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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. 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.

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