Renaissancen.
/rᵻˈneɪs(ə)ns/, /rᵻˈneɪsɑːns/, /rᵻˈneɪsɒ̃s/, U.S. /ˈrɛnəˌsɑns/ 1.
a. With the. The revival of the arts and high culture under the influence of classical models, which began in Italy in the 14th cent. and spread throughout most of Europe by the end of the 16th; (also) the period during which this was in progress.The Renaissance is generally regarded as beginning in Florence, as part of the developing culture of humanism (humanism n. 3b), with classical motifs and models being revived in the arts, literature, and architecture. Over the course of the 15th cent. the movement spread to other Italian centres, such as Rome and Venice, culminating in the decades around 1500 when Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo were active (commonly known as the High Renaissance), and to other parts of Europe. Alongside this classicism, the period was also characterized by innovations such as, in literature, the emergence of the vernacular as a widely accepted medium for poetic expression and, in the fine arts, the development of perspective and other techniques, and a greater emphasis on depicting human character. Developments in music included an increased respect for the rhythm and the sense of the words in text-setting, as exemplified by the adoption of a new type of madrigal composition in the 1520s and, at the end of the 16th cent., the invention of opera.
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society > leisure > the arts > the arts in general > [noun] > specific movement or period
cinquecento1762
classicality1784
romanticism1821
classicism1827
Renaissance1836
classicalism1840
Queen Anne1863
classic1864
renascence1868
classical1875
modernism1879
New Romanticism1885
Colonial Revival1887
shogun1889
super-realism1890
verism1892
neoclassicism1893
veritism1894
social realism1898
camerata1900
peasantism1903
proto-Renaissance1903
Biedermeier1905
expressionism1908
futurism1909
Georgianism1911
Dada1918
Dadaism1918
German expressionism1920
expressionismus1925
Negro Renaissance1925
super-realism1925
settecento1926
surrealism1927
Neue Sachlichkeit1929
Sachlichkeit1930
neo-Gothicism1932
socialist realism1933
modernismus1934
Harlem Renaissance1940
organicism1945
avant-gardism1950
nouvelle vague1959
bricolage1960
kitchen-sinkery1964
black art1965
neo-modernism1966
Yuan1969
conceptualism1970
sound art1972
pre-modernism1976
Afrofuturism1993
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > period, movement, or school of art > Italian Renaissance or 14-16th century > [noun]
Renaissance1836
1836 Morning Advertiser 9 Jan. Have not the French lately devoted their attention to a style of art which they call the style of the Renaissance, or the early style which prevailed when the arts again began to dawn in Italy.
1837 W. Dyce & C. H. Wilson Let. to Lord Meadowbank 37 A style possessing many points of rude resemblance with the more elegant and refined character of the art of the renaissance in Italy.
1838 Civil Engineer & Architect's Jrnl. 1 291/2 Not that we consider the style of the Renaissance to be either pure or good per se.
1854 J. R. Lowell Keats in Prose Wks. (1896) I. 244 In him we have an example of the renaissance going on almost under our own eyes.
1873 W. Pater Stud. Hist. Renaissance 2 The word Renaissance indeed is now generally used to denote..a whole complex movement of which that revival of classical antiquity was but one element or symptom.
1886 J. A. Symonds Catholic Reaction in Renaissance in Italy (1898) VII. ix. 76 The inebriation of the Renaissance..pulses through all his utterances.
1901 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 6 560 The Italian Renaissance produced a brief but astounding burst of neo-pagan individualism.
1932 J. Burnham & P. E. Wheelwright Introd. Philos. Anal. iii. 82 The great cultural shift that occurred at the Renaissance, can hardly be exaggerated.
1951 N. Pevsner Middlesex (Buildings of Eng.) 119 Motifs of Roman ‘grottesche’ and of Spalato, but also of the Renaissance, are used with Rococo freedom.
1973 Listener 14 June 790/3 The coming of the Renaissance..was a head-on collision with the medieval system.
2002 R. Porter Blood & Guts ii. 34 Through the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and long beyond, the ideal physician was prized as a man..who had undergone a prolonged university education to render him expert in the liberal arts and sciences.
b. Any period of exceptional revival of the arts and intellectual culture. Chiefly with modifying word.Harlem, Negro Renaissance: see the first element.
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society > leisure > the arts > the arts in general > [noun] > general
Renaissance1872
renascence1872
the world > time > relative time > the past > historical period > [noun] > other historical periods
antiquityc1375
Christian antiquity1577
the days of ignorance1652
the time of ignorance1652
dark ages1656
Lower Empire1668
the age of reason1792
Scythism1793
grand siècle1811
the Age of Enlightenment1825
the Hundred Days1827
Tom and Jerry days1840
regency1841
industrial age1843
Régence1845
viking age1847
ignorance1867
renascence1868
Renaissance1872
gilded age1874
jazz era1919
jazz age1920
post-war1934
steam age1941
postcolonialism1955
information age1960
1872 J. Morley Voltaire i. 4 Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth century.
1910 Encycl. Brit. I. 530/1 Alcuin is the most prominent figure of the Carolingian Renaissance, in which have been distinguished three main periods.
1949 Mariner's Mirror 35 54 The Ignatian and Photian renaissance saw great stylistic advances [in Byzantine iconography].
1969 A. Cockburn in A. Cockburn & R. Blackburn Student Power 18 The astonishing works of Mao Tse Tung..bear witness to the flowering of the May 4 Movement which..has justly been called the Chinese Renaissance.
2001 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 12 Apr. 85/1 An Indian elite..developed a modern literature marked by Western as well as Eastern traditions (for example, the movement now celebrated as the ‘Bengal Renaissance’).
c. A revival of, or renewal of interest in, something; (also) the process by which this occurs.
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the world > action or operation > amending > restoration > [noun] > restoration to flourishing condition > fact of
regeneration1567
resurging1575
renascency1648
Second Coming1650
palintocya1660
reflorescence1690
revirescence1741
resurgence1798
renascence1810
resurgency1810
recrudescence1877
Renaissance1882
Risorgimento1883
reburgeoning1929
greening1970
1882 Athenæum 23 Dec. 857/2 The most satisfactory among the signs of a theatrical renaissance.
1900 G. Ade More Fables 44 Any Husband could..get up every Morning ready to Plug for a Renaissance of their Early love.
1938 Times 1 Jan. 11/1 The new Government believed..in the spiritual renaissance of Rumanianism through the Christian Church.
1969 Physics Bull. June 221/1 The ‘renaissance’ in optics, one of the oldest disciplines in physics, has been brought about mainly by the advent of the laser.
1988 New Eng. Jrnl. Med. 31 Mar. 861/1 Cardiac catheterization has undergone a renaissance over the past eight years.
2007 National Trust Mag. Summer 52/3 The Trust is taking part in this honey renaissance. Orchard honey from the Killerton estate near Exeter recently won a National Trust ‘Fine Farm Produce Award’.
2. The style of architecture or art developed in and characteristic of the period of the Renaissance.Chiefly used with reference to classicism in architecture and the fine arts.
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society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > period, movement, or school of art > Italian Renaissance or 14-16th century > [noun] > period > style of
Renaissance style1836
Renaissance1840
quattrocentism1905
1840 T. A. Trollope Summer in Brittany II. 234 That heaviest and least graceful of all possible styles, the ‘renaissance’ as the French choose to term it.
1851 J. Ruskin Stones of Venice I. i. 23 This rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a return to pagan systems.
1859 J. M. Jephson & L. Reeve Narr. Walking Tour Brittany 268 The cathedral front is a huge mass of barbarous Renaissance.
1889 Harper's Mag. Aug. 332/2 The adjacent central building is Byzantine; the end section is a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance.
1937 Archit. Rev. 82 129/2 The Manoeline style of architecture is as distinct from what is termed Italian ‘Renaissance’ as Romanesque is from Gothic... In this respect by ‘Manoeline’ is meant Portuguese Renaissance.
1984 N. Bryson Trad. & Desire (1987) i. 28 This remains true whether its style is Renaissance, or Baroque, or Rococo, or Neo-classical: if the painter fails in his fight against repetition, presence will elude his image.
2002 Country Life 19 Dec. (Travel Suppl.) 27/1 The architecture is an irresistible cacophony of Renaissance, Gothic, Art Nouveau, Cubist and contemporary.
Compounds
C1. attributive.
a. Designating art, architecture, music, etc., produced during or done in imitation of that of the Renaissance.
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1851 J. Ruskin Stones of Venice I. App. xv. 386 We shall get rid of Chinese pagodas, and Indian temples, and Renaissance Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one great rubbish heap.
1857 J. Ruskin Polit. Econ. Art ii. 103 Verona possesses..the loveliest Renaissance architecture of Italy.
1886 F. L. Shaw Col. Cheswick's Camp. I. x. 217 With heavy renaissance porch and wide spreading flight of granite steps.
1893 Pall Mall Gaz. 23 Jan. 2/1 Although it has suffered somewhat from repaint..it still remains one of the most beautiful single heads produced by Renaissance painting.
1914 A. Byne & M. Stapley Rejería of Span. Renaissance p. vii Renaissance Architecture in Spain could not be fully appreciated without examining the towering wrought-iron grilles, or Rejas, of the period.
1930 R. Fry Let. 12 Sept. (1972) II. 650 [Montrésor] has..a very ambitious and rather good Renaissance Gothic church. It's odd what a really good and convenient style that makes—in fact it does Gothic much better with less fuss than Gothic itself.
1959 Isis 50 278/1 The sidelights on the history of science and medicine which the ‘panoptic’ view of Renaissance art has afforded are no mean achievement.
1980 I. Murdoch Nuns & Soldiers i. 40 A programme of Renaissance music.
2007 Independent 10 Feb. (Mag.) 43/2 Yoshitomo Nara is a cult Japanese artist inspired by animé, manga and graffiti as well as Renaissance painting.
b. Designating an artist, writer, etc., who lived and worked during the period of the Renaissance.
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1851 J. Ruskin Stones of Venice I. App. xi. 370 A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance painters.
1873 W. H. Pater Stud. in Hist. Renaissance 168 On either side are grouped those on whom the spirit of Apollo descended, the classical and Renaissance poets.
1903 E. von Mach Greek Sculpture ix. 67 When the Renaissance artists began to study what was left of the antique, the extant Greek or Roman statues did not show any traces of color.
1940 L. MacNeice Last Ditch 21 Light on her feet and gentle with her fingers; Put on a little flesh, became an easy Spreadeagled beauty for Renaissance painters.
1968 Listener 19 Dec. 834/2 This ranges from Naafi versions of ‘Colonel Bogey’,..to the ‘parody’..techniques of Renaissance composers.
1977 C. Wilkinson in S. Kostof Architect 139 Military design..was practiced by nearly every major Renaissance architect except Palladio.
1991 Oxf. Art Jrnl. 14 i. 101/2 Renaissance artists..responded by developing linear perspective.
c. gen. With the sense ‘of or relating to the Renaissance’.
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1851 J. Ruskin Stones of Venice I. xx. 225 The Renaissance frosts came, and all perished.
1892 Times 17 Mar. 6/5 A pair of silver gilt présentoirs of the Renaissance period, from Lady Sophia des Vœux's collection.
?1936 K. Rexroth World Outside Window (1987) 6 We have been to the speculations of Arabian Mystics, Renaissance Rosicrucians or to devotional literature of the early Anglican church.
1966 Playboy Dec. 238/1 Perhaps the fleshiest film of the decade, ‘Sins of the Borgias’ offered (in European versions) a cornucopic abundance of lusty looks at low life and high times in Renaissance Florence.
1990 Catholic Herald 30 Nov. 6/1 (advt.) Items included in the collection range from Greek vases and mosaics from the old St Peter's to vestments from the Renaissance period.
2001 Isis 92 385/2 She places the whole within the ancient context of Neoplatonism and the more recent ones of medieval Kabbalah, Renaissance magic, and the Reformation.
C2.
Renaissance humanism n. = humanism n. 3b.
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society > society and the community > customs, values, and civilization > [noun] > human (literary) culture
Renaissance humanism1881
1881 J. A. Symonds Renaissance in Italy: Ital. Lit. II. ix. 31 Ariosto selects a number of decorous phrases redolent of Renaissance humanism.
1948 W. K. Ferguson Renaissance in Hist. Thought iii. 71 Bayle..interpreted Renaissance humanism as an enlightened revolt against barbarism.
1975 Language 51 443 Renaissance humanism was responsible for the most successful system of syntactic analysis to be conceived prior to the advent of explicit syntactic theorizing in the 20th century.
2003 London Rev. Bks. 21 Aug. 24/4 Renaissance humanism drew on this pagan vision of things, as Warner observes in her inspired chapter on hatching.
Renaissance lace n. an elaborate tape lace in which heavy tape is formed into patterns and joined with simple lace stitches.
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1871 Daily Evening Bull. (San Francisco) 25 Nov. Maltese and renaissance lace are much used for sailors' collars and deep cuffs.
1900 Glasgow Herald 27 Dec. 1/7 (advt.) Renaissance lace collar, in fancy box.
2004 A. Lomny Art & Craft of Goldwork 33 The beauty, variety and ingenuity of Renaissance lace are the inspiration for the design of this work.
Renaissance man n. a man who exhibits the virtues of an idealized man of the Renaissance; (now usually more generally) one with many talents or interests, esp. in the arts and humanities.
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the world > action or operation > ability > [noun] > many-sidedness or versatility > many-sided or versatile person
universalist1713
Admirable Crichton1807
all-rounder1869
all-arounder1902
Renaissance man1906
uomo universale1963
the mind > goodness and badness > quality of being good > excellence > [noun] > excellent person
gemc1275
blooma1300
excellence1447
mirrorc1450
man of mena1470
treasure?1545
paragon1548
shining light1563
Apollo's swan?1592
man of wax1597
rara avis1607
Titan1611
choice spirita1616
excellency1725
inestimable1728
inimitable1751
cock of the walk1781
surpasser1805
shiner1810
swell1816
trump1819
tip-topper1822
star1829
beauty1832
soarer1895
trumph1895
pansy1899
Renaissance man1906
exemplum virtutis1914
museum piece1920
superman1925
flyer1930
pistol1935
all-star1949
1906 W. H. Woodward Stud. Educ. Renaissance vii. 128 That the Frenchmen in their King's train should be profoundly impressed with the Renaissance man as they found him declared in Rodrigo Borgia, and his enigmatic son, in Ludovico Sforza or Ercole d'Este, is no cause for wonder.
1948 W. K. Ferguson Renaissance in Hist. Thought v. 128 The discontented rebels against the restrictions of contemporary bourgeois society..took the lead in the idealization of the Renaissance man, combining the cult of genius with that of free, egoistic personality.
1970 E. Pace Saberlegs (1971) xiv. 132 I knew your father... A fine man. So many-sided. What I believe you would call a Renaissance man.
1977 Time 8 Aug. 32/3 At 50, Hood is the Renaissance man of sailing; he designed, cut the sails and outfitted Independence, the first man in history to control every aspect of a 12-tonner from drawing board to helm.
2002 N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. 28 Apr. 28/1 Talk about Renaissance men: fabulist, gymnast, horse tamer, urban theorist and renowned architect, Alberti was the real deal.
Renaissance Revival n. (also with lower-case initial(s)) a movement or style in architecture and the decorative arts in the 19th and early 20th centuries, inspired by the designs of Renaissance Europe and characterized by ornate decoration featuring an eclectic combination of motifs; frequently attributive.
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1874 T. R. Fraser & A. Dewar Origin of Creation x. 70 Ruskin waged war against the great Renaissance revival in painting and architecture.
1956 Jrnl. Soc. Archit. Historians 15 17/1 It [sc. Haughwout and Company's store] must have been one of the finest examples of the Renaissance Revival.
1990 BM Mag. (Brit. Museum Soc.) Spring 24/1 A beautiful renaissance revival cup and cover made for William Beckford of Fonthill Abbey..have deceived the leading experts in the field.
2009 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 23 Jan. c21/1 Much is made of the surviving woodwork and ornamental plaster in this Renaissance Revival row house.
Renaissance style n. and adj. (a) n. = sense 2; (b) adj. (usually with hyphen) made, built, or decorated in a style characteristic of the Renaissance.
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society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > period, movement, or school of art > Italian Renaissance or 14-16th century > [noun] > period > style of
Renaissance style1836
Renaissance1840
quattrocentism1905
1836 H. G. Knight Archit. Tour Normandy iii. 24 Rouen..is rich in examples of every variety of style, from the best period of the pointed, down to what is called the renaissance style of Francis the First.
1898 Cosmopolitan Oct. 604/2 The most lavishly ornamented of all the great structures built as if to display the riches of the Renaissance style.
1963 A. Lubbock Austral. Roundabout 190 Airy, Renaissance-style stucco arches.
2006 ‘A. Ant’ Stand & Deliver iii. 63 I vividly recall..his famous left-handed Hofner violin bass, leaning against a series of screen doors decorated with Renaissance-style inner panels.
2008 Church Times 25 July 25/3 No one would deny the attention-grabbing sumptuousness of Henry VII's tomb in Westminster Abbey, an early example of Renaissance style in Britain.
Renaissance woman n. a woman who exhibits the virtues of an idealized woman of the Renaissance; (now usually more generally) one with many talents or interests, esp. in the arts and humanities.
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1900 G. H. Ely tr. R. M. la Clavière Women of Renaissance i. v. 135 The Renaissance woman, then, a woman of essentially fine grain, and well versed in everything it was her business to know, was a woman of absolute sincerity.
1962 Guardian 24 Jan. 10/6 Although in many ways the Victorian she was born, Mrs Cecil Chesterton had a strong touch of the Renaissance woman.
1977 Newsweek (Nexis) 12 Dec. 79 I want to direct and act and produce and write. I want to be a Renaissance woman and grow petunias.
1992 H. G. Goldman Fanny Brice 4 She was a Renaissance woman who made efforts in a fairly wide variety of fields.
2007 N.Y. Mag. 3 Sept. 130/1 I've admired Joni for many years for her genius and for her being a Renaissance woman.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2009; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1836