The name Renaissance, comes from the french equivalent of the italian word rinascita, which literally means “rebirth” and describe the radical changes experimented in European culture during the 15th y 16th centuries. It was preceded by the Middle Ages and followed by the Reformation.

According to the usual description, the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century, spreading through the rest of Europe, represented a reconnection of the west with classical antiquity, the absorption of knowledge—particularly mathematics—from Arabic, the return of experimentalism, the focus on the importance of living well in the present (e.g. humanism), an explosion of the dissemination of knowledge brought on by printing and the creation of new techniques in art, poetry and architecture which led to a radical change in the style, and substance of the arts and letters. This period, in this view, represents Europe emerging from a long period as a backwater, and the rise of commerce and exploration. The Italian Renaissance is often labeled as the beginning of the "modern" epoch.

Multiple Renaissances

During the last quarter of the 20th century many scholars took the view that the Italian Renaissance was perhaps only one of many such movements. This is in large part due to the work of historians like Charles H. Haskins (1870–1937), who made a convincing case for a Renaissance of the 12th century, as well as by historians arguing for a Carolingian Renaissance. Both of these concepts are now widely accepted by the scholarly community at large; as a result, the present trend among historians is to discuss each so-called renaissance in more particular terms, e.g., the Italian Renaissance, the English Renaissance, etc. This terminology is particularly useful because it eliminates the need for fitting The Renaissance into a chronology that previously held that it was preceded by the Middle Ages and followed by the Reformation, which many believe to be inaccurate. The entire period is now often replaced by the term "Early Modern". (See periodisation, Lumpers and splitters)

Other periods of cultural rebirth have also been termed a renaissance; such as the Harlem Renaissance or the San Francisco Renaissance. The other renaissances are not considered further in this article, which will concentrate on the Renaissance as the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age.
We are all familiar with the paintings of madonna an child of the Renaissance, come to mind the Great Masters as Titian, Murillo, and many others.
Renaissance art, violin.

These are some of the masters of the Renaissance:

Rafael Sanzio, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, El greco, Francisco Goya, Murillo, Diego Velazquez, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Miguel Angel Buonarroti, Piero de la Francesca, Uccello, Masaccio, Juan de Borgona, Vasari, Francesco Albani, Jackson, Mariotto Albertinelli, Alessandro Allori, Fray Angelico, Amico Aspertini, Bachiacca, Baciccio, Mario Balassi, Alessio Baldovinetti, Giacomo Balla, Federico Barocci, Fra Bartolommeo, Jacopo Bassano, Leandro Bassano, Pompeo Batoni, Battistello, Guiseppe Bazzani, Beccafumi, Giovanni Bellini, Jacopo Bellini, Marco Benefial, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Alonso Berruguette, Paolo Emilio Besenzi, Bartolomeo Bimbi, Boccaccino, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Andrea Boscoli, Guiseppe Bottani, Sandro Botticelli, Bramantino,Leonart Bramer, Agnolo Bronzino, Alberto Burri, Lodovico Buti, Francesco Cairo, Jacques Callot, Giullo Campi, Canaletto, Caravagio, Vittore Cartaccio, Giulio Carpioni, Annibale Carracci, Rosalba Giovanna Carriera, Niccolo Cassana, Andrea del Castagno, Valerio Castello, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Bernardo Cavallino, Bravo Cecco, Cerano, Cigoli, Cima Da Conegliano, Cimabue, Jacopo di Cione, Nardo di Cione, Viviano Codazzi, Andrea Commodi, Francesco Conti, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Correggio, Domenico Corvi, Lorenzo di Ottavio Costa, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Cristofano Di Papi Dell Altissimo, Daddi Bernardo, Cesare Dandini, Michele Desubleo, Carlo Dolci, Domenichino, Domenico Veneziano, Dosso Dossi, Duccio Di Buoninsegna, Empoli, Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, Ciro Ferri, Domenico Fetti, Felice Ficherelli, Orazio Fidani, Girolamo Forabosco, Antonio Franchi, Francesco Francia, Franciabigio, Giovani Antonio Fumiani, Francesco Furini, Anton Domenico Gabbiani, Agnolo Gaddi, Taddeo Gaddi, Gaetano Gandolfi, Giovanna Garzoni, Gentile Da Fabriano, Artemisia Gentileschi, Pier Leone Ghezzi, Domenico Ghirlandaio,Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Giambologna, Luca Giordano, Giorgione, Giottino, Giotto Di Bondone, Giovanni Da Milano, Giovanni Da San Giovanni, Giovanni Dal Ponte, Giovanni del Biondo, Giovanni di Paolo, Giulio Romano, Francesco Granacci, Benedetto Vincenzo de Greyss, Francesco Guardi, Guercino, Joseph Heintz the-Younger, Jacopo Del Sellaio, Giulia Lama, Neroccio de Landi, Leonardo Da Vinci, Jacopo Ligozzi, Filippino Lippi, Fra Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lippi, Alessandro Longhi, Pietro Longhi, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Pietro Lorrenzetti, Lorenzo Di Alessandre Da Sanseverino, Lorenzo di Credi, Lorenzo Monaco, Lorrain Claude, Lorenzo Lotto, Johann Lys, Alessandro Magnasco, Rutilio Manetti, Bartolomeo Manfredi, Vincenzo Mannozzi, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Martinelli, Simone Martini, Masaccio, Masolino, Lucio Massari, Master of the Bardi Saint Francis, Master of Saint Cecilia, Master of the Cross, Master of Greve, Master of Magdalene, Matteo di Giovanni, Ludovico Mazzolino, Livio Mehus, Jacopo di Meliore, Melozzo da Forli, Lippo Memmi, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Giorgio Morandi, Morazzone, Giovan Battista Moroni,Cristoforo Munari, Francesco de Mura, Filippo Napoletano, Niccolo Di Bonaccorso, Orcagna, Gregorio Pagani, Palma Il Vecchio, Marco Palmezzano, Paolo Veneziano, Parmigianino, Domenico Parodi, Lorenzo Pasinelli, Passignano, Giovani Antonio Pellegrini, Perin Del Vaga, Perugino Pietro, Pesellino, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Piero Della Francesca,Piero Di Cosimo, Pietro da Cortona, Simone Pignoni, Giovan Battista Pittoni, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Piero del Pollaiulo, Jacopo Pontormo, Nicolas Poussin, Andrea Pozzo, Preti Mattia, Raffaelino Del Garbo, Raphael, Giuseppe Recco, Nicolas Regnier, Guido Reni, Pandolfo Reschi, Sebastiano Ricci, Salvator Rosa, Cosimo Rosselli, Nicola Maria Rossi, Fiorentino Rosso, Francesco Rustici, Andrea Sacchi, Carlo Antonio Sacconi, Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani, Andrea del Sarto, Sasseta, Sassoferrato, Giovanni Gerolam Savoldo, Emilio Savonanzi, Sebasiano Del Piombo, Semplice Da Verona, Luca Signorelli, Francesco Solimena, Giovan Battista Spinelli, Gherardo Starnina, Bernardo Strozzi, Justus Sustermans, Giambattista Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Tiberio Titi, Titian, Francesco Trevisani, Cosme Tura, Alessandro Turchi, Paolo Uccello, Ugolino Di Nerio, Gaspare Vanvitelli, Giorgio Vasari, Antonio Maria Vassallo, Vecchietta, Diego Velazquez, Giuseppe Vermiglio, Veronese, Andrea del Verrocchio, Bartolomeo, Bernardino Zenale, Jacopo Zucchi, Rosso Fiorentino

An angel is a supernatural being found in many religions. In Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Islam, they typically act as messengers from God.

The English word came from Latin angelus, which came from Greek ἄγγελος, ángelos, meaning "messenger". The closest Hebrew word for angel is מלאך‎, mal'ach Hebrew word #4397 in Strong's, also meaning "messenger".

In the Hebrew Bible, angels often appear to people in the shape of humans of extraordinary beauty, and often are not immediately recognized as angels (Genesis 18:2, Genesis 19:5; Judges 6:17, Judges 8:6; 2 Samuel 29:9). Some fly through the air, some become invisible, sacrifices touched by some are consumed by fire, and some may disappear in sacrificial fire. Angels, or the Angel, appeared in the flames of the thorn bush (Genesis 16:13; Judges 6. 21, 22; 2 Kings 2:11; Exodus 3:2). They are described as pure and bright as Heaven; consequently, they are said to be formed of fire, and encompassed by light, as the Psalmist said (Psalm 104:4): "He makes winds His messengers, burning fire His ministers." Some verses in the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon depict angels wearing blue or red robes but no such reference occurs in the Protestant books.

Though superhuman, angels can assume human form; this is the earliest conception. Gradually, and especially in post-Biblical times, angels came to be bodied forth in a form corresponding to the nature of the mission to be fulfilled—generally, however, the human form. Angels bear drawn swords or other destroying weapons in their hands—one carries an ink-horn by his side—and ride on horses (Numbers 22:23, Joshua 5:13, Ezekiel 9;2, Zechariah 1:8 et seq.). A terrible angel is the one mentioned in 1 Chronicles 21:16,30, as standing "between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand". In the Book of Daniel, reference is made to an angel "clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz: his body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude" (Daniel 10:5-6). This imagery is very similar to a description in the book of Revelation. Angels are thought to possess wings (Daniel 9:21), as they are described in the Bible, and depicted in Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian art. They are commonly depicted with halos.

In Christian iconography, the use of wings is a convention used to denote the figure as a spirit. Depictions of angels in Christian art as winged human forms, unlike classical pagan depictions of the major deities, follow the iconic conventions of lesser winged gods, such as Eos, Eros, Thanatos and Nike.

Angels are portrayed as powerful and dreadful, endowed with wisdom and with knowledge of all earthly events, correct in their judgment, holy, but not infallible: they strive against each other, and God has to make peace between them. When their duties are not punitive, angels are beneficent to man (Psalms 103:20, Psalms 78:25; 2 Samuel 14:17,20, 2 Samuel 19:28; Zechariah 14:5; Job 4:18, Job 25:2).

Angels appear in several Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) stories, in addition to the ones previously mentioned above. These include the warning to Lot of the imminent destruction of Sodom. Many Bible chapters mention an "angry God" who sends His angel to smite the enemies of the Israelites. Traditional Jewish biblical commentators have a variety of ways of explaining what an angel is. The earliest Biblical books present angels as heavenly beings created by God, some of whom apparently are endowed with free will. Later biblical books in the Tanakh present a stunningly different view of angels, as the Jewish beliefs about such things developed over the many years covered in the Bible. Such a differing perspective on angels is discovered in the Book of Ezekiel, where these angels bear no relation whatsoever to the former understanding of what an angel was.

In the New Testament angels appear frequently as the ministers of God and the agents of revelation (e.g. Matthew 1:20 (to Joseph), 4:11. (to Jesus), Luke 1:26 (to Mary), Acts 12:7 (to Peter)); and Jesus speaks of angels as fulfilling such functions (e.g. Mark 8:38, 13:27), implying in one saying that they neither marry nor are given in marriage (Mark 12:25). Angels are most prominent in the Apocalypse. The New Testament takes little interest in the idea of the angelic hierarchy, but there are traces of the doctrine. The distinction of good and bad angels is recognized. Good angels mentioned by name are Gabriel and Michael (Luke 1:19; Daniel 12:1). Scripture also mentions a tempter Satan, the scribes name the ruler of demons as Beelzebub, and the angel of the abyss Apollyon (Mark 1:13, 3:22; Rev. 9:11). Apollyon, (Hebrew Abaddon) a name for an angel mentioned in Revelation 9:11, is believed by some to be a good angel that guards the gates to the traditionally known hell. Revelation 10:1 describes another angel, although unnamed, some say it is Metatron. The Christian Greek scriptures also imply an angelic hierarchy; archangels (namely Michael, mentioned in both Daniel 10:13 and Jude 9, Gabriel, and Raphael), principalities and powers (Rom. 8:38; Col. 2:10), thrones and dominions (Col 1:16). The hierarchies of principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions are questionable by some Christian denominations due to the ambiguity of the context. Romans 8:38 may refer to other things besides angels if the context includes opposition beyond spirits themselves. The scope of Col. 1:16 covering "all things created" also extends far beyond angels by themselves. Other hierarchies accepted from the Old Testament include seraphim and cherubim.

The Catholic Church teaches that there are several ranks of angels; among them Cherubim, Seraphim, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Dominions.

Angels occur in groups of four or seven (Rev 7:1). The Angels of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor are described in Rev. 1-3; practically, the angels are personifications or representatives of the seven congregations. Daniel 10:12,13 also appears to depict angels in opposition (presumably fallen angels) to other angels, taking on the roles of prince-angels for nations, in this case the "prince of the kingdom of Persia."

While angels and demons alike are generally regarded as invisible to human sight, they are frequently depicted as human-like creatures with wings, though many theologians have argued that they have no physical existence, but can take on human form. The angels' wings are heavily implied by the Scriptures. Seraphim are depicted in art and scripture as having six wings (Isaiah 6:1-3), and Cherubim four

Theologians agreed that angels have no gender (see more extended discussion below). Whilst artists avoided making the Virgin and saints too attractive, so that inappropriate thoughts would not be aroused in the beholder, no such constraint applied to angels, who have no sex. Their exceptional beauty was well attested in Scripture. The long plain dress or tunic traditionally given to most angels comes hardly altered from the Byzantine tradition, where it had, if anything, a male connotation. In the Renaissance these were often brightly coloured, but before and after were mostly plain white.

Byzantine angels were also often shown in military outfits, and, transmitted by icons from Crete in particular, this tradition was transferred to Western art, especially for Gabriel and Michael, who wear versions of Byzantine officer's armour and clothing into the Baroque period and later. The same archangels, when in attendance on Christ or the Virgin, wear the loros, a jewelled strip of cloth hanging vertically down the front of the body. This was worn only by the Imperial family and their bodyguard; the archangels were seen as God's bodyguard. They also often carry long white wands of office. Hence, when a high ranking Byzantine in a visionary dream in 586 saw two men he took to be bodyguards of the Emperor, they subsequently turned out to be angels.[11] For other scenes, the same angels must appear incognito to accord with, for example, their appearance to Abraham. However artists are very reluctant to depict them in normal clothes, or without wings.

In the Renaissance, the classical putto, usually naked, was first revived in secular and mythological subjects, but they soon appeared, often in great quantity, as angels, becoming almost the norm in compositions with a number of angels merely in attendance.

In Arabic, the language of the Qur'an, angels are called "Malaaikah"(sing: Malak), similar to the Hebrew word "mal'ach". The belief in angels is central to the religion of Islam, beginning with the belief that the Qur'an was dictated to the prophet Muhammad by the chief of all angels, the archangel Gabriel. Angels are thus the ministers of God, as well as the agents of revelation in Islam.

In Islam, angels are benevolent beings created from light and do not possess free will. They are completely devoted to the worship of God and carry out certain functions on His command, such as recording every human being's actions, placing a soul in a newborn child, maintaining certain environmental conditions of the planet (such as nurturing vegetation and distributing the rain) and taking the soul at the time of death. Angels are described as being excessively beautiful and have different numbers of wings (for example, Gabriel is attributed as having 600 wings in his natural form) and have no gender. They can take on human form, but only in appearance. As such, angels do not eat, procreate or commit sin as humans do.

According to the majority of Islamic scholars, angels are incapable of committing sin, and therefore cannot fall from grace, excluding the Iblis who chose to do evil because he had free-will and is not considered as a fallen angel, but a separate entity made of fire called jinn. Scholars cite the following Quranic verse, "And when We said to the Angels; 'Prostrate yourselves unto Adam.' So they prostrated themselves except Iblis. He was one of the jinn..." (Surat Al-Kahf, 18:50). Angels, unlike the fiery nature of jinn, are beings of goodness and cannot choose to disobey God, nor do they possess the ability to do evil.

The archangel Gabriel is attributed with sending the message of God to all the Prophets (including the Psalms, Torah, Bible and Qur'an). Other angels include Michael who discharges control of vegetation and rain, Israfel who will blow the trumpet at the day of resurrection, and Azrael, the angel of death (as opposed to the Christian view that Gabriel is the angel of good news). The angels Nakir and Munkar are assigned to interrogate the dead before judgement day; and there are nineteen angels over-seeing the punishments of hell unflinchingly (Surat Al-Muddaththir, 74:30). There are eight massive angels that support the Throne of God (Surat Al-Haaqqa, 69:17). Every human being is assigned two angels to scribe a record of all actions done by the individual throughout their life, which will be used in evidence for or against the person by God on the day of judgement.

We know on the authority of Scripture that there are nine orders of angels, viz., Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Dominations, Throne, Cherubim and Seraphim. That there are Angels and Archangels nearly every page of the Bible tell us, and the books of the Prophets talk of Cherubim and Seraphim. St. Paul, too, writing to the Ephesians enumerates four orders when he says: 'above all Principality, and Power, and Virtue, and Domination'; and again, writing to the Colossians he says: 'whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers'. If we now join these two lists together we have five Orders, and adding Angels and Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, we find nine Orders of Angels.

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