The Renaissance was an era of change in human thought. It was characterized by a new philosophy, which included the rise of humanism, individualism, and secularism. Writers and artists began to focus on the individual man and his potential. The Renaissance movement began in the Italian city-states, especially Florence, and spread northward toward the rest of Europe. The Renaissance was the rebirth of new ideas in all aspects of life such as: science, technology, classical art, and education. A variety of factors led contributed to the beginnings of the Renaissance. One main factor which led to the start of the Renaissance was the Crusades. The Crusades was a series of wars by Western European Christians to recapture the Holy Land …show more content…

The paint dried slowly, and was something to be marveled at. Stonemasons of the Middle Ages began to be replaced by artists. They used materials like bronze to make the scenes in their paintings more lifelike. Also many Renaissance works of art showed subjects taken from the Bible for example Michelangelo's David and Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Nonreligious subjects from Greek and Roman Mythology were also popular. The painters and artists that lived during the Renaissance changed the way the world looked at art forever.
Also breakthroughs in the field of science and technology during the renaissance helped change a way of life forever. Inventions such as the printing press and fast production of books helped distribute knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome and of science and medicine. Also during this time a man known as Nicholas Copernicus came up with the idea of a heliocentric solar system this meant that everything in the solar system revolved around the sun and he showed proof supporting his idea. However, it was popular belief that the earth was geocentric which meant that that the whole solar system revolved around the earth. Nevertheless, many people started supporting Copernicus ideas and it became a known fact that the earth was in a heliocentric solar system. Also during the Renaissance, a Belgian physician Andreas Vesalius experimented with the dissection of human corpses in order to learn more about human anatomy and advances were