The Renaissance

This is essentially a filmstrip transfer to video with a few live-action narration segments thrown in for transition. Using paintings both from the Renaissance, and those later depicting it, the story traces the roots of the Renaissance from the creation of the Italian city-states of Florence, Milan, Venice, Naples, etc. at the dawning of the 16th century, and the changed political and social atmosphere which allowed the rise of such renowned figures as Dante and Petrarch (Literature); Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello (Arts and Sculpture); and Machiavelli, the Medicis and the Borgias (Political Science or chicanery). The printing press, the age of exploration, and the protestant Reformation, were the three most significant factors in bringing the Renaissance to the rest of Europe, and the final third of the program concentrates on non-Italian painters (Brueghel, Van Eyck, and Holbein) and writers (Sir Thomas More, Rabelais, and Cervantes.) As an introduction to the Renaissance this is a competent, though rather flat (considering the material), overview. And the weighting of the material is a bit odd in places. Cervantes gets a whole sentence for Don Quixote (1615), while Shakespeare appears lumped together with Kyd and Marlowe. And the sciences are not even mentioned. This might be useful as supplementary material in a classroom; otherwise not a necessary purchase. (See HOW AUDIO RECORDINGS ARE MADE for availability.)