Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
Shortly before Erasmus's arrival Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples had returned from Italy, where he had visited the Platonists, such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Ermolao Barbaro, the reviver of Aristotle. Though theoretical theology and philosophy generally were conservative at Paris, yet here as well as elsewhere movements to reform the Church were not wanting.
For the men of the Renaissance, no matter how philosophized and cultured, retained the pleasure in mere incident, which we moderns seem to have given over to children and savages; and Lorenzo, Ficino, and Politian probably listened to the adventures of Luigi Pulci's paladins and giants with much the same interest, and only a little more conscious sense of grotesqueness, with which the crowd in the market listened to Cristofano dell' Altissimo and similar story-tellers.
Dante's picture Sir John Hawkwood Ancestor and Descendant The Pazzi Conspiracy Squeamish Montesecco Giuliano de' Medici dies Lorenzo's escape Vengeance on the Pazzi Botticelli's cartoon High Mass Luca della Robbia Michelangelo nearing the end The Miracles of Zenobius East and West meet in splendour Marsilio Ficino and the New Learning Beautiful glass.
He entertained Marsilio Ficino, the reviver of the Platonic philosophy, in his own house; and being much attached to him, have him a residence near his palace at Careggi, that he might pursue the study of letters with greater convenience, and himself have an opportunity of enjoying his company.
Extinguish the architecture and the sculpture, the poetry and the philosophy of Attica; obliterate from the sum of civilization the names of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli, of Cimabue, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Michel Angelo, of Brunetto, Ficino, Politian; and how much diminished will be the remainder!
In the left corner you may see Marsilio Ficino dressed as a priest; Gentile de' Becchi turns to him, while Cristoforo Landini in a red cloak stands by, and Angelo Poliziano lifts up his hands. Does one ever regret, I wonder, after looking at these realistic fifteenth-century works, that the frescoes of Orcagna for he painted the whole choir were destroyed in a storm, it is said, in 1358.
The Umbrian devotion felt by Raphael in his boyhood, the prophecy of Savonarola, and the Platonism of Ficino absorbed by Michael Angelo at Florence, the scientific preoccupations of Lionardo and the antiquarian interests of Mantegna, were all alike unknown at Venice.
The old thrift and simplicity gave way to extravagance and ostentation; the old faith gave way too, but that was not wholly the effect of Lorenzo's natural inclination towards Platonic philosophy, fostered by his tutor Marsilio Ficino and his friends Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, but was due in no small measure also to the hostility of Pope Sixtus, which culminated in the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478 and the murder of Giuliano.
He also brought from Flanders masters in the art of tapestry. Pontano, Ficino, and Poggio dedicated works of importance to his name; and Pirro Perrotti, in the preface to his uncle's 'Cornucopia, draws a quaint picture of the reception which so learned a book was sure to meet with at Urbino. But Frederick was not merely an accomplished prince.
Only a fragment remains now of the best of his poems, that which earned the praise of Ficino and the great Lorenzo, and it is significant that the name of the piece was "The Wood of Life." At twenty Philip returned to Beaumanoir after long wanderings. He was the perfect scholar who had toiled at books and not less at the study of mankind.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking