As you have read, the Renaissance was a time of looking back to achievements of earlier civilizations. During the 1300s humanists began to search the Italian countryside for Greek and Roman artifacts. They found examples of classical cultures such as manuscripts, coins, and statues to study for ideas.
European scholars, especially scientists, also learned from Arab scholars. As you read in Chapter 10, scholars in Baghdad preserved and developed Greek, Roman, and Indian scientific knowledge. As trade between Europe, Asia, and Africa grew during the Crusades, goods and knowledge spread.
The Power of Words

One of the earliest Italian humanists to study classics--works of literature from ancient Greece, Rome, and Arabia--was Petrarch (PEE trahrk). Petrarch was a poet who lived from 1304 to 1374. He loved learning, and he read every book he could find. Petrarch believed the classics were better than any works written later.
Petrarch became the most celebrated poet in all of Europe. He once described his love of writing as follows:
There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen...As there is none among earthly delights more noble than literature, so there was none more lasting, none gentler or more faithful.
Renaissance Artists

Artists as well as poets learned from ancient Romans and Greeks. One of the greatest Renaissance artists was Michelangelo. He used many classical ideas--such as balance of form--in his paintings, sculptures, and architecture.
You can see his David at the beginning of this lesson.
A very famous painter of Italy was the humanist Leonardo da Vinci (lee uh NAHR doh duh VIHN chee). He lived from 1452 to 1519. Like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, and architect. However, Leonardo da Vinci was a scientist, engineer, and musician as well. Da Vinci's interests and talents were as broad as the Renaissance itself.

Leonardo da Vinci, the Painter

 

Besides painting, da Vinci also kept hundreds of notebooks in which he wrote down all kinds of new ideas. Da Vinci always wrote backward to keep his ideas secret. He made plans for a submarine and a machine gun. He wrote this plan for a parachute:
If a man has a tent made of linen, of which the holes have all been stopped up, and it is 20 feet across and 20 in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any great height without sustaining any injury.
Leonardo da Vinci studied carefully the flight of birds. His close observation helped him to design a flying machine. Four hundred years would pass before a human actually flew. Leonardo da Vinci's love of knowledge inspired future artists and inventors.
Earth, Sun, and Stars

In a small town in Poland, a young man named Nicolaus Copernicus (kuh PUR nih kus) studied books of Greek and Arab astronomy.
[Image: Da Vinci drew this portrait of himself. He also made many sketches of his inventions such as a flying machine (below).]

He observed the night sky with a simple telescope and carefully recorded the positions of the stars he saw.

In 1514 Copernicus made a startling discovery. Earth seemed to orbit around the sun, once each year. This was a new idea. Since people first tracked the stars and moon, they believed that Earth was the center of the universe. Many European leaders, including officials of the Church in Rome, found this new theory unacceptable. They felt it went against Church teachings, which put Earth at the center of the universe. It was not until after Copernicus died that his book was published. It was called On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Copernicus's ideas about the universe greatly changed our knowledge of astronomy