Renaissance Northern Europe produced some of the greatest writers and thinkers the world has ever known. William Shakespeare, Thomas More, Francois Rabelais were some of the talented people from that time and place. William Shakespeare was a famous playwright, poet, and genius. His genius was in expressing universal themes in everyday, realistic settings. His work explores the complexity of the individual and the importance of the classics. Shakespeare’s love of words also vastly enriched the English language. More than 1700 words appeared for the first time in his works. Between 1590-1613 he wrote 37 plays that are still performed around the world. Ben Jonson, a fellow poet and playwright said “Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time.” Thomas More thought of utopia and wanted all of…
Other notable painters, such as Hans Holbein the Elder and Jean Fouquet, retained a Gothic influence that was still popular in the north, while highly individualistic artists such as Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder developed styles that were imitated by many subsequent generations. Northern painters in the 16th century increasingly looked and travelled to Rome, becoming known as the Romanists. The High Renaissance art of Michelangelo and Raphael and the late Renaissance stylistic tendencies of Mannerism that were in vogue had a great impact on their work.Renaissance humanism and the large number of surviving classical artworks and monuments encouraged many Italian painters to explore Greco-Roman themes more prominently than northern artists, and likewise the famous 15th-century German and Dutch paintings tend to be religious. In the 16th century, mythological and other themes from history became more uniform amongst northern and Italian artists. Northern Renaissance painters, however, had new subject matter, such as landscape and genre painting. That’s why I think Renaissance of Northern Europe of the…
