Black Death

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Black Death
Spread of the Black Death in Europe and the Near East (1346–1353)
Disease	Bubonic plague
Location	Eurasia, North Africa
Date	1346–1353
Deaths	75,000,000–200,000,000 (estimate)

The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the death of 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, but it may also cause septicaemic or pneumonic plagues.

The Black Death was the beginning of the second plague pandemic. The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history.

The origin of the Black Death is disputed. The pandemic originated either in Central Asia or East Asia but its first definitive appearance was in Crimea in 1347. From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese slave ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching Africa, Western Asia and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily and the Italian Peninsula. There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death was in large part spread by fleas – which cause pneumonic plague – and the person-to-person contact via aerosols which pneumonic plague enables, thus explaining the very fast inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague.

The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population. The plague might have reduced the world population from c.  475 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century. There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, with other contributing factors, the European population did not regain its level in 1300 until 1500. Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century.

Names

European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia, 'pestilence'; epidemia, 'epidemic'; mortalitas, 'mortality'. In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death". Subsequent to the pandemic "the furste moreyn" (first murrain) or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague. The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black" in the 14th or 15th centuries in any European language, though the expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand.

"Black death" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated Danish: den sorte død, lit. 'the black death'. This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as a calque: Icelandic: svarti dauði, German: der schwarze Tod, and French: la mort noire. Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin: magna mortalitas, lit. 'Great Death'.

The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old. Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, with her mouths "full of black Death" (Ancient Greek: πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο, romanized: pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio). Seneca the Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', (Latin: mors atra) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease. The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" (febris pestilentialis) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium). The phrase mors nigra, 'black death', was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease.

The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague". In 1908, Gasquet claimed that use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant).

Previous plague epidemics

Yersinia pestis (200 × magnification), the bacterium which causes plague

Recent research has suggested plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in the Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age. Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the "Neolithic decline" around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly. This Y. pestis may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara.

The symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in a fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan, six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I. In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541–542 CE, with recurrences until 750) was Y. pestis. This is known as the First plague pandemic.

14th-century plague

Causes

Early theory

The most authoritative contemporary account is found in a report from the medical faculty in Paris to Philip VI of France. It blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air" (miasma theory). Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a “martyrdom and mercy” from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise. For non-believers, it was a punishment. Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God. Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for plague used by Europeans. These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks.

Predominant modern theory

The Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) engorged with blood. This species of flea is the primary vector for the transmission of Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for spreading bubonic plague in most plague epidemics. Both male and female fleas feed on blood and can transmit the infection.

 

Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) infected with the Yersinia pestis bacterium which appears as a dark mass in the gut. The foregut (proventriculus) of this flea is blocked by a Y. pestis biofilm; when the flea feeds on an uninfected host Y. pestis is regurgitated into the wound, causing infection.

Due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease. The plague disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas, including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, North India, Uganda and the western United States.

Y. pestis was discovered by Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacillus was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission. The mechanism by which Y. pestis is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage starves the fleas and drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour and attempts to clear the blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lack resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic.

DNA evidence

Skeletons in a mass grave from 1720 to 1721 in Martigues, near Marseille in southern France, yielded molecular evidence of the orientalis strain of Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for bubonic plague. The second pandemic of bubonic plague was active in Europe from 1347, the beginning of the Black Death, until 1750.

Definitive confirmation of the role of Y. pestis arrived in 2010 with a publication in PLOS Pathogens by Haensch et al. They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y. pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences. The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y. pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages". In 2011, these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England. Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist".

Later in 2011, Bos et al. reported in Nature the first draft genome of Y. pestis from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of Y. pestis.

Since this time, further genomic papers have further confirmed the phylogenetic placement of the Y. pestis strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics including the third plague pandemic and as the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian. In addition, plague genomes from significantly earlier in prehistory have been recovered.

DNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th century London have shown plague is a strain of Y. pestis almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013.

Alternative explanations

It is recognised that an epidemiological account of plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was undertaken in England between the time of publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and the poll tax of the year 1377. Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy.

Mathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission. A research in 2018 challenged the popular hypothesis that "infected rats died, their flea parasites could have jumped from the recently dead rat hosts to humans". It suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people". The second model claims to better fit the trends of death toll because the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but very high spike in deaths, which contradict historical death data.

Lars Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities. Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague.

Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London and that the disease spread too quickly to support the thesis that Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person. This theory is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic.

Summary

Although academic debate continues, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance. Many scholars arguing for Y. pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections. In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicaemic (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the lungs before the rest of the body) forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms. In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis. Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of Y. pestis bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp, no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations. In the words of one researcher: "Finally, plague is plague."

Transmission

The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century with the development of the germ theory of disease; until then streets were commonly filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding, facilitating the spread of transmissible disease.

Territorial origins

Spread of plague in western Eurasia, 1346–1353.

According to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman that analysed the genetic variation of the bacterium, Yersinia pestis "evolved in or near China", from which it spread around the world in multiple epidemics. Later research by a team led by Galina Eroshenko places the origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China.

Nestorian graves dating to 1338–1339 near Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic. Others favour an origin in China. According to this theory, the disease may have travelled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders, or it could have arrived via ship. Epidemics killed an estimated 25 million across Asia during the fifteen years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347.

Research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan Dynasty shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague in fourteenth-century China, suggesting that the Black Death may not have reached these regions. Ole Benedictow argues that since the first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa, the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea.

European outbreak

The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.

... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted the people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive.

Geoffrey the Baker, Chronicon Angliae

Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. During a protracted siege of the city, in 1345–1346 the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg, whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease, catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is more likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347.

The epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor, John VI Kantakouzenos, who wrote a description of the disease modelled on Thucydides's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens, but noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities. Nicephorus Gregoras also described in writing to Demetrios Kydones the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens. The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400.

Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347; the disease spread rapidly all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy. Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles.

From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain (the epidemic began to wreak havoc first on the Crown of Aragon in the spring of 1348), Portugal and England by June 1348, then spread east and north through Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland. Finally, it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351. Plague was somewhat more uncommon in parts of Europe with less developed trade with their neighbours, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated Alpine villages throughout the continent.

According to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavourable weather decimated plague-infected rodent populations and forced their fleas onto alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean, as well as during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic states. Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, malnutrition, even if distantly, also contributed to such an immense loss in European population, since it weakened immune systems.

Western Asian and North African outbreak

The disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. As infected rodents infected new rodents, the disease spread across the region, entering also from southern Russia.

By autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople; according to a contemporary witness, from a single merchant ship carrying slaves. By late summer 1348 it reached Cairo, capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, cultural centre of the Islamic world, and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died. The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex. The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites, and plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over the following century and half.

During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus, and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo. That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine, the cities of Ashkelon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, and Homs were all infected. In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey. Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa. The pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis was infected by ship from Sicily. Tunis was then under attack by an army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from the Islamic city of Almería in al-Andalus.

Mecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj. In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen, al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home. During 1348, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease.

Signs and symptoms

A hand showing how acral gangrene of the fingers due to bubonic plague causes the skin and flesh to die and turn black

 

An inguinal bubo on the upper thigh of a person infected with bubonic plague. Swollen lymph nodes (buboes) often occur in the neck, armpit and groin (inguinal) regions of plague victims.

Bubonic plague

Symptoms of the disease include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Left untreated, of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 percent die within eight days.

Contemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, neck, and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio's description:

In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg ... From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves.

This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most victims died two to seven days after initial infection. Freckle-like spots and rashes, which could have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of plague.

Pneumonic plague

Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master the Cardinal Colonna died of plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease, pneumonic plague, that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems. Symptoms include fever, cough, and blood-tinged sputum. As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red. Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90 to 95 percent.

Septicaemic plague

Septicaemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate near 100%. Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation). In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicaemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.

Consequences

Deaths

Inspired by the Black Death, The Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre, an allegory on the universality of death, was a common painting motif in the late medieval period.

There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely by locality. In urban centres, the greater the population before the outbreak, the longer the duration of the period of abnormal mortality. It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia. The mortality rate of the Black Death in the 14th century was far greater than the worst 20th-century outbreaks of Y. pestis plague, which occurred in India and killed as much as 3% of the population of certain cities. The overwhelming number of deceased bodies produced by the Black Death caused the necessity of mass burial sites in Europe, sometimes including up to several hundred or several thousand skeletons. The mass burial sites that have been excavated have allowed archaeologists to continue interpreting and defining the biological, sociological, historical, and anthropological implications of the Black Death.

According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, it is likely that over four years, 45–50% of the European population died of plague. Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow suggests it could have been as much as 60% of the European population. In 1348, the disease spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die. Half of Paris' population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from between 110,000 and 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well, with a death toll of approximately 62,000 between 1346 and 1353. Florence's tax records suggest that 80% of the city's population died within four months in 1348. Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. The disease bypassed some areas, with the most isolated areas being less vulnerable to contagion. Plague did not appear in Douai in Flanders until the turn of the 15th century, and the impact was less severe on the populations of Hainaut, Finland, northern Germany, and areas of Poland. Monks, nuns, and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for victims of the Black Death.

Citizens of Tournai bury plague victims

The physician to the Avignon Papacy, Raimundo Chalmel de Vinario (Latin: Magister Raimundus, lit. 'Master Raymond'), observed the decreasing mortality rate of successive outbreaks of plague in 1347–48, 1362, 1371, and 1382 in his 1382 treatise On Epidemics (De epidemica). In the first outbreak, two thirds of the population contracted the illness and most patients died; in the next, half the population became ill but only some died; by the third, a tenth were affected and many survived; while by the fourth occurrence, only one in twenty people were sickened and most of them survived. By the 1380s in Europe, it predominantly affected children. Chalmel de Vinario recognized that bloodletting was ineffective (though he continued to prescribe bleeding for members of the Roman Curia, whom he disliked), and claimed that all true cases of plague were caused by astrological factors and were incurable; he himself was never able to effect a cure.

The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran, and Syria, during this time, is for a death toll of about a third of the population. The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population. In Cairo, with a population numbering as many as 600,000, and possibly the largest city west of China, between one third and 40% of the inhabitants died inside of eight months.

Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded his experience from Siena, where plague arrived in May 1348:

Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices ... great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night ... And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug ... And I, Agnolo di Tura ... buried my five children with my own hands. And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city. There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death. And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.

Economic

With such a large population decline from the pandemic, wages soared in response to a labour shortage. On the other hand, in the quarter century after the Black Death in England, it is clear many labourers, artisans, and craftsmen, those living from money-wages alone, did suffer a reduction in real incomes owing to rampant inflation. Landowners were also pushed to substitute monetary rents for labour services in an effort to keep tenants.

Environmental

Some historians believe the innumerable deaths brought on by the pandemic cooled the climate by freeing up land and triggering reforestation. This may have led to the Little Ice Age.

Persecutions

Jews being burned at the stake in 1349. Miniature from a 14th-century manuscript Antiquitates Flandriae

Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers, and Romani, blaming them for the crisis. Lepers, and others with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were killed throughout Europe.

Because 14th-century healers and governments were at a loss to explain or stop the disease, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for outbreaks. Many believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins, and could be relieved by winning God's forgiveness.

There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered. In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed. During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a warm welcome from King Casimir the Great.

Social

Pieter Bruegel's The Triumph of Death reflects the social upheaval and terror that followed plague, which devastated medieval Europe.

One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death, which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy and led to the Renaissance. Italy was particularly badly hit by the pandemic, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife. It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art.

This does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred in Italy in the 14th century. The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy. The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of the above factors, in combination with an influx of Greek scholars following the fall of the Byzantine Empire. As a result of the drastic reduction in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To answer the increased need for labour, workers travelled in search of the most favorable position economically.

Prior to the emergence of the Black Death, the workings of Europe were run by the Catholic Church and the continent was considered a feudalistic society, composed of fiefs and city-states. The pandemic completely restructured both religion and political forces; survivors began to turn to other forms of spirituality and the power dynamics of the fiefs and city-states crumbled.

Cairo's population, partly owing to the numerous plague epidemics, was in the early 18th century half of what it was in 1347. The populations of some Italian cities, notably Florence, did not regain their pre-14th century size until the 19th century. The demographic decline due to the pandemic had economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30–40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400. Landholders faced a great loss, but for ordinary men and women it was a windfall. The survivors of the pandemic found not only that the prices of food were lower but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives, and this probably destabilized feudalism.

The word "quarantine" has its roots in this period, though the concept of isolating people to prevent the spread of disease is older. In the city-state of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia), a thirty-day isolation period was implemented in 1377 for new arrivals to the city from plague-affected areas. The isolation period was later extended to forty days, and given the name "quarantino" from the Italian word for "forty".

Recurrences

Second plague pandemic

The Great Plague of London, in 1665, killed up to 100,000 people.

 

A plague doctor and his typical apparel during the 17th Century Outbreak.

The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. According to Jean-Noël Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671. (Note that some researchers have cautions about the uncritical use of Biraben's data.) The second pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–63; 1374; 1400; 1438–39; 1456–57; 1464–66; 1481–85; 1500–03; 1518–31; 1544–48; 1563–66; 1573–88; 1596–99; 1602–11; 1623–40; 1644–54; and 1664–67. Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the retreat from most of Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century). The historian George Sussman argued that the plague had not occurred in East Africa until the 1900s. However, other sources suggest that the Second pandemic did indeed reach Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to historian Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31." In the first half of the 17th century, a plague claimed some 1.7 million victims in Italy. More than 1.25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.

Contemporaneous painting of Marseille during the Great Plague in 1720

The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world. Plague was present in at least one location in the Islamic world virtually every year between 1500 and 1850. Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–21, and again in 1654–57, 1665, 1691, and 1740–42. Cairo suffered more than fifty plague epidemics within 150 years from the plague's first appearance, with the final outbreak of the second pandemic there in the 1840s. Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800. Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population has been wiped out.

Third plague pandemic

Worldwide distribution of plague-infected animals, 1998

The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone. The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen was named.

Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in well over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney. This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia pestis.

The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak in 1907–1908.

Modern-day

Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine. It is feared that the plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat. One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995. A further outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014. In October 2017 the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands.

An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern bubonic plague, following the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions.

 

Venetian Renaissance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Renaissance 

 

Giorgione, Sleeping Venus (c. 1510), Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany.

The Venetian Renaissance had a distinct character compared to the general Italian Renaissance elsewhere. The Republic of Venice was topographically distinct from the rest of the city-states of Renaissance Italy as a result of their geographic location which isolated the city politically, economically and culturally allowing the city the leisure to pursue the pleasures of art. The influence of Venetian art did not cease to continue at the termination of the Renaissance period. Its practices persisted through the works of art critics and artists proliferating its prominence around Europe to the 19^th century.

Tintoretto, Miracle of the Slave, 1548

Though a long decline in the political and economic power of the Republic began before 1500, Venice at that date remained "the richest, most powerful, and most populous Italian city" and controlled significant territories on the mainland, known as the terraferma, which included several small cities who contributed artists to the Venetian school, in particular Padua, Brescia and Verona. The Republic's territories also included Istria, Dalmatia and the islands now off the Croatian coast, who also contributed. Indeed, "the major Venetian painters of the sixteenth century were rarely natives of the city" itself, and some mostly worked in the Republic's other territories, or further afield. Much the same is true of the Venetian architects.

Though by no means an important centre of Renaissance humanism, Venice was the undoubted centre of book publishing in Italy, and very important in that respect; Venetian editions were distributed across Europe. Aldus Manutius was the most important printer/publisher, but by no means the only one.

Painting

The Feast of the Gods, begun c. 1514 by Giovanni Bellini, and completed by Titian in 1529; oil on canvas; National Gallery of Art, Washington

Venetian painting was a major force in Italian Renaissance painting and beyond. Beginning with the work of Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) and his brother Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507) and their workshops, the major artists of the Venetian school included Giorgione (c. 1477–1510), Titian (c. 1489–1576), Tintoretto (1518–1594), Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) and Jacopo Bassano (1510–1592) and his sons. Considered to give primacy of colour over line, the tradition of the Venetian school contrasted with the Mannerism prevalent in the rest of Italy. The Venetian style exerted great influence upon the subsequent development of Western painting.

The harmonious concord and stability, and tight government control, of Venice was reflected in its paintings. Venice was widely known and revered for retaining the reputation of "unsullied liberty, unwavering religiosity, social harmony and unfailing peaceful intentions." The Republic of Venice was the leading city to uphold the utilisation of artistic patronage as an "arm of government" in its realisation of the potential of art as a political asset.

The rest of Italy tended to ignore or underestimate Venetian painting; Giorgio Vasari's neglect of the school in the first edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550 was so conspicuous that he realized he needed to visit Venice for extra material in his second edition of 1568. In contrast, foreigners, for whom Venice was often the first major Italian city visited, always had a great appreciation for it and, after Venice itself, the best collections are now in the large European museums rather than other Italian cities. At the top, princely, level, Venetian artists tended to be the most sought-after for commissions abroad, from Titian onwards, and in the 18th century most of the best painters spent significant periods abroad, generally with great success.

The traditional methods of the Byzantine style persisted even in the painting faction until around 1400 before the dominant style began to shift towards International Gothic and Italian Renaissance first brought into Venice by Paduan Guariento di Arpo, Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello when they were commissioned to ornament the frescoes of the Doge's Palace.

The symbol of Venice is known to be the Virgin or the goddess Venus, but the Lion of Saint Mark is the oldest and most universal symbol of the Republic. The Lion is the figure which welcomes outsiders into the city, as it stands on the summit of the column on the Piazzetta, along with other public structures such as the city gates and palaces. Depictions of lions in paintings represented the significance of the saint as the patron of the city of Venice.

An example is the tempera on canvas by Vittore Carpaccio, Lion of Saint Mark, 1516. The powerful image of the lion portrayed with the divine marks of the halo and wings, points to an open book with the inscriptions "Peace unto you Mark, my evangelist" explicitly stating its protection and blessing over the city. The delineation of the lion’s front paws above land whilst the rear paws stand above the sea alludes to the dominance of Venice's reign over both territories as a fulfilment of Saint Mark's promise.

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  The Bravo, an example of a painting often attributed to Titian or Giorgione, but also to Palma Vecchio

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  Sebastiano del Piombo, Visitation, 1518–19

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  Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527

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  Paolo Veronese, The Conversion of Mary Magdalene, c. 1548

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  Andrea Schiavone, Judgement of Midas, c. 1548–50

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  Jacopo Bassano, The Way to Calvary, c. 1540

Architecture

Palazzo Dario, 1480s, with characteristic Venetian chimney-pots

Compared to the Renaissance architecture of other Italian cities, in Venice there was a degree of conservatism, especially in retaining the overall form of buildings, which in the city were usually replacements on a confined site, and in windows, where arched or round tops, sometimes with a classicized version of the tracery of Venetian Gothic architecture, remained far more heavily used than in other cities. The Doge's Palace was much rebuilt after fires, but mostly behind the Gothic facades.

The Venetian elite had a collective belief in the importance of architecture in bolstering confidence in the Republic, and a Senate resolution in 1535 noted that it was "the most beautiful and illustrious city which at present exists in the world". At the same time, overt competition between patrician families was discouraged, in favour of "harmonious equality", which applied to buildings as to other areas, and novelty for its own sake, or to recapture the glories of antiquity, was regarded with suspicion. Though visitors admired the rich ensembles, Venetian architecture did not have much influence beyond the republic's own possessions before Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), whose style of Palladian architecture became hugely influential some time after his death, not least in the English-speaking world.

Mauro Codussi, Ca' Vendramin Calergi, from 1481

Art and architecture were utilised as a powerful method to display the grandeur of the city of Venice. Architectures and structures such as St Mark's Basilica, Piazza San Marco and the Doge's Palace to name a few were "a visible expression of the idea of Venice." Venice was able to prolong its state of freedom for more than a thousand years and established a standing superior to that of Rome. The citizens of Venice believed themselves to be a pious nation for the lack of association with paganism in the past and claims that the city was founded on the Day of the Annunciation. Therefore, Venetians used pompous and intricate architectural designs to display the city's "pure, legitimate and undefiled" Christianity. The art during the Renaissance period of Venice continued to draw heavy influence from the styles of the Byzantine Empire.

Mauro Codussi (1440–1504) from Lombardy was one of the first architects to work in a Renaissance style in Venice, with his son Domenico assisting him and carrying on his practice after his death. His work respects and alludes to many elements of the Venetian Gothic, and harmonizes well with it. Other architects active in the early Renaissance period include Giorgio Spavento (active from 1489 or before, d. 1509), and Antonio Abbondi, often known as Scarpagnino (died 1549), who was active from at least 1505. San Sebastiano, Venice, begun 1506, is an early work. Both of these had many government commissions.

Jacopo Sansovino, Biblioteca Marciana, begun 1537

Jacopo Sansovino (1486–1570), also an important sculptor, was a Florentine with a successful career in Florence and then Rome. He fled to Venice after the catastrophic Sack of Rome in 1527 and in 1529 was appointed chief architect and superintendent of properties (Protomaestro or Proto) to the Procurators of San Marco. Before long he found a style that satisfied Venetian patrons and was "definitive for the entire subsequent history of Venetian architecture". He created the appearance of much of the area around the Piazza San Marco beyond Basilica of San Marco itself, designing the Biblioteca Marciana (1537 onwards) and mint or "Zecca" on the Piazzetta di San Marco. His palazzi include Palazzo Corner della Ca' Grande (1532 onwards) and Palazzo Dolfin Manin from 1536.

The Biblioteca Marciana is considered his "undoubted masterpiece", and a key work in Venetian Renaissance architecture. Palladio, who saw it being built, called it "probably the richest ever built from the days of ancients up to now", and it has been described by Frederick Hartt as "surely one of the most satisfying structures in Italian architectural history". It has an extremely prominent site, with the long facade facing the Doge's Palace across the Piazzetta di San Marco, and the shorter sides facing the lagoon and the Piazza San Marco.

Michele Sanmicheli (1484–1559) from Verona in the terraferma, trained further south, and on his return to Verona in 1527 was hired by the state as a military architect. Most of his work was fortifications and military or naval buildings around the Venetian territories, especially in Verona, but he also built a number of palaces that are very original, and take Venetian architecture into Mannerism. His work in Verona represents a group of buildings defining the city in a way comparable to Palladio's in Vicenza. The Palazzo Bevilacqua in Verona (begun 1529) is the most famous of these.

Palladio, Villa Badoer, 1556 on, one of his villas on the terraferma

The principal architect of the later Venetian Renaissance, was Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), who was also the key figure in later Italian Renaissance architecture, and its most important writer on architecture. But apart from the two large churches of San Giorgio Maggiore (1566 on), and Il Redentore (1577 on), he designed relatively little in the city itself, for a number of reasons. He designed many villas in the Veneto, in Vicenza and a series of famous country houses, relatively small compared to some further south, for the Venetian elite. Palladio's style was later developed in the Palladian architecture of both Britain and the American colonies, and his Venetian window, with a central arched top, took a very Venetian element around the world. The World Heritage Site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto includes 23 buildings in the city, and 24 country villas.

Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548–1616) from Vicenza only moved to Venice in 1581, the year after Palladio's death. He designed the Procuratie Nuove on the Piazza San Marco, and completed many projects Palladio had left incomplete. His pupil Baldassare Longhena (1598–1682), who was for a change born in the city, in turn completed Scamozzi's projects and, while he introduced a full-blown Baroque architecture to Venice, many buildings, especially palaces, continued to develop a Baroque form of the Venetian Renaissance style.

Architectural publishing

Venice was a major European centre for all book printing publishing, and became the major centre for architectural publishing. Vitruvius is the only significant classical writer on architecture to survive, and his work De architectura was keenly studied by all Renaissance architects. Although the Latin text had been printed before, the first edition illustrated with woodcuts was produced by Fra Giovanni Giocondo in Venice in 1511; he had designed the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in 1505–08.

The "Seven Books" or Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva of Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) were also published in Venice, in several volumes from 1537 onwards. He had worked in the city as an architect, but left little mark. These were also heavily illustrated and became essential reading, and quickly copied and translated around Europe. The patrician humanist, clergyman and Venetian diplomat Daniele Barbaro was a patron of Palladio (Villa Barbaro), and Palladio illustrated his Italian translation of Vitruvius (1556). Palladio's own I quattro libri dell'architettura (1570), illustrated by himself, again had a huge influence across Europe.

Vincenzo Scamozzi's main book L’Idea dell’Architettura Universale was published in 1615, and essentially looks back to Palladio; it was influential in spreading Palladianism.

Music

Paolo Veronese, group of musicians playing at The Wedding at Cana, 1563

In music history, the "Venetian School" was the body and work of composers working in Venice from about 1550 to around 1610, many working in the Venetian polychoral style. The Venetian polychoral compositions of the late sixteenth century were among the most famous musical works in Europe, and their influence on musical practice in other countries was enormous. The innovations introduced by the Venetian school, along with the contemporary development of monody and opera in Florence, together define the end of the musical Renaissance and the beginning of the musical Baroque.

As in other media, the rich patronage available in Venice drew composers from elsewhere in Italy, and beyond, to work in the city. Venice was also the European leader in publishing the new form of printed music scores.

Several major factors came together to create the Venetian School. The first was political: after the death of Pope Leo X in 1521 and the Sack of Rome in 1527, the long dominant musical establishment in Rome was eclipsed: many musicians either moved elsewhere or chose not to go to Rome, and Venice was one of several places to have an environment conducive to creativity.

Another factor, possibly the most important, was the existence of the splendid Basilica San Marco di Venezia (commonly known as St. Mark's), with its unique interior with opposing choir lofts. Because of the spacious architecture of this basilica, it was necessary to develop a musical style which exploited the sound-delay to advantage, rather than fought against it: thus the Venetian polychoral style was developed, the grand antiphonal style in which groups of singers and instruments played sometimes in opposition, and sometimes together, united by the sound of the organ. The first composer to make this effect famous was Adrian Willaert, who became maestro di cappella of St. Mark's in 1527, and remained in the position until his death in 1562. Gioseffo Zarlino, one of the most influential writers on music of the age, called Willaert "the new Pythagoras," and Willaert's influence was profound, not only as a composer but as a teacher, since most of the Venetians who followed studied with him.

In the 1560s, two distinct groups developed within the Venetian school: a progressive group, led by Baldassare Donato, and a conservative group, led by Zarlino who was then maestro di cappella. Members of the conservative branch tended to follow the style of Franco-Flemish polyphony, and included Cipriano de Rore, Zarlino, and Claudio Merulo; members of the progressive group included Donato, Giovanni Croce, and later Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli. An additional point of contention between the two groups was whether or not Venetians—or at least Italians—should be given the top job of maestro di cappella at St. Mark's. Eventually the group favoring local talent prevailed, ending the dominance of foreign musicians in Venice; in 1603, Giovanni Croce was appointed to the job, followed by Giulio Cesare Martinengo in 1609.

The peak of development of the Venetian School was in the 1580s, when Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli composed enormous works for multiple choirs, groups of brass and string instruments, and organ. These works are the first to include dynamics, and are among the first to include specific instructions for ensemble instrumentation. Organists working at the same time included Claudio Merulo and Girolamo Diruta; they began to define an instrumental style and technique which moved to northern Europe in the succeeding generations, culminating in the works of Sweelinck, Buxtehude, and eventually J.S. Bach.

Venetian Guilds

The Venetian community in the Renaissance was constructed on the emphasis on the relationships between neighbours, ritual brothers and kinsmen all living together in equality from the upper and lower social class. Many scholars believe that the stability, prosperity and political security was significantly due to their notion of working together and communal action. Petrarch, in the mid-fourteenth century, described Venice as "solidly built on marble but standing more solid on a foundation of civil concord." The stability of Venice was escalated through the system of guilds. Dennis Romano wrote in his book, Patricians and Popolani: "Nowhere in Venetian society was the emphasis on community and solidarity more pronounced than in the guilds." By the mid-fourteenth century, Venice had founded more than fifty guilds that helped to achieve cooperation from both members of the government and the guild. The government was shrewd to practice fair justice equally to all social levels, which prevented riots or political protests. Depending on the artisan's trade and specialty, individuals joined the corresponding guild group upon a pledge of allegiance to the doge. There were many types of guilds such as the stonemasons, woodcarvers, glassmakers, furriers and wool industries.

"Arte dei depentori" is a painter's guild which is the oldest known guild dating back to 1271. This groups are not exclusive to painters but also includes gilders, textiles designers, embroiderers, gold-tooled leather artisans, playing-card makers, mask makers, and sign painters. The stratification of the guilds was divided into master craftsmen and workers or apprentices. The masters were in charge of production processes whilst depending on their competency and skills, the workers contributed to production of goods or took on trivial chores such as sweeping the floor or grinding pigments. The functions of the guilds were both political and cultural, contributing their talents during special celebrations and ceremonies. On special events such as the Feast of Saint Mark, members of each guild participated in these events for trading of expensive items such as paintings, furniture, carpets, objects of glass, gold, and textiles.

Roman Renaissance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Renaissance 

 

Idealized depiction of Rome from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle

The Renaissance in Rome occupied a period from the mid-15th to the mid-16th centuries, a period which spawned such masters as Michelangelo and Raphael, who left an indelible mark on Western figurative art. The city had been a magnet for artists wishing to study its classical ruins since the early 1400s. A revived interest in the Classics brought about the first archaeological study of Roman remains by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi and sculptor Donatello. This inspired a corresponding classicism in painting and sculpture, which manifested itself in the paintings of Masaccio and Uccello. Pisanello and his assistants also frequently took inspiration from ancient remains, but their approach was essentially cataloguing, acquiring a repertoire of models to be exploited later.

In the year 1420, Pope Martin V moved the papal seat back to Rome, ending its long "Babylonian captivity", and after the Papal Schism, when several "popes" simultaneously claimed the office. He at once set to work, establishing order and restoring the dilapidated churches, palaces, bridges, and other public structures. For this reconstruction he engaged some famous masters of the Tuscan school, and thus laid the foundation for the Roman Renaissance.

Historical background

The 14th century in Rome, with the absence of the popes during the Avignon Papacy, was a century of neglect and misery. Rome dropped to its lowest level of population, and those that remained were starving and wretched. Before the return of the papacy, repeatedly postponed because of the bad conditions of the city and the lack of control and security, it was first necessary to strengthen the political and doctrinal aspects of the pontiff. When, in 1377, Gregory XI did return to Rome, he found his power more formal than real. It was a city in anarchy because of the struggles between the nobility and the popular faction. There followed four decades of instability, characterized locally by power struggles between the commune and the papacy, and internationally by the great Western Schism. It was finally Martin V of the Colonna family who managed to bring order to the city, laying the foundations of its rebirth.

Martin V (1417–1431)

The head of a princess attributed in a cycle of Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran of Pisanello e Gentile, Museo di palazzo Venezia, Rome.

Pope Martin V was born at Genazzano in 1368. He studied at the University of Perugia, became prothonotary Apostolic under Pope Urban VI, and papal auditor and nuncio at various Italian courts under Pope Boniface IX. On 12 June 1402 he was made Cardinal Deacon of San Giorgio in Velabro. At the Council of Constance he was unanimously elected pope on 11 November 1417, and took the name Martin V in honour of Martin of Tours, whose feast fell on the day of his election. King Sigismund of Germany tried to induce Martin V to stay in Germany while France begged him to come to Avignon, but, rejecting all offers, he set out for Rome on 16 May 1418. After many detours, primarily to cement relations with the Queen of Naples, Bracco di Montone, and others, he arrived on 28 September 1420.

The first work began on the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, which has been badly damaged in 1413. In 1421 the church was enriched by a new Cosmatesque floor and the ceiling was repaired, while Gentile da Fabriano received a commission to create a new cycle of frescoes in the right aisle. These were completed by Pisanello after his death in 1427. The basilica also received a new monastery, assigned to the Benedictines. The pavement of the basilica and the columns were designed as signature pieces of the Colonna family.

When Cosimo de' Medici was exiled from Florence, Donatello returned to Rome, remaining until 1433. The two works that testify to his presence in this city, the Tomb of Giovanni Crivelli at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and the ciborium at St. Peter's Basilica, bear a strong stamp of classical influence. Brunelleschi also returned several times to find inspiration for what was the Renaissance art. While in Florence, Masaccio, first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento, became friends with Brunelleschi and Donatello, and at their prompting in 1423 travelled to Rome, along with his mentor Masolino. From that point he was freed of all Gothic and Byzantine influence, as may be seen in his altarpiece for the Carmelite Church in Pisa. The traces of influences from ancient Roman and Greek art that are present in some of Masaccio's works must also have originated from this trip. Unfortunately, any further innovation was curtailed by Masaccio's premature death at the age of 27.

Eugene IV (1431–1447)

Eugenius IV (Gabriello Condulmaro, or Condulmerio) was born in Venice in 1388, of a wealthy family. He was nephew to Pope Gregory XII. His service to Pope Martin V was such that he was elected to the papacy on the first scrutiny. However, his papacy was destined to be a stormy one. In 1434, a revolution, fomented by the pope's enemies, broke out in Rome. Eugene escaped down the Tiber to Ostia, where the friendly Florentines were only too happy to receive him. He took up his residence in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella, and sent Vitelleschi, the militant Bishop of Recanati, to restore order in the Papal States. Florence at that time was the centre of literary activity, and clearly influenced the Humanist movement. During his stay in the Tuscan capital, Eugene consecrated the Florence Cathedral, just then finished by Brunelleschi.

Martyrdom of Saint Peter, Filarete bronze door for the Old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome

Pope Eugene IV continued in this vein in Rome, commissioning the Florentine Antonio di Pietro Averlino, known as Filarete (1400–1469), to make two bronze doors, (imposts), for the Old St. Peter's Basilica, completed in 1445.

In 1443–1445, Leon Battista Alberti, whose many talents truly epitomised the "Renaissance Man", wrote the Descriptio urbis Romae, where he proposed a system for a geometric arrangement of the city centred on the Capitoline Hill. He later became the architectural advisor to Pope Nicholas V and was involved in a number of projects at the Vatican. Shortly after they arrived in town, Beato Angelico and French Jean Fouquet began a series of frescoes in the Old St. Peter's Basilica, which testifies to the presence of the nascent interest in Flemish painting and the Nordic generally. Although the duration of the pontificate of Eugene IV did not allow for the full implementation of his plans, Rome became a fruitful meeting ground for artists of different schools. This would soon spawn a common style, which for the first time be defined as "Roman".

Nicholas V (1447–1455)

The collaboration between Alberti and Pope Nicholas V gave rise to the first grandiose building projects of Renaissance Rome. The plan for the city focused primarily on five main points:

• restore the walls
• restoration or reconstruction of the forty churches in the city
• reset the Borgo district
• expansion of the Old St. Peter's Basilica
• restoration of the Apostolic Palace

The intent was to gain a citadel of religion that had its focal point on the Capitoline Hill. The project's aim was to exalt the power of the Church, clearly demonstrating the continuity between the Imperial and Christian Rome. It was to Nicholas V that Alberti dedicated in 1452 the monumental theoretical result of his long study of Vitruvius. This was his De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building), not a restored text of Vitruvius but a wholly new work. It became a bible of Renaissance architecture, for it incorporated and made advances upon the engineering knowledge of antiquity, and grounded the stylistic principles of classical art into a fully developed aesthetic theory.

Due to the brevity of the pontificate of Pope Nicholas V, all the ambitious projects could not be completed. However, it made artists who shared an interest in the antiquity and charm of the classic ruins converge (especially the Tuscan and Lombard ones). This led to a certain homogeneity of their work.

Palazzo Venezia, the courtyard of the Palazzetto

A paradigmatic example of the style that developed in that period in architecture is Palazzo Venezia, started in 1455, that incorporating existing buildings. The courtyard of the annexed Palazzetto is taken from Roman elements combined, but without philological rigor. It incorporates the model of the viridarium and is inspired by the Colosseum in the overlapped architectural orders, and in the cornice with ornament in brackets. The width of the arches, however, is reduced and simplified so they will not look too impressive compared to the spaces they enclose. In the building itself (built from 1466), there was a more faithful revival of ancient models, which shows a gradually deeper understanding. For example, the hall was once a lacunar in concrete (taken from Pantheon or the Basilica of Maxentius) with overlapping orders and partially leaning on the pillars, as in the Colosseum or in the Theatre of Marcellus.

The renewal of the Constantinian Old St. Peter's Basilica was assigned to Bernardo Rossellino. The body was expanded with five aisles and longitudinal cross vaults on pillars that were to incorporate the old columns. The apse was rebuilt with the expansion of the transept, a choir was added, which was the logical continuation of the nave, and also a domed room at the intersection of the transept and choir. This configuration influenced the next plan by Bramante for a total overhaul of the building, which retained what was already built. Work began around 1450, but with the death of the Pope had no further development, and stagnated until Julius II decided for a complete reconstruction.

The renewal of the Apostolic Palace was a first step in the decoration of the private chapel of the Pope, the Niccoline Chapel, by Fra Angelico and his assistant Benozzo Gozzoli. The decoration includes stories of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen, which were interpreted by Fra Angelico in a style rich in details, erudite, and where his "Christian humanism" is expressed in its vertices. The scenes are set in majestic architecture, born from the suggestions of ancient Rome and early Christian times, but not slavish, perhaps mindful of the projects that then circulated in the papal court for the restoration of St. Peter. The figures are solid, calm and solemn, the tone was generally more stately, exemplifying the meditative artist.

The Jubilee celebration of 1475 injected revenue that inspired a number of projects and allowed the Pope to draw a large number of artists together. There were various collaborations between artists such as, Vivarini, Bartolomeo di Tommaso, Benedetto Bonfigli, Andrea del Castagno, Piero della Francesca, and perhaps Rogier van der Weyden. This wealth of ideas prepared the ground for the synthesis towards the end of the century, and led to the creation of a language properly "Roman".

Sixtus IV (1471–1484)

Melozzo da Forlì, Sixtus IV Appointing Platina as Prefect of the Vatican Library (1477).

Pope Sixtus IV created the Vatican Library and entrusted it to the humanist Melozzo da Forlì, the Papal painter. He frescoed one of the emblems of the Roman humanist culture of the time, Pope Sixtus IV Appoints Platina as Prefect of the Vatican Library (1477), in which the pope is portrayed among his relatives in opulent classical architecture. A few years later, under Giuliano della Rovere, Melozzo painted the apse of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli with Ascension of the Apostles between Playing Angels, considered the first example of the view "from down to top".

The Sistine Chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who had the old Cappella Magna restored between 1477 and 1480. It was originally to be decorated by artists from Umbria and Marche. But through the intercession of Lorenzo de' Medici, the commission of the wall decoration was instead entrusted to the best Florentine artists of the time, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Cosimo Roselli. They created a series of frescos depicting the Life of Moses and the Life of Christ, offset by papal portraits above and trompe-l'œil drapery below. The work on the frescoes began in 1481 and was concluded in 1482. This is also the date of the works in marble: the screen, the choir stalls, and the pontifical coat of arms over the entrance door. On 15 August 1483 Sixtus IV celebrated the first mass when the chapel was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The Sistine Chapel, now the seat of the most important ceremonies of the papacy, became a point of reference for Renaissance art, setting a milestone for the character developments of the late 15th century.

Alexander VI (1492–1503)

Via della Conciliazione

The last part of this century was dominated by the figure of Pope Alexander VI, from the Spanish family Borgia. He first turned his attention to the defence of the Eternal City. He changed the Mausoleum of Hadrian into a fortress, likewise Torre di Nona, to secure the city from naval attacks. His Via Alessandrina, now called Via della Conciliazione, remains to the present day the grand approach to St. Peter's. Though a scandalous pope, he was a patron of the arts and sciences, and in his days a new architectural era was initiated in Rome with the coming of Bramante. Raphael, Michelangelo and Pinturicchio. He commissioned Pinturicchio to lavishly paint a suite of rooms in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which are today known as the Borgia Apartments.

In addition to the structures erected by himself, his memory is associated with the many others built by monarchs and cardinals at his instigation. During his reign, Bramante designed for Ferdinand II of Aragon the Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio, on the traditional site of St. Peter's martyrdom. Bramante built for Cardinal Raffaele Riario the Palazzo della Cancelleria. In 1500, the ambassador of Emperor Maximilian laid the cornerstone of the national church of the Germans, Santa Maria dell'Anima, the French Cardinal Briçonnet erected Trinità dei Monti, and the Spaniards Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli. To Alexander we owe the beautiful ceiling of Santa Maria Maggiore, in the decoration of which he employed the first gold brought from America by Columbus.

Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel

Julius II (1503–1513)

In 1503 Julius II was elected pope after the short reign of Pope Pius III. He was chiefly a soldier, and his fame is greatly due to his re-establishment of the Pontifical States and the deliverance of Italy from its subjection to France. But he also gained a reputation as a patron of the arts. Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo contributed some of their greatest masterpieces during his time. He laid the cornerstone of the Basilica of St. Peter on 18 April 1506, and united the Vatican Palace with the Villa Belvedere, engaging Bramante to accomplish the project. The famous frescoes of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael Rooms in the Apostolic Palace, the Court of St. Damasus with its loggias, the Via Giulia and Via della Lungara, even the statue of Moses which graces his tomb in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, are lasting witnesses of his great love of art.

Leo X

Leo X was a lover and patron of the arts and sciences, and probably did more than any pope to establish Rome as the centre of European culture. He had San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, on the Via Giulia, built, after designs by Jacopo Sansovino and pressed forward on the reconstruction of St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican under Raphael and Agostino Chigi.

The Raphael Cartoons: The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

He encouraged painting in particular, and Raphael benefitted enormously under his patronage. "Everything pertaining to art the pope turns over to Raphael", wrote an ambassador in 1518. He finished the decoration of the Stanze begun under Julius II, even referring to Leo X in some of the scenes. He painted the cartoons for the tapestries of the Sistine Chapel, which represent scenes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul, the most magnificent of them being St. Peter's miraculous draught of fishes and St. Paul preaching in Athens A third famous enterprise was the decoration of the Vatican Loggia done by Raphael's pupils under his direction, and mostly from his designs. The most exquisite of his paintings are the Sistine Madonna and the Transfiguration.

Sculpture was not as favored under Leo X as painting, and while Michelangelo worked on a marble façade for the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, he did not finish it. The greatest and most difficult task was the continuation of the new St. Peter's. Bramante remained its chief architect until his death in 1514. Raphael succeeded him, but in his six years of office little was done, much to his regret, through lack of means.

Leo X has spent all the money carefully saved by his predecessor Julius II. He sold indulgences to help pay for it, a mistake which led to the Reformation.