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Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it started around the year 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields, a Proto-Renaissance, beginning around 1250, is typically accepted. The French word ''renaissance'' (corresponding to ''rinascimento'' in Italian) means 'rebirth', and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries during what Renaissance humanists labelled as the "Dark Ages". The Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari used the term ''rinascita'' 'rebirth' in his '' Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'' in 1550, but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the work of sch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mona Lisa
The ''Mona Lisa'' ( ; it, Gioconda or ; french: Joconde ) is a Half length portrait, half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world". The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism. The painting has been definitively identified to depict Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo, Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. It is painted in oil on a white Populus nigra, Lombardy poplar panel painting, panel. Leonardo never gave the painting to the Giocondo family, and later it is believed he left it in his will to his favored apprentice Salaì. It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; howeve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era. Michelangelo achieved fame early; two of his best-known works, the ''Pietà'' and ''David'', were sculpted before the age of thirty. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Age Of Discovery
The Age of Discovery (or the Age of Exploration), also known as the early modern period, was a period largely overlapping with the Age of Sail, approximately from the 15th century to the 17th century in European history, during which seafaring Europeans explored and colonized regions across the globe. The extensive overseas exploration, with the Portuguese and Spanish at the forefront, later joined by the Dutch, English, and French, emerged as a powerful factor in European culture, most notably the European encounter and colonization of the Americas. It also marks an increased adoption of colonialism as a government policy in several European states. As such, it is sometimes synonymous with the first wave of European colonization. European exploration outside the Mediterranean started with the maritime expeditions of Portugal to the Canary Islands in 1336, and later with the Portuguese discoveries of the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and Azores, the coast of West Afr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maritime Republics
The maritime republics ( it, repubbliche marinare), also called merchant republics ( it, repubbliche mercantili), were Thalassocracy, thalassocratic city-states of the Mediterranean Basin during the Middle Ages. Being a significant presence in Italy in the Middle Ages, four of them have the coat of arms inserted in the flag of the Italian Navy since 1947: Republic of Venice, Venice, Republic of Genoa, Genoa, Republic of Pisa, Pisa, and Duchy of Amalfi, Amalfi; the other republics are: Republic of Ragusa, Ragusa (now Dubrovnik), Republic of Gaeta, Gaeta, Republic of Ancona, Ancona,Peris Persi, in ''Conoscere l'Italia'', vol. Marche, Istituto Geografico De Agostini, Novara 1982 (p. 74); AA.VV. ''Meravigliosa Italia, Enciclopedia delle regioni'', edited by Valerio Lugoni, Aristea, Milano; Guido Piovene, in ''Tuttitalia'', Casa Editrice Sansoni, Firenze & Istituto Geografico De Agostini, Novara (p. 31); Pietro Zampetti, in ''Itinerari dell'Espresso'', vol. Marche, edited by Neri Pozza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Divergence
The Great Divergence or European miracle is the socioeconomic shift in which the Western world (i.e. Western Europe and the parts of the New World where its people became the dominant populations) overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilization, eclipsing the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India, Qing China, Tokugawa Japan, and Joseon Korea. Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including geography, culture, institutions, colonialism, resources and just pure chance. There is disagreement over the nomenclature of the "great" divergence, as a clear point of beginning of a divergence is traditionally held to be the 16th or even the 15th century, with the commercial revolution and the origins of mercantilism and capitalism during the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, the rise of the European colonial empires, proto-globalization, the Scientific Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accounting
Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "language of business", measures the results of an organization's economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of stakeholders, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms "accounting" and " financial reporting" are often used as synonyms. Accounting can be divided into several fields including financial accounting, management accounting, tax accounting and cost accounting. Financial accounting focuses on the reporting of an organization's financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to the external users of the information, such as investors, regulators and suppliers; and management accounting focuses on the mea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merchantilism
Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. The policy aims to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus, and it includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves by a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Historically, such policies frequently led to war and motivated colonial expansion. Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time. It promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy.John J. McCusker, ''Mercantilism and the Economic History of the Early Modern Atlantic World'' (Cambridge UP, 2001) Before ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banking
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords. Banking in its modern sense evolved in the fourteenth century in the prosperous cities of Renaissance Italy but in many ways functioned as a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that had their roots in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets. Economists, historians, political economists and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include ''laissez-faire'' or free-market capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, state capitalism and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modern Era
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history. The modern era can be further divided as follows: * The early modern period lasted from c. AD 1500 to 1800 and resulted in wide-ranging intellectual, political and economic change. It brought with it the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and an Age of Revolutions, beginning with those in America and France and later spreading in other countries, partly as a result of upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars. * The late modern period began around 1800 with the end of the political revolutions in the late 18th century and involved the transition from a world dominated by imperial and colonial powers into one of nations and nationhood following the two great world wars, World War I a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—most recently part of the Ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seicento
The Seicento (, ) is Italian history and culture during the 17th century. The Seicento saw the end of the Renaissance movement in Italy and the beginning of the Counter-Reformation and the Baroque era. The word means "six hundred" (''sei'' = six, ''cento'' = hundred) and is short for , 1600. Definition The Seicento in Italy simply refers to the 17th century, yet abroad, the word refers to the Italian cultural and social history during this period, characterised by several wars and conflicts, invasions, and the patronage of the arts and architecture. It was also the period in which the Baroque era came into place (the Baroque being an essentially Italian movement, having been created by the popes in Rome as a part of the Catholic Reformation). This period also saw advancements in Italian science, philosophy and technology. History The 17th century was a tumultuous period in Italian history, with several political and social changes, and times of much civil and military unrest. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
