudices, the beautiful dead past came back, newly revealed, to a generation eager to see, to comprehend all things. The world of classical antiquity, the beauty and strength of ancient Greece and Rome, was a revelation to the far-off sons and daughters of that heroic breed, all unconscious of their glorious heritage. A very fever of enthusiasm was aroused, not alone for the priceless treasures of sculpture in marble and bronze, found beneath the Italian soil, but also for the classics of language and literature, the works of Homer and Plato, of Aristotle and Virgil, of the philosophers and the tragedians of ancient fame. Then came the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the ruin of the Eastern Empire brought a fresh impulse to the West, in rediscovered treasures and learned exiles. The religious ideal of the Middle Ages had appealed alike to all—to rich and poor, to the learned and the ignorant ; but the cultured spirit of the Renaissance was almost exclusively the possession
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