Study Guide to the Renaissance and Enlightenment: 158 Flashcards from Petrarch to Kant
Master the Renaissance and Enlightenment with 158 flashcards: humanism, Medici, perspective, Gutenberg, Copernicus, Locke, Voltaire, Kant, enlightened rulers.
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The Renaissance and the Enlightenment are usually taught as two separate chapters, yet exam questions keep linking them: humanism leads to textual criticism, the Scientific Revolution leads to the Age of Reason, Copernicus leads to Newton. The Flip It deck Renaissance and Enlightenment (deck code LJ6523, 158 cards) puts both periods in one place so you can learn them as a single arc from Petrarch (1304-1374) to Kant.
Study this deck: Renaissance & Enlightenment
1 / 10What was the Renaissance?
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
Cards from the deck
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| When did the Italian Renaissance conclude? | 1527, with the Sack of Rome during the War of the League of Cognac |
| Who is considered the father of Renaissance humanism? | Petrarch (1304-1374), for his revival of classical Latin texts |
| What were the Studia Humanitatis? | Poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy and rhetoric |
| Who formalized the rules of linear perspective? | Brunelleschi demonstrated it, Leon Battista Alberti wrote the theory |
| What is sfumato? | Soft, gradual transitions between colors and tones, perfected by Leonardo |
| Who brought Greek texts to Italy after 1453? | Greek scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople |
| What publication is often cited as marking the beginning of the Enlightenment? | Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) |
| What famous phrase from Kant captures the Enlightenment attitude? | Sapere aude (dare to know) |
| What was Enlightened Absolutism? | Monarchs embracing Enlightenment principles while keeping absolute power |
| What was the French term for the Enlightenment? | Les Lumières (The Lights) |
Everything the 158 cards cover
Renaissance (roughly the first 90 cards)
- Origins: Florence, the meaning of rinascita, the Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), Italian city-states, Venice, the Black Death, the merchant economy.
- Humanism: Petrarch, Poggio Bracciolini, Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), the Republic of Letters, vernacular literature, Dante's Divine Comedy, Machiavelli's The Prince, Erasmus, Thomas More's Utopia.
- Art and technique: linear perspective, chiaroscuro, sfumato, Vitruvian Man, Mona Lisa, Sistine Chapel ceiling, David (1501-1504), The Birth of Venus, School of Athens, Brunelleschi's dome, St. Peter's Basilica, High Renaissance (c. 1490-1527), Mannerism, Baroque.
- Northern Renaissance: Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Bruegel the Elder.
- Science and exploration: Gutenberg and the Gutenberg Bible (c. 1455), Copernicus (De revolutionibus, 1543), Vesalius (De humani corporis fabrica, 1543), Galileo, Luca Pacioli and double-entry bookkeeping (1494), Columbus (1492), Magellan (1519-1522), the Columbian Exchange, polyphony.
- Religion: the Renaissance Papacy, Luther's Ninety-five Theses (1517), the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation.
Enlightenment (the remaining cards)
- Dates and names: 1687 or 1715 to 1789, the Age of Reason, Les Lumières, the Scottish Enlightenment.
- Foundations: Scientific Revolution, Descartes (Cogito, ergo sum), Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Newton.
- Thinkers: Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Kant, Hume, Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Goethe, Benjamin Franklin.
- Institutions: salons, coffeehouses, Masonic lodges, learned academies such as the Royal Society, encyclopedias, journals, debating societies.
- Politics: natural rights, rule of law, separation of church and state, constitutional government, Enlightened Absolutism (Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Joseph II), the American and French Revolutions, the legacy in liberalism, socialism, neoclassicism and Romanticism.
Study tips for this deck
Use 1543 and 1687 as anchor years. Copernicus and Vesalius both published in 1543, which is the hinge between Renaissance art and the Scientific Revolution; Newton's Principia in 1687 is the hinge into the Enlightenment. Almost every other date in the deck (1455, 1492, 1517, 1527, 1715, 1789) can be placed as "before" or "after" one of these two, which is far easier than memorizing 20 loose numbers.
Learn the paired works, not just the names. The deck repeatedly asks "who wrote" and "what was X about" for the same title: The Prince, Utopia, Oration on the Dignity of Man, De revolutionibus, Principia Mathematica, What Is Enlightenment?. Recite author, title and one-line thesis together; a card that gives you any one of the three should trigger the other two.
Where to find it
Log in to Flip It and look up deck code LJ6523, "Renaissance and Enlightenment". Study the Renaissance half first, then the Enlightenment half, then one shuffled session mixing both.
For the centuries that come just before, see our study guide to Medieval Europe.
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