The Renaissance - the Age of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci (2/2) | DW Documentary

the Renaissance was when people started keeping track of time locksmith Peter Henline invented the pocket watch in 1510 it soon became a powerful tool merchants earned a fortune with it and it allowed seafarers to navigate the distant oceans shortly before Christopher Columbus had arrived in the Americas and the known world tripled in size people began to understand our planet in new ways and an empire arose on which the Sun never set this was all thanks to the new portable timepieces scholars could measure and calculate the paths of the heavenly bodies more accurately discovering the mechanisms of planetary motion and ultimately placing the Sun at the heart of our solar system the way to the Stars was opened at least in the mind the pocket watch and the other inventions of the Renaissance help transform Europe and the world Florence in 1504 Leonardo da Vinci was a towering figure in an era that became known as the Renaissance when the best-known painting of all time was created the Mona Lisa the mysterious beauty with the inscrutable smile it's probably a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo the wife of a cloth and silk merchant from Florence apparently Leonarda took years to finish it the artist always struggled with his works he was never satisfied with them and was always trying to perfect them [Music] Publio the tenth one said of him this man will never accomplish anything how wrong he was Lunada was a polarizing figure charming and erudite he was also described as foppish and vain a man who was openly homosexual at a time when gay men were persecuted even burnt at the stake Leonardo da Vinci is considered one of the most versatile geniuses of all time the star of the Renaissance was much more than just an artist he was also an architect anatomist sculptor mathematician iconoclast inventor for the brilliant creator of the Mona Lisa painting was perhaps just a necessary evil Amir 15 paintings are attributed to Leonardo today most have been lost because he was constantly experimenting with new paint mixes many of which decomposed over time he cared more about his inventions than he did about painting they're not a Buffy life but when it came to his innermost desires Leonardo was a seeker and Explorer someone who was interested in new ideas mysteries rather than a painter who laborious Lee tended to his craft everyday brush stroke after brushstroke we know that he sometimes may just minor Corrections to a painting and that he wasn't in front of a canvas all the time maybe he just painted to make a living his paintings were in great demand after all they were extremely well done at least those that he finished maybe he just painted to earn the money he needed to have the freedom he needed to pursue his scientific research if I had to have insanely pieces after him for fulness of the time in the 15th century Italy was ravaged by numerous conflicts Venice defeated Padua and Florence conquered Pisa in 1405 in 1413 the Neapolitans attacked Rome in 1444 Florence went to war against both Naples and Venice the Italian cities had an insatiable appetite for conquest but their constant battles filled progress war had become a promoter of art click in Denison's Nick Newell negative war didn't just have negative effects in the Renaissance it ensured that huge sums of money were mobilized to the condottieri the military contractors they were often based in small cities or towns from where they waged the wars of the big players for big money that meant wealth from Florence Milan Naples Venice and Rome flowed into smaller places if you go to Italy and enjoy the beauty and diversity of these small towns you get an idea of what it meant back then to turn war and iron into gold and gold into art Milan in 1485 Leonardo's employer was Ludovico Sforza who ruled the city-state you know who applied to work for him as a military engineer and maker of weapons only mentioning his painting and sculpture in passing Lodovico had great expansion plans and was readying himself for war and so Leonardo ended up building high-tech weapons for the sports us inspired by antiquity he combined the idea of an enclosed chariot with a tortoise formation used by the Roman legions in siege warfare it was supposed to be an armored vehicle with incredible firepower but it failed in practice it was too heavy to move easily and the steam engine hadn't yet been invented the Codex atlanticus contains more than a thousand pages with sketches by Leonardo he designed a perpetual motion machine a gearbox and vehicles powered by Springs but many of his creations still puzzle us even now some think this cog device was a mechanical calculator although critics say that interpretation goes a step too far in the Renaissance there was no way of actually constructing a mechanical gear train like this of course Leonardo knew that but that didn't stop his theoretical innovations and some of them were groundbreaking Leonardo's love of mechanics chimed with the spirit of the times like him many pioneering minds were searching for machines that might set people the earth and the universe in motion clocks were the most mechanically elaborate devices of Leonardo's times when Pater Henlein invented his pocket watch in the early 16th century people started believing themselves the masters of time but those who earn money with time by loaning money for set periods while charging interest were committing a mortal sin time still belongs to God alone the prohibition on charging interest is in the Christian Bible it's one of the really important biblical prohibitions almost as important as thou shalt not kill that's because people believed that humans shouldn't profit from time because time belonged to God but in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance the economy had come to play a totally different role money had to be available in the economy and making money and time available was beneficial so you had to make it worth your while as a result there were more and more ways of getting around the ban on charging interest in practice since four-board factor shows our current society the imperial decrees of the sixteenth century now allowed christian moneylenders to charge a maximum of five percent interest on money loaned [Music] until then the credit industry had been solely in the hands of Jewish moneylenders this now changed Martin Luther still denounced the practice of charging interest but the Swiss reformer John Calvin had quite a different opinion Calvin said that people could determine from their economic success whether they were predestined to salvation or damnation that meant people didn't just sit around to see whether they would be chosen they worked incredibly hard the great sociologist Max Weber said that Calvinism was the father of capitalism but we know that other religious movements of the 16th and 17th centuries did just as much to spur the economy it was really the overall forces in society at the time along with technical developments that led to the incredible economic boom when people wasn't taking different individual the city of Zurich started setting up official currency exchanges in 1419 the money changes tended to be Goldsmith's or coin winters because they had to be able to tell the value of the coins they changed currencies and they also made loans later with the swing lien and Calvinist traditions Switzerland became a banking pioneer and affluence became a symbol of divine favour measuring time is still inseparably tied to exploring the heavens Renaissance thinkers had already set their sights on the Stars many medieval timepieces were astronomical clocks the exact measurement of time is a necessary requirement for studying the motion of the Sun Moon and planets it was the start of an age in which scholars began to challenge the church's worldview saying that the Sun didn't revolve around the earth and the earth was not the center of the universe from bach in poland in around 1540 nicolaus copernicus was a canon at the Cathedral there as well as a high-ranking government official he was also a lawyer physician and mathematician as well as an economist who wrote a highly regarded work on the theory of money but his real passion was astronomy his astronomical observations and calculations contradicted the generally accepted model originally posited by the ancient scholar Claudius Ptolemy namely that the earth was at the center of the solar system this geocentric worldview was a central teaching of the church Copernicus believed the Sun was at the center of the solar system but even though he spent 30 years working on his theory he kept quiet about it his friends and confidants including some high-ranking clerics tried to persuade him to publish his work but without success Copernicus was scared of publishing his theory because he was afraid he would make himself a laughingstock educated people knew that the earth wasn't flat that it was a sphere in Copernicus's worldview this sphere was also moving it's spun on its own axis and also orbited the Sun at high speed people believed that this would have unforeseeable consequences the earth would be subjected to strong headwinds objects would tip over and things like that and then there was the theological aspect that Martin Luther threw into the mix he told Copernicus that the Bible said that the Sun moved around the earth and not the other way around so Copernicus was wrong and that scared Copernicus into keeping quiet sanity is about to perfectly Martin Luther called Copernicus a fool and his model was dismissed not so much as heretical but more as fantastical it was only 70 years after his death that Galileo's observations provided convincing arguments but the physical proof had to wait for another 300 years nevertheless Nicholas Copernicus had provided the astronomical model of our solar system and refuted the ancient scholar Ptolemy and that in itself was revolutionary the earth was ultimately removed from the center of the universe and classified as an ordinary planet that orbited the Sun along with others Copernicus saw how the apparent motion of the stars in the night sky was really the result of the Earth's own rotation everything orbited the Sun so the actual center of the solar system had to be near it hardly any other discovery has had such a great influence on our time our voyage to the Stars began 500 years ago without Copernicus there would be no spaceflight or satellite communication systems and our lives today would be very different the calculations performed by Copernicus have had a real impact on us today we sent our spaceships into space knowing where the planets worth if Ptolemies worldview had been correct we would have reached none of those planets and it all would have been a waste of time to honor Tilly the advent of the Cross staff also known as Jacob's staff made it possible to determine latitude at sea using astronomical calculations this breakthrough in maritime technology made it possible to navigate on the high seas a further achievement came with the ephemera these astronomical tables calculated by the German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Miller who was also known as Lea Montano's his tables recorded the location of celestial bodies from 1475 to 1506 together with the Jacobs staff they guided sailors on their journeys Thank You Montana's hot damn Isaiah Montana's made people in Europe aware of trigonometry he published his own work taking advantage of the new invention of printing Gutenberg's invention of the printing press trigonometry is still central to navigational calculations and to GPS receivers around the world before trigonometry was the key to navigation and the search for new trade routes emboldened the explorers of the Renaissance who sought new sources of wealth people started pondering completely new questions what lies beyond the known world and how can we get there Europe's merchants realized that it was cheaper to bring large quantities of pepper cinnamon and silk to Europe via the Portuguese shipping routes then to transport them along the overland route controlled by Venice that led to the collapse of the Venetian spice monopoly many trading establishments of the Renaissance invested in shipping Portugal and Spain became leading trading nations European merchants wanted to get their hands on exotic luxurious and beautiful things and sell them for as much profit as possible these things could be found in the Mediterranean and especially in the Far East and so merchants like Marco Polo set off to search for spices and silk and incense and other luxury products they traveled the world they were followed by missionaries and sometimes by warriors and then came the artists thinkers and explorers so they all fueled each other hoping to transcend their own horizons one two three Thursday Lisbon in 1484 33 year-old Christopher Columbus was just hours away from his life's dream coming true he had an audience with the Portuguese King John the second Columbus was a professional Seafarer from Genoa with profound knowledge of mathematics and Catan Rafi and a passionate defender of Aristotle's belief that Asia could be reached in just a few days by sailing west from Europe the ancient scholars had estimated that Europe and Asia covered roughly half of the Earth's circumference but Columbus believed that Eurasia was much bigger than that in fact Eurasia only makes up around 1/3 [Music] Columbus also believed the earth was very much smaller than it really is only half its actual size he thought the Western route to China and India was 4,500 kilometers long a challenging voyage but a manageable one in actual fact it's a journey of 20,000 kilometers far beyond the capabilities of his time so Columbus was not only taking a risk but also a miscalculated one King John's advisors suspected Columbus was mistaken and refused to give him financial support he only received it eight years later from the spanish king ferdinand ii after six weeks at sea on the 12th of October 1492 Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas and then went on to Cuba and Hispaniola he still believed he had found the western route to Asia and that Hispaniola was the Chinese coast in his report he promised the Spanish crown as much gold as it needed and as many slaves as it asked for Columbus had discovered the new world and plunged it into catastrophe the Columbus first hunt is Columbus was good at navigating ships through difficult waters but he was a very poor manager he wasn't able to keep his own men together and ultimately the Spanish crown took away his powers America was already populated when he discovered it so it wasn't a real discovery in that sense but his arrival opened the door to unprecedented disasters millions of indigenous people died at the hands of the germs that the Europeans brought with them the European explorers were interested in gold and yet more gold a little bit in God but more so in spices Columbus's voyages opened up the newly discovered lands to foreign conquest and brought disaster to their indigenous populations on each side right until his death Columbus believed that he had found the sea route to the Chinese mainland but his discovery nonetheless changed the world Spain and Portugal became Imperial superpowers Columbus lass was also the first in a line of cruel conquerors what drove him a lust for adventure the promise of power wealth or fame Columbus van zan dementia Columbus was definitely someone who wanted fame and fortune but he was also a very devout person he thought he was helping countless individuals by bringing their souls to the Christian faith there are many indications that he might have believed that at the end of the 15th century the world was nearing its end so often the case the rational considerations and desire for profit and fame were mixed with medieval motivations the Renaissance had two sides to it and so too did Columbus thanks to the discoveries and discoverers King Charles the first of Spain established an empire on which the Sun never set alongside large parts of Europe it included colonial territories in North and South America and in Asia when the Sun went down in Mexico it was already day in the Philippines in 1530 the Pope crowned him Holy Roman Emperor Charles the first became Charles v he saw himself as a universal monarch defender of the faith appointed by God he issued several decrees in an attempt to counteract the enslavement of the indigenous population and in 1540 he even ordered their liberation [Music] but the colonies were far away and in the end Charles's need for gold was too great Charles's Empire was greedy for silver and gold between 15 41 and 15 60 67 tons of gold and 480 tons of silver reached Spain and triggered an economic crisis in the Middle Ages Jews were the only people in Europe who were able to issue loans and charge interest Jewish businessman controlled international finance and many saw them as profit ears brutal pogroms took place on the Iberian Peninsula the Jewish population was persecuted killed or expelled the Jewish financial system collapsed and the European money market had to reorient itself at the heart of this sea change was a small town in Bavaria olks book it became the financial capital of the known world and the headquarters of the fuga dynasty between 1495 and 1525 the further family business which have been founded by Jakob Fugger Europe's most significant merchant mining entrepreneur and banker grew into a pan-european financial empire forgotten start Finland see luck the start had ended you could say that Jakob Fugger funded the state and the state gave him unique opportunities to use or exploit the land and Fuger didn't do anything by halves he invested a lot of money in the properties and land that are still at the heart of the fuqua foundations he took calculated risks to make money and he worked with those in power but he also always invested in safe real estate he always diversified his investments and he had a good eye for what was feasible so he was very successful after Saha Indians go steal TV attracted figure who was both pious and one of the most powerful men of his day wanted an aristocratic title [Music] with one foot still in the middle-ages he was nonetheless a manager with a modern spirit named Z our experiment Duras famous portrait of Jakob Fugger put this man in a gray suit and take the gold cap off his head and you've got a modern CEO he was a tough an incredibly efficient manager that's undoubtedly true but he was also a repentant Christian the best proof of that is that he built an entire estate for the poor in his hometown of Alex Borg the Fuger eye of 15/16 so we see a rich successful businessman balancing his books with God investing in the well-being of his soul and that plays a big role here to fuga was active around the world he gave loans to princes and the church and in return negotiated mining rights and trading privileges and bought up estates the income he generated was much higher than the cost of borrowing another product of the Renaissance the rise of the global player but Fuger combined his entrepreneurial spirit with social commitment in 1521 he founded the Fuger high it's a Renaissance time capsule in the heart of Augsburg the fuga high is the oldest social housing project in history and it's still in use it's 67 houses are now home to a hundred and fifty Catholic residents of Augsburg the entry conditions are still the same as they were in the 16th century anyone wanting to live in the fuga high has to be from Augsburg a Catholic and of good reputation and it's still maintained by the Fortran managed by the fuga Foundation a financial instrument set up in the Renaissance and still operating today the annual rent also remains unchanged one vanished Guldur or 88 Euro cents compared with the living standards of most people in the Renaissance their houses in the fuga high were positively luxurious [Music] a home for an entire family with around 60 square meters spacious and well lit at least by Renaissance standards in return for the symbolic rent Jakob Fugger placed another condition on the residents of the Fuger high regular prayers every day they were to say one our Father one creed and one Hail Mary for fuga and his family [Music] the prayers for him and his family paved his way to paradise or so people believed in the Middle Ages another investment in the salvation of his soul was the construction of the fuga chapel at a nastic burial place and a prestigious statement of the family's social standing Jakob Fugger hired important artists first and foremost I pledged Allah who designed the tombstones for his brothers Georg and oldish fuga the fuga chapel in st. Anna was the first church interior in Germany to be built in the Renaissance style this is where Jakob and his brothers found their final resting place this donation says a lot about Jakob his commercial full site and his personal beliefs he apparently believed that even the salvation of the soul and the afterlife had a financial solution Jakob Fugger pious Christian and financial genius and one of the richest men of his time Fokker was incredibly rich the gap was immense if you consider the sum that Fuger and a consortium stumped up to fund the imperial election of charles v it was more than eight hundred thousand guilders an ordinary craftsman would have had to work thirty two thousand years to earn that thousand yahrens Fuger also made money with the fear of hell it's terrible torments were omnipresent in fogers time the church preached that it had been granted divine powers of remittance to reduce the punishment people would have to suffer for their sins but this indulgence as it was called didn't come for free as soon as a coin in the box does ring the soul from purgatory does spring these were the words of the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel one of the most notorious sellers of indulgences he even sold indulgences for blasphemy and murder in the autumn of 1511 the 28 year old Augustinian friar Martin Luther was in Rome he too was seeking indulgence he climbed the sacred stairs in front of the Lateran on his knees to obtain forgiveness for his sins and to free his deceased relatives from purgatory since the time of emperor constantine the Lateran had been the official seat of the Pope's the Lateran Palace is a 16th century Renaissance building built by Pope Sixtus v the Renaissance popes money-spinner was the sale of indulgences women in a salsa peeps today when we talk about the Renaissance popes we often hear terrible stories and you get the impression that they triggered the Reformation with their immoral behavior but that's a very one-sided story they were modernizers they were Renaissance men they were princes who held court in line with the European standards of the time administered in 1508 pope julius ii commissioned the 33 year old Michelangelo Buonarroti to cover the interior of the Sistine Chapel in frescoes but Michelangelo didn't want the job painting wasn't his strength he primarily saw himself as a sculptor he said but Julius more a warrior than a man of God got his way Michelangelo asked for artistic freedom do what you want Julius replied with 520 square meters of frescoes to be painted overhead it was a torturous work of epic proportions the frescoes in the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Leonardo's Mona Lisa are indisputably the most famous paintings of the Renaissance if not the whole of art history and the interpretation of the Creation of Adam is the most reproduced work of art in the world portraying a God reaching out from the clouds to form humanity [Music] and a Last Judgement that depicts the heavenly hosts as naked as the gods of Mount Olympus it was a courageous work of genius made possible only thanks to his papal patron we haven't canopy we wouldn't have st. Peters we wouldn't have all this wonderful art in Rome we wouldn't have many pieces of music if these Renaissance popes hadn't existed Renaissance popes are ambivalent like the whole of modernity they have admirably good trades and they also behaved like princes like Machiavelli unrestrained and confident and sometimes they put their responsibilities to the church on the back burner or even forgot about them altogether so Lucas Ted Woodruff elections ooh God forgets pope julius ii or ill terry blur as the romans called him the architect at his side was Donna - Bramante who was known as maestro Robin aunty the master of destruction the two men put their stamp on Rome Julius had buildings torn down squares enlarged and roads rebuilt Bramante had gained his status as a leading architect with a cloister at Santa Maria del Apache the kiosk rowdy Bramante in Rome his client was Cardinal Oliviero Carafa an influential prince of the church romantic came to fame with the Tempietto libera Monte his little temple inspired by the round temples of ancient Rome it's considered a paradigm of high Renaissance architecture pope julius ii disregarded the protests of his cardinals and had the venerable basilica of constantine demolished he wanted to build the biggest Church in Christendom in its place st. Peter's julius ii had a Pasha for the huge and spectacular his Basilica was also intended to house his monumental tomb a mausoleum that would be bigger than anything the world had ever seen don't out of romantic of the Commission and started work in 1506 forty years were to pass before the sculptor painter poet and scientist Michelangelo Buonarroti became the architect and site manager of st. Peter's he was 72 when he took over the supervision of Europe's largest building site in 1547 the dome of st. Peters is the tallest freestanding masonry structure in the world the rib dome was Michelangelo's idea and its construction was the pinnacle of his artistic career his creative life lasted 70 years he saw himself as a sculptor but he also created epochal works as a painter and architect he spent years in quarries constantly searching for materials sometimes literally moving mountains Michelangelo outlived 9 popes and worked until his final breath he died at 89 a biblical age in his day Michelangelo died on the 18th of February 1564 a date many art historians see as marking the end of this era he was the last of the great scholarly artists of the Renaissance but even this Renaissance masterpiece was funded by the fear Christians had of eternal torment in hell it was Pope Leo the tenth who supported the sale of indulgences to fund the new building Martin Luther was appalled by the moral decline he believed he encountered in Rome for Luther this was a transformative experience and he mentioned it frequently in his later writings and speeches he fulminate it against the trade in indulgences which he saw as synonymous with the moral decline and greed of the church and it's Pope's this marked the birth of what would go down in history as the Reformation Luther wasn't a revolutionary but a reformer a simple friar who defied the Emperor and the Pope and split the church just two generations after Luther Europe would be shaken by a conflict more vicious than any that had gone before the 30 Years War the fighting between Catholics and Protestants devastated the Empire Martin Luther publicly condemned the practice of selling indulgences in his ninety-five theses in just a few months more than 80 of Luther's treatises and collections were published which were eventually reprinted in more than 600 editions Luther became a media star and the printed word the first mass medium in history if there wouldn't have been a Reformation without the mass media of the 16th century Martin Luther wrote theses about a relatively abstruse theological problem indulgences but these theses spread all over southern Germany in just a few weeks it was printing it was fly sheets and pamphlets that spread all over the empire and mobilized people people read them and they read them to others and debated the issues with those who couldn't read mentally neatly isn't quite who you were asking is the discontinued how do people really tick what drives us these were questions that scholars could now discuss publicly through the new mass medium global communication started in the Renaissance now for the first time thousands of people could refer to the same content at the same time and for the first time the future could be depicted and planned in a realistic fashion people understood what moved them and copied themselves the first humanoid machines were created precursors of a future in which robots play football within just a few generations the known world tripled in size global transport and global trade became a reality for the first time in the Renaissance merchants and seafarers did not only travel the earth they also laid the groundwork for the exploration of the universe the legacy of the Renaissance has never died it's still alive today we could say that the Industrial Revolution and therefore our modern world wouldn't have been possible without all the things that were invented in the Renaissance at no other time in its history has humankind experienced a comparable certain development the Renaissance even outstripped our own fast-changing age never before was so much developed invented moved changed revolutionized and rejected in such a short span of time it was a development driven by people who mastered the seemingly impossible because they had understood their own world the Renaissance was a plea against closed minds and the cult of experts it gave room to intellectual curiosity and the courage to set forth on new paths it's a story of people who did not wish to believe but to know and who accepted no limits to their quest [Music] you

Channel: DW Documentary

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Keywords: DW, Documentary, DW Documentary, Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rebirth of Antiquity, leonardo da vinci, renaissance (art period/movement), da vinci, history, art, ancient, culture, sistine chapel, david, last supper, leonardo da vinci paintings, leonardo da vinci documentary, johannes gutenberg, gutenberg, doku, vatican, pope

Id: _LMUWV1Tacs

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019