Art has been present throughout the world since the beginning of humans. Art has come a long way in time from the early prehistoric art through the Classical period and then into the Renaissance, all the way to where we are now, art has evolved with the times. Everywhere you look, art is present, and whether it is obvious or not, be it a painting, a sculpture, or some sort of architecture, our world is full of art. The Renaissance period in particular was a time when art was thought to have begun to make and impact on civilization. .
The term Renaissance is applied to the period in the history of Western Europe in the early 1300s the extended through the late 1500s. "Renaissance" is a French word meaning "rebirth" (Britannica 1). This term describes the radical and comprehensive changes that took place in European culture, bring about the demise of the Middle Ages and embodying for the first time the values of the modern world. The word "renaissance" originally referred to the revival of the values and artistic styles of classical antiquity during that period, especially in Italy (Beckett, 1994, 36). The Renaissance is seen as building on, rather than breaking with, its medieval heritage (Canto, 1994, 13). The Florentine art historian, Giorgio Vasari, developed the idea of rebirth in art in his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, which was written in 1500 (Turner, 1996, 497). Vasari claimed "art had been reborn in Italy in about 1250 and had progressed through "childhood" and "youth" to its 16th century maturity" (Britannica 7).
"In the 19th century, Jules Michelet and Jakob Burckhardt popularized the idea of the Renaissance as "a distinct historical period heralding the modern age, characterized by the rise of the individual, scientific inquiry and geographical exploration, and the growth of secular value""(Cole, 1994, 13). Today the concept of the Renaissance is firmly secured as a cultural and intellectual movement.
