Kungfu Jedi

Timeline 2

Early Modernity and Arts and Letters Art The modern era for art and architecture began in the 15th century with the development of linear perspective, spatial realism, oil painting, and secular subject matter.
  • Giotto (precursor), Arena Chapel, ca. 1305
  • Brunelleschi, Florence Cathedral Dome, ca. 1417 - 1436
  • Donatello, David, 1428 - 1432
  • Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Wedding, 1434
  • Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1478 - 1482
Literature The modern era for literature began in the 16th and especially the 17th centuries with the shift from medieval allegory to vernacular language, psychological realism, individual agency, and secular social critique. Precursors - The Vernacular & Humanist Foundations (14th Century)
  • Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321) The Divine Comedy in Tuscan Italian
  • Petrarch (1304 – 1374), Father of Humanism
  • Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1340s – 1400) The Canterbury Tales in Middle English
Renaissance - Humanism & Satire
  • Erasmus of Rotterdam, In Praise of Folly (1511)
  • François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1532 – 1534
  • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1580, the modern personal essay
Early Modern Masterpieces
  • William Shakespeare’s (ca. 1590 – 1613)
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605, 1615), first modern Western novel
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), human agency, free will, and political ambition
Music The modern era for music began in the 17th and 18th Centuries with the development of tonality, homophony, opera and instrumental forms.
  • Music moved from ancient church modes to major and minor (tonal) key systems with predictable, functional chord progressions
  • Transition from complex weaving melodies (polyphony) to one clear, leading melody supported by harmonic chord accompaniment (homophony)
  • Birth of Opera, Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643), L'Orfeo* (1607)
  • Development of Instrumental Forms
  • The Concerto, soloist or small group against a full orchestra
  • e.g., Vivaldi, The Four Seasons (1725); J.S. Bach, Brandenburg Concertos (1721)
  • The Sonata, a multi-movement keyboard structure
  • e.g., Domenico Scarlatti and C.P.E. Bach