Renaissance_ A Short History, The - Johnson, Paul [75]
By the end of the 1520s, of course, Renaissance ideas and forms of art were being re-created or adapted in most parts of Europe and even in the New World. Titian, coming to the height of his powers, was not just an Italian but a European artist. As we have seen, by 1500 literary humanism was a pan-European movement, and where humanist books penetrated, Renaissance art was sure to follow soon. However, by this date in history, the Renaissance was being affected not only by its own internal modulations but by external events. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Italy had not exactly been tranquil—on the contrary, there had been periodic and often highly destructive fighting between the leading cities for local and regional hegemony—but there had been comparatively little interference from abroad. It was during this period of Italian independence that urban life flourished and prospered and the Renaissance took hold. However, in September 1494, Charles VIII of France, at the invitation of the duke of Milan, entered Italy with an army to conquer the Kingdom of Naples, and brought Italy’s political isolation to an end. Thereafter, Italy was rent by two ravenous foreign dogs, Valois France and Habsburg Germany, until the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559. The fighting was periodic rather than continuous and it did not affect the whole of Italy. But it was on a scale the country had never known before, involving massive use of cannon and the consequent need to build expensive walls and forts round the towns.
Charles VIII’s expedition had an immediate effect on Florence, for it led to the flight of the Medici, the “liberation” of Pisa from Florence by Charles and his triumphant entry into Florence itself. He did not stay long, hurrying on to Naples and failure, but his inruption introduced a period of turmoil that produced the iconoclastic mission of Savonarola and his unseemly trial and incineration. Florence continued to produce great art and artists, but it was “never glad confident morning again.” From the perspective of history, we can now see that the Florentine Renaissance came to a climax in the quarter century before the French invasion, when it truly was a city made for artists.2
The center of artistic activity then shifted to Rome under a series of munificent popes, and especially Julius II and his Medici successor, Leo X. This was the great Roman age of Raphael and Michelangelo. But the French kings continued their forays into Italy, and rising Spanish-German power found a champion in the young emperor Charles V. François I was decisively defeated and taken prisoner at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, making the Germans masters of Italy, and two years later Charles’s army of mercenaries, somewhat against his wishes, entered and sacked Rome. That, it could be said, ended the High Renaissance, and the Roman cultural climate was not the same again for half a century. Wars, rumors of wars and even occupations of cities did not necessarily bring artistic activity to an end. Indeed, it is remarkable how often artists were able to carry on, discharging important commissions, during periods of turmoil. But the loss of Italian self-respect that the constant foreign invasions produced, and the periodic impoverishment of large parts of the countryside, had their inevitable consequences. It is not surprising, therefore, that after the sack of Rome artistic leadership in Italy tended to go to Venice, which though involved in the various coalitions that invasion forced the cities to put together was itself spared direct attack. But the truth is, by midcentury, the absolute predominance that Italy had once exercised in the arts was passing, as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and even England began to acquire cultural self-confidence. Thus at the time when the ideas of the Italian Renaissance were spreading with increasing speed all over Europe, the source itself was burning low.
There was the growing religious factor too. Medieval Europe was in some