Editing Renaissance (section)

===Self-awareness===
[[File:The historian Leonardo Bruni.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Leonardo Bruni]]]]
By the 15th century, writers, artists, and architects in Italy were well aware of the transformations that were taking place and were using phrases such as ''modi antichi'' (in the antique manner) or ''alle romana et alla antica'' (in the manner of the Romans and the ancients) to describe their work. In the 1330s [[Petrarch]] referred to pre-Christian times as ''antiqua'' (ancient) and to the Christian period as ''nova'' (new).<ref name=mommsen>{{cite journal | last = Mommsen | first = Theodore E.|author-link =Theodor Ernst Mommsen |title = Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages' | journal = [[Speculum (journal)|Speculum]] | volume = 17 | issue = 2 | pages = 226–242 | year = 1942| doi = 10.2307/2856364|jstor = 2856364 | s2cid = 161360211}}</ref> From Petrarch's Italian perspective, this new period (which included his own time) was an age of national eclipse.<ref name=mommsen/> [[Leonardo Bruni]] was the first to use tripartite [[periodization]] in his ''History of the Florentine People'' (1442).<ref name="Hankins">Leonardo Bruni, James Hankins, ''History of the Florentine people'', Volume 1, Books 1–4 (2001), p. xvii.</ref> Bruni's first two periods were based on those of Petrarch, but he added a third period because he believed that Italy was no longer in a state of decline. [[Flavio Biondo]] used a similar framework in ''Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire'' (1439–1453).

Humanist historians argued that contemporary scholarship restored direct links to the classical period, thus bypassing the Medieval period, which they then named for the first time the "Middle Ages". The term first appears in Latin in 1469 as ''media tempestas'' (middle times).<ref name="Albrow">Albrow, Martin, ''The Global Age: state and society beyond modernity'' (1997), Stanford University Press, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZwmdxMMjOd4C&pg=PA205 p. 205] {{ISBN|0804728704}}.</ref> The term ''rinascita'' (rebirth) first appeared, however, in its broad sense in [[Giorgio Vasari]]'s ''[[Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori|Lives of the Artists]]'', 1550, revised 1568.<ref name="panofsky">[[Erwin Panofsky|Panofsky, Erwin]]. ''Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art'', New York: Harper and Row, 1960.</ref><ref>The Open University Guide to the Renaissance, ''[http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/renaissance/defining.htm Defining the Renaissance] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090721070445/http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/renaissance/defining.htm |date=21 July 2009 }}'' (Retrieved 10 May 2007)</ref> Vasari divides the age into three phases: the first phase contains [[Cimabue]], [[Giotto]], and [[Arnolfo di Cambio]]; the second phase contains [[Masaccio]], [[Filippo Brunelleschi|Brunelleschi]], and [[Donatello]]; the third centers on [[Leonardo da Vinci]] and culminates with [[Michelangelo]]. It was not just the growing awareness of classical antiquity that drove this development, according to Vasari, but also the growing desire to study and imitate nature.<ref>Sohm, Philip. ''Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) {{ISBN|0521780691}}.</ref>