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There´s Something About Italy

© Anika Scott

Maybe it´s something special in the yellow soil of Tuscany. Something secret in the vineyards of Chianti or something in the wind off the Umbrian Appenines. Perhaps the Sicilian sun has something to do with it, or the particular blue of the sea off the Amalfi coast.

Italy has something that has made it a leading player in European history for more than 2,000 years. Romulus and Remus chose the seven hills off the Tiber for the founding of Rome. Imperial troops built roads from Hadrian´s wall in faraway England to the center of the Roman Empire. Great generals like Julius Caesar arose, as well as great poets like Dante and Petrarch. Venetian and Genoese trading ships ruled the medieval seas and the Catholic Church could not stay away from Italy for long. The Greeks founded colonies in the Italian south, and Holy Roman emperors brought something of Germany to Sicily´s sunwashed cities.

Something pulls people from around the world to Italy today. The country is among the top travel destinations in Europe. And much of the attraction springs from the Renaissance. People who haven´t stepped inside a church in their hometowns crowd into St. Peter´s Basilica. Michelangelo´s David draws visitors to Florence. The mirrored writing and intriguing drawings of Leonardo da Vinci´s notebooks draw fans to Milan. Folks take trips of a lifetime to the Renaissance sites of Italy not because they are lovers of art and architecture or readers of Italian literature (though many are). They go because the Renaissance achievements of Italians are great achievements of mankind. Art historians can better explain the universal appeal of Italian Renaissance works. But for me, the attraction is something in the gut, something that tells me this statue, palace or garden belongs to all of us.

That´s not to say the Italian Renaissance appeal is all about art. There are famous names from the era that many of us know even if we don´t know all the details. Medici is one. Sforza, Machiavelli, Visconti. The name Borgia has become synonymous with abuses of papal power. Among these names arise the personalities that made the Italian Renaissance what it was: irreverent, greedy, innovative, lusty, creative, deceptive, violent, opulent. To explore the people of the era is to learn more about how the convergence of art, politics and money produced what we call the Renaissance, an epoch that changed the western world.

Though scholars agree that the Renaissance sprouted in Italy, they can´t seem to agree on exactly when. No one referred to the age of Medici and Leonardo as the Renaissance until after scholar Jacob Burckhardt popularized the term in the 19th century. For my purposes, I´ll use a generous span of time under the umbrella of "the Renaissance": roughly 1350 to 1650. This is controversial, I realize. Some scholars prefer to date the Renaissance from between 1400 and 1450 and cap it by 1600. Others dispense with the word Renaissance altogether and call the period Early Modern. But I´m a lover of the time period, not a scholar, and will stick with my own dates. They allow me to discuss some of the early inklings of humanism or vernacular literature and some of the results of inventions, wars and politics in the late Renaissance period.

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