Italy in European History Part III
In the meantime, knowledge of the new Italian literature had begun to spread after Humanism. Sannazzaro, Baldassarre Castiglione, Pietro Bembo, Pietro Aretino, Ludovico Ariosto penetrated widely in France. The references of Francis I and the political events pushed many Italian men of letters to France, as well as painters and engravers and draftsmen. This was the fate of many Florentines, political exiles: most bankers and merchants, but close to human letters, sometimes writers and poets themselves. There are in Marseille, in Toulouse, in Bordeaux, in Montpellier, in Paris, in Lyon, almost the capital of the “Florentine nation” abroad, at this time. Perhaps no country like France, by reason of its proximity and affinity, absorbed so many elements of the Italian Renaissance, which then, incorporated and merged into French culture, they will give France in the 17th century a teacher of Europe as Italy had been before. But also other countries, besides France, albeit to a lesser extent. In Spain there was a whole series of Italianizing. And the Spanish theater of the ‘5 and’ 600 very much taken from the Italian theater. In England, which was then being refined, knowledge and taste for Italian things also began to spread. Various influences were felt by Italy on Germany, especially on the middle classes of the Bavarian cities of Nuremberg, Augusta, etc., despite the many ideal contrasts between the Germanic world and the Latin or Italian world. Remember the intense commercial relations and the attendance of German students in Italian universities. Indeed then, in the first half of the 16th century, when princes and their officials had victory over popular movements, the culminating phase of the reception of Roman law in Germany, passed through the practice of Italian cities and Italian law schools, Bologna and , now, especially Padua, which is the university most frequented by the Germans and by the other nations of Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe, and excels in these studies before the primacy passes to French, Dutch and German universities. With humanistic historiography, with Italian literature, art, the new art of the Renaissance. At the end of the 15th century, Italian architecture entered France, with Fra Giocondo and Boccadoro da Cortona; influences of Lombard and Italian painting and engraving, especially of Leonardo, were active in the Netherlands; Alberto Dürer made his Italian travels in 1496-1506 and felt powerfully, as a painter and engraver, Mantegna, Pisanello, others. In Spain, in the years of the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, sculptors who came from Italy or made on Italians are very successful; and Spanish painting, which until then he had received from the Flemings, was open to Italian influences. Certainly tiring penetration; many local resistances; but at the beginning of the 16th century that became faster; these lose vigor. Extremely high credit, outside of Italy, is that of the Italian figurative and constructive arts. Political Italy no longer had a voice: but the Raphaeles, Cellinis, Palladio, Titian, Sangallo and Michelangelo had a powerful one: without counting the lesser resonant names and the minor decorative industries of ceramics and terracottas that from Italy they transplanted their workshops to the Netherlands and France. In the figurative and constructive arts, Italy is, now, more than it had ever been and will not be a school for cultured Europe, especially by virtue of Rome, the greatest Italian and European center, point of convergence of artists from all over the peninsula, to whose name the Eternal City gives worldwide resonance. It was our conviction, remember Michelangelo, that only in Italy was good painting; that indeed good painting was synonymous with Italian painting. And it must have been a widespread opinion also beyond the Alps, while admitting that the fame of many Italian painters of the 16th century is sometimes greater than intrinsic merit. Even in terms of architecture, in much of Europe, the architectural lines and ornamental elements of the Italian Renaissance or both together, almost acquired citizenship, thanks to the work of foreign artists who came to study in Italy and in Italy. Italians who went to work outside Germany, Austria, Bavaria, Bohemia, whose princes had multiple relations with Italy. The Trentino region was almost an intermediary and therefore saw the Italian character of its culture accentuate in the early 1500s, thanks to Bernardo Clesio, bishop of Trento. From all over medieval art had entered a phase of movement and transformation, to embody new artistic ideals, respond to new practical needs, express passions and ardors fueled by religious, political and national struggles, adorn the life of bourgeoisies that had become rich. But encountering the art of the Italian Renaissance, of the country where such ideals had first appeared and such extrinsic conditions verified, she had help to make the initial effort and also some lasting imprint. So that influence culminated in the ‘500 and part of the’ 600, then declined, as in the peninsula the fanatic admiration of the ancient had fallen to give rise to more spontaneous creation. Precisely: in France, in England, in Germany, Italian art had that office that, in general, the antique had exercised on the Italian culture of the Renaissance. In those countries also the ancient came, in part, through Italy, as Italian art. Italy had this task as a mediator between ancient and Europe. Begun for centuries, it now reaches its peak.
According to WATCHTUTORIALS, this is the time in which even the European military architecture, which receives stimulus from the continuous wars and the increasing use of artillery, is, for the most part, Italian, as Italians are the most accredited and sought after military engineers, heirs and continuators of those of the ‘400. Many, among them the Marchigiani, of that school of military and civil architecture of the Duchy of Urbino which had been headed by Girolamo Genga. Then Lombardi, Venetians, Tuscans: that is, from the most cultured regions of Italy. They were soldiers, gunners, often inventors or machine perfectors. They brought with them that variety of attitudes, that readiness, that ingenuity in facing every situation, which belonged to the Italians of the Renaissance and constituted their superiority over others. Fortification art was known in Italy, she had trained in the many works of fortresses committed by the Venetian republic on the mainland and in the East. It was now widespread in Europe. And just remember Girolamo Morini of Modena, Girolamo Bellarmata in exile from Siena, Iacopo Fusti known as Castriotto, Pietro Strozzi from Florence, Gerolamo Pennacchi from Treviso, Antonio Melloni from Cremona, Bartolomeo Campi from Valdarno, a brilliant inventor of obsidional mechanics; all very active in the wars of France and the Netherlands, where several of them died in the service of England, Spain, the Empire, France, and where they later promoted the birth of national schools of military engineers. Maximum, the French one, which will triumph with Vauban in the 1600s. Empire, France, and where they later promoted the birth of national schools of military engineers. Maximum, the French one, which will triumph with Vauban in the 1600s.
The knowledge and use of the Italian language is also very widespread: in France especially, from Charles VIII to Henry II, husband of Caterina de ‘Medici, expert in speaking Italian “as if he were nudraged in the middle of Tuscany”. Even in Poland, at the time of Bona Sforza, wife of that king, Italian became the language of the court. It then had an older and more lasting spread and vitality in the East, in the countries of Venetian, Genoese and Pisan colonization. In Constantinople, it was almost the language of business and diplomacy. And his knowledge, there, was recognized in France as a necessary and sufficient requirement for a diplomat.