title: Vocaloid

text: The next live concert was set for Tokyo on March 9, 2011. Other events included the Vocarock Festival 2011 on January 11, 2011 and the Vocaloid Festa which was held on February 12, 2011. The Vocaloid Festa had also hosted a competition officially endorsed by Pixiv, with the winner seeing their creation unveiled at Vocafes2 on May 29, 2011. The first Vocaloid concert in North America was held in Los Angeles on July 2, 2011 at the Nokia Theater during Anime Expo; the concert was identical to the March 9, 2010 event except for a few improvements and new songs. Another concert was held in Sapporo on August 16 and 17, 2011. Hatsune Miku also had a concert in Singapore on November 11, 2011. Since then, there have been multiple concerts every year featuring Miku in various concert series, such as Magical Mirai, and Miku Expo.


title: Vocaloid

text: The software became very popular in Japan upon the release of Crypton Future Media's Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 2 software and her success has led to the popularity of the Vocaloid software in general. Japanese video sharing website Niconico played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. A user of Hatsune Miku and an illustrator released a much-viewed video, in which "Hachune Miku", a super deformed Miku, held a Welsh onion ("Negi" in Japanese), which resembles a leek, and sang the Finnish song "Ievan Polkka" like the flash animation "Loituma Girl", on Nico Nico Douga. According to Crypton, they knew that users of Nico Nico Douga had started posting videos with songs created by the software before Hatsune Miku, but the video presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation—notably the "dōjin" culture.


title: Vocaloid

text: As the recognition and popularity of the software grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would generate illustrations, animation in 2D and 3D, and remixes by other users. Other creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas. The software has also been used to tell stories using song and verse and the "Story of Evil" series has become so popular that a manga, six books, and two theatre works were produced by the series creator. Another theater production based on "Cantarella", a song sung by Kaito and produced by Kurousa-P, was also set to hit the stage and will run Shibuya's Space Zero theater in Tokyo from August 3 to August 7, 2011. The website has become so influential that studios often post demos on Nico Nico Douga, as well as other websites such as YouTube, as part of the promotional effort of their Vocaloid products. The important role Nico Nico Douga has played in promoting the Vocaloids also sparked interest in the software and Kentaro Miura, the artist of Gakupo's mascot design, had offered his services for free because of his love for the website.


title: Vocaloid

text: In September 2009, three figurines based on the derivative character "Hachune Miku" were launched in a rocket from the United States state of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, though it did not reach outer space. In late November 2009, a petition was launched in order to get a custom made Hatsune Miku aluminum plate (8 cm x 12 cm, 3.1" x 4.7") made that would be used as a balancing weight for the Japanese Venus space probe Akatsuki. Started by Hatsune Miku fan Sumio Morioka that goes by chodenzi-P, this project received the backing of Dr. Seiichi Sakamoto of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The website of the petition written in Japanese was translated into other languages such as English, Russian, Chinese and Korean, and, the petition exceeded the needed 10,000 signatures necessary to have the plates made on December 22, 2009. On May 21, 2010 at 06:58:22 (JST), Akatsuki was launched on the rocket H-IIA 202 Flight 17 from the Japanese spaceport Tanegashima Space Center, having three plates depicting Hatsune Miku.


title: Vocaloid

text: The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter, which looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. The virtual idols "Meaw" have also been released aimed at the Vocaloid culture. The twin Thai virtual idols released two singles, "Meaw Left ver." and "Meaw Right ver.", sung in Japanese.


title: Vocaloid

text: A cafe for one day only was opened in Tokyo based on Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2010. A second event was arranged for all Japanese Vocaloids. "Snow Miku" was also featured on an event as a part of the 62nd Sapporo Snow Festival in February 2011. A Vocaloid-themed TV show on the Japanese Vocaloids called "Vocalo Revolution" began airing on Kyoto Broadcasting System on January 3, 2011. The show is part of a bid to make the Vocaloid culture more widely accepted and features a mascot known as "Cul", also mascot of the "Cul Project". The show's first success story is a joint collaboration between Vocalo Revolution and the school fashion line "Cecil McBee" "Music x Fashion x Dance". Piapro also held a competition with famous fashion brands with the winners seeing their Lolita-based designs reproduced for sale by the company Putumayo. A radio station set up a 1-hour program containing nothing but Vocaloid-based music.


title: Vocaloid

text: The Vocaloid software had a great influence on the development of the freeware UTAU. Several products were produced for the for intended use for the programs Reason 4 and GarageBand. These products were sold by Act2 and by converting their file format, were able to also work with the UTAU program. The program Maidloid, developed for the character , was also developed, which works in a similar way to Vocaloid, except produces erotic sounds rather than an actual singing voice. Other than Vocaloid, AH Software also developed Tsukuyomi Ai and Shouta for the software Voiceroid, and the sale of their Vocaloids gave AH software the chance to promote Voiceroid at the same time. The software is aimed for speaking rather than singing. Both AH Software's Vocaloids and Voiceroids went on sale on December 4, 2009. Crypton Future Media has been reported to openly welcome these additional software developments as it expands the market for synthesized voices.


title: Vocaloid

text: During the events of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a number of Vocaloid related donation drives were produced. Crypton Future Media joined several other companies in a donation drive, with money spent on the sales of music from Crypton Future Media's KarenT label being donated to the Japanese Red Cross. In addition, a special Nendoroid of Hatsune Miku, Nendoroid Hatsune Miku: Support ver., was announced with a donation of 1,000 yen per sale to the Japanese Red Cross.


title: Vocaloid

text: In 2012, Vocaloid was quoted as one of the contributors to a 10% increase in cosplay related services. In 2013, the Vocaloid 3 software Oliver was used as the voice of Cartoon Hangover character PuppyCat from their web series "Bee and PuppyCat".


title: Vocaloid

text: The earliest use of Vocaloid-related software used prototypes of Kaito and Meiko and were featured on the album "History of Logic System" by Hideki Matsutake released on July 24, 2003, and sang the song "Ano Subarashii Ai o Mō Ichido". The first album to be released using a full commercial Vocaloid was "A Place in the Sun", which used Leon's voice for the vocals singing in both Russian and English. Miriam has also been featured in two albums, "Light + Shade" and "Continua". Japanese progressive-electronic artist Susumu Hirasawa used the Lola Vocaloid in the original soundtrack of "Paprika" by Satoshi Kon. The software's biggest asset is its ability to see continued usage even long after its initial release date. Leon was featured in the album "32bit Love" by Muzehack and Lola in "Operator's Manual" by anaROBIK; both were featured in these albums six years after they were released. Even early on in the software's history, the music making progress proved to be a valuable asset to the Vocaloid development as it not only opened up the possibilities of how the software may be applied in practice, but led to the creation of further Vocaloids to fill in the missing roles the software had yet to cover. The album "A Place in the Sun" was noted to have songs that were designed for a male voice with a rougher timbre than the Vocaloid Leon could provide; this later led to the development of Big Al to fulfill this particular role.


title: Vocaloid

text: Some of the most popular albums are on the "Exit Tunes" label, featuring the works of Vocaloid producers in Japan. One of the Vocaloid compilations, "Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku", debuted at No. 1 on the Japanese weekly Oricon albums chart in May 2010, becoming the first Vocaloid album ever to top the charts. The album sold 23,000 copies in its first week and eventually sold 86,000 copies. The following released album, "Exit Tunes Presents Vocalonexus feat. Hatsune Miku", became the second Vocaloid album to top the weekly charts in January 2011. Another album, "Supercell", by the group Supercell also features a number of songs using Vocaloids. Upon its release in North America, it became ranked as the second highest album on Amazon's bestselling MP3 album in the international category in the United States and topped the store's bestselling chart for world music on iTunes.


title: Vocaloid

text: Other albums, such as 19's Sound Factory's "First Sound Story" and Livetune's "Re:Repackage", and "Re:Mikus" also feature Miku's voice. Other uses of Miku include the albums by Absorb and by OSTER-project. Kagamine Len and Rin's songs were covered by Asami Shimoda in the album "Prism" credited to "Kagamine Rin/Len feat. Asami Shimoda". The compilation album "Vocarock Collection 2 feat. Hatsune Miku" was released by Farm Records on December 15, 2010, and was later featured on the Cool Japan Music iPhone app in February 2011. The record label Balloom became the first label to focus solely on Vocaloid-related works and their first release was "Unhappy Refrain" by the Vocaloid producer Wowaka. Hatsune Miku's North American debut song "World is Mine" ranked at No. 7 in the iTunes world singles ranking in the week of its release. Singer Gackt also challenged Gackpoid users to create a song, with the prize being 10 million yen, stating if the song was to his liking he would sing and include it in his next album. The winning song "Episode 0" and runner up song "Paranoid Doll" were later released by Gackt on July 13, 2011. In relation to the Good Smiling racing promotions that Crypton Future Media Vocaloids had played part in, the album "Hatsune Miku GT Project Theme Song Collection" was released in August 2011 as part of a collaboration.


title: Vocaloid

text: In the month prior to her release, SF-A2 Miki was featured in the album "Vocaloids X'mas: Shiroi Yoru wa Seijaku o Mamotteru" as part of her promotion. The album featured the Vocaloid singing Christmas songs. Miki was also featured singing the introduction of the game "Hello Kitty to Issho! Block Crash 123!!". A young female prototype used for the "project if..." series was used in Sound Horizon's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as the "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". For Yamaha's VY1 Vocaloid, an album featuring VY1 was created. The album was released with the deluxe version of the program. It includes various well-known producers from Nico Nico Douga and YouTube and includes covers of various popular and well-known Vocaloid songs using the VY1 product. The first press edition of Nekomura Iroha was released with a CD containing her two sample songs "Tsubasa" and "Abbey Fly", and the install disc also contained VSQ files of the two songs for use with her program. A number of Vocaloid related music, including songs starring Hatsune Miku, were featured in the arcade game "Music Gun Gun! 2". One of the rare singles with the English speaking Sonika, "Suburban Taxi", was released by Alexander Stein and the German label Volume0dB on March 11, 2010.


title: Vocaloid

text: To celebrate the release of the Vocaloid 3 software, a compilation album titled "The Vocaloids" was released. The CD contains 18 songs sung by Vocaloids released in Japan and contains a booklet with information about the Vocaloid characters. Porter Robinson used the Vocaloid Avanna for his studio album "Worlds".


title: Vocaloid

text: Yamaha utilized Vocaloid technology to mimic the voice of deceased rock musician hide, who died in 1998, to complete and release his song "Co Gal" in 2014. The musician's actual voice, breathing sounds and other cues were extracted from previously released songs and a demo and combined with the synthesized voice. Kenji Arakawa, a spokesman for Yamaha, said he believes this to be the first time a work by a deceased artist is commercially available and includes the dead person singing lyrics completed after their death.


title: Vocaloid

text: For illustrations of the characters, Crypton Future Media licensed "original illustrations of Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin, Kagamine Len, Megurine Luka, Meiko and Kaito" under Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported ("CC BY-NC"), allowing for artists to use the characters in noncommercial adaptations and derivations with attribution.


title: Vocaloid

text: According to Crypton, because professional female singers refused to provide voice samples, in fear that the software might create clones of their singing voices, Crypton changed their focus from imitating certain singers to creating characteristic vocals. This change of focus led to sampling vocals of voice actors and the Japanese voice actor agency Arts Vision supported the development. Similar concerns are expressed throughout the other studios using Vocaloid, with Zero-G refusing to release the names of several of their providers. PowerFX only hinted at Sweet Ann's voice provider, and Oliver's voice provider is still unknown. AH Software named the voice providers for Miki, Kiyoteru, Yukari, Zunko and Iroha, but for legal reasons cannot name Kaai Yuki's voice provider as a minor was the subject of the recordings.


title: Vocaloid

text: Any rights or obligations arising from the vocals created by the software belong to the software user. Just like any music synthesizer, the software is treated as a musical instrument and the vocals as sound. Under the term of license, the mascots for the software can be used to create vocals for commercial or non-commercial use as long as the vocals do not offend public policy. In other words, the user is bound under the term of license of the software not to synthesize derogatory or disturbing lyrics. On the other hand, copyrights to the mascot image and name belong to their respective studios. Under the term of license, a user cannot commercially distribute a vocal as a song sung by the character, nor use the mascot image on commercial products, without the consent of the studio who owns them.


title: Vocaloid

text: Employees working within the studios are bound by legal implications not to repeat any details given to them from Yamaha on Vocaloid development without Yamaha's permission. They are also not allowed to disclose details of upcoming Vocaloids without permission of the Vocaloid studio nor reveal the identity of the singer if the studio does not make it public.


title: Vocaloid

text: On November 29, 2010, Crypton started an independent music publication for seeking copyright royalties if songs are used for commercial purposes such as karaoke, because Vocaloid users hardly used the copyright collective Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC). Due to the fact songs using the software are made by independent users, the act of plagiarism has remained a highly controversial issue among Vocaloid users and their published works. This has been a heated issue on both illustrative and musical levels with songs and their publishers being targeted by allegations of stealing the works of others. In January 2011, Japanese boyband KAT-TUN were forced to admit plagiarism against their song "Never×Over~「-」Is Your Part~", after the producer of the song admitted it was influenced by the Vocaloid song "Dye" produced by AVTechNO, fans having expressed their outrage over the similarities of the two songs. However, AVTechNO also released a statement explaining that the members of the band were not to blame for this incident.


title: Vocaloid

text: The portrayals of Vocaloids can at times touch controversial issues. One of the most controversial uses of the legal agreements of any Vocaloid producing studio was from the Democratic Party of Japan, whose running candidate, Kenzo Fujisue, attempted to secure the use of Miku's image in the Japanese House of Councillors election of July 11, 2010. The hope was that the party could use her image to appeal to younger voters. Although Crypton Future Media rejected the party's use of her image or name for political purposes, Fujisue released the song "We Are the One" using her voice but not credited to her on YouTube, by replacing her image with the party's character in the music video.


title: Vocaloid

text: Yamaha has had input in the art style of new Vocaloids. For example, the illustrations for Vocaloid AVANNA were changed to a more 'anime-esque' style at Yamaha's request. Avanna's illustrator, AkiGlancy, theorised that this was in response to backlash against the first two Spanish Vocaloid packages Bruno and Clara, which was met with outcry from Vocaloid fans over the artwork style.


title: Vocaloid

text: Despite the success of the software in Japan, overseas customers have been largely reluctant to embrace it. When interviewed by the Vocaloid producing company Zero-G, music producer Robert Hedin described how the software offered creative freedom. He compared it to auto-tuning software, stating the Vocaloid software itself has enough imperfections to present itself as a singer who does not sound human. However, he states that Vocaloid also does not "snap into tune" like auto-tuning software, which the music industry seems to favor these days. Giuseppe, who had produced demo songs for both Zero-G and PowerFX Vocaloids, and is aided in the production of Spanish-based Vocaloids, had noted that each Vocaloid package worked the same way. However, each vocal has its own unique personality to it, so choosing one vocal over another is not easy. He hoped that the Vocaloid software will continue to progress forward so long as its userbase continues to push it forward. He also noted that the software's slow start and its early bad reputation was the hardest part for the software to overcome regarding its success, and like any commercial product, a decrease in sales would result in a decrease in development. However, focus had switched from focusing on the vocals to focusing on the boxart character mascot itself at this point.


title: Vocaloid

text: The CEO of Crypton Future Media noted the lack of interest in Vocaloids overall was put down to the lack of response in the initial Vocaloid software. With regard to the development of the English version of the software specifically, many studios when approached by Crypton Future Media for recommendations towards developing the English Vocaloids had no interest in the software initially, with one particular company representative calling it a "toy". A level of failure was put on Leon and Lola for lack of sales in the United States, putting the blame on their British accents. Crypton praised the value of the English Vocaloids and what they offered to the Japanese users for their capability of offering the English language to them, when it would otherwise be off limits. As Hatsune Miku was responsible for making the software famous, her voice has become the most commonly associated with the Vocaloid software and divides opinions of critics both overseas and within Japan on their opinions towards her and the software. Crypton blamed a fear of robots on part of the lack of response on the sale of the software overseas and expressed that there was also a general "anti-Vocaloid" point of view amongst some cultures and communities, although he also noted that he hoped in the future this would change as the software continued to be developed. Prior to the release of the Hatsune Miku product, Crypton Future Media had also noted there was some criticism at choosing to release the original Vocaloid engine as a commercial licensing product, although felt that the choice was for the better of the engine. Furthermore, it was noted that the original Vocaloid engine felt more like a prototype for future engine versions.


title: Vocaloid

text: Even with the lack of success for the English version of the software in the United States, Crypton Future Media reported that about half of music downloads at the iTunes Store for songs of Crypton's label KarenT, published by Japanese producers, have been from overseas purchases, with sales from American consumers making up the majority of percentages of overseas sales. Despite experiencing good sales in Europe, it was reported the software is failing to attract a satisfactory level of attention, and software developers are now setting their sights on trying to overturn the lack of interest in the software in Europe.


title: Vocaloid

text: Hatsune Miku picked up second place in a 2010 Japanese Yahoo! poll on Japanese gamers' favorite characters, owed to her starring role in "". CNN's website CNNGo declared Hatsune Miku as one of Japan's best in their "Tokyo best and worst of 2010", listing her as the "Best new virtual singer for the otaku generation". "Clash" magazine labeled Hatsune Miku and the Vocaloid software as the future of music.


title: Vocaloid

text: Vocaloid was sold as a product for professional musicians, and although there were many producers using the software within Japan by 2011, a report was released detailing the true reflections of the Vocaloid craze. It was conducted independently by fans of the Vocaloid software and detailed the popularity of certain Vocaloids over others. Most Vocaloid related videos struggled to get over 5,000 views and the most popular producers gaining the most interest over lesser popular producers. In order of the most video uploads were Hatsune Miku (first), Kagamine Rin (second), Gumi (third), Megurine Luka (fourth), Kagamine Len (fifth) and Kaito (sixth) had the most videos uploaded related to them, while all other Vocaloids had less than 1,000 uploads related to them. This was not true for all the calculations they ran to determine the popularity, including average and mean views and mylists. In the end, only Gumi and the Kagamine software packages managed to stay on the top six lists of all their calculations, with popular Vocaloid Hatsune Miku failing to make it on the mean average top six list calculations for the study period. In 2013, it was estimated that about 30% of all videos updated each month on Niconico were Vocaloid related.


title: Vocaloid

text: Despite its growing popularity as a franchise, by December 2015, Vocaloid was still struggling to make an impact in the west; Hatsune Miku also did not make as much of an impact. Concerns were mostly focused on Vocaloid itself at this point. It was also reported that more Japanese companies were growing protective of their properties, with "", which was released at the time, being the center of one such conflict of copyright interest. The market for such games was described as a "niche audience in the west".


title: Canary Wharf

text: Canary Wharf is an area of London, England, located near the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf is defined by the Greater London Authority as being part of London's central business district, alongside Central London. With the City of London, it constitutes one of the main financial centres in the United Kingdom and the world, containing many high-rise buildings including the third-tallest in the UK, One Canada Square, which opened on 26 August 1991.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Developed on the site of the former West India Docks, Canary Wharf contains around of office and retail space. It has many open areas, including Canada Square, Cabot Square and Westferry Circus. Together with Heron Quays and Wood Wharf, it forms the Canary Wharf Estate, around in area.


title: Canary Wharf

text: From 1802 to the late 1980s, what would become the Canary Wharf Estate was a part of the Isle of Dogs (Millwall), Limehouse, and Poplar and was one of the busiest docks in the world. West India Docks was primarily developed by Robert Milligan (c. 1746–1809) who set up the West India Dock Company.


title: Canary Wharf

text: The Port of London Authority was established in 1909 and took control of West India Dock. Canary Wharf itself takes its name from No. 32 berth of the West Wood Quay of the Import Dock. This was built in 1936 for Fruit Lines Ltd, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines for the Mediterranean and Canary Islands fruit trade. It is located on the Isle of Dogs, the quay and warehouse were given the name Canary Wharf.


title: Canary Wharf

text: After the 1960s, when cargo became containerized, port industry began to decline, leading to all the docks being closed by 1980. After the docks closed in 1980, the British Government adopted policies to stimulate redevelopment of the area, including the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) in 1981 and the granting of Urban Enterprise Zone status to the Isle of Dogs in 1982.


title: Canary Wharf

text: The Canary Wharf of today began when Michael von Clemm, former chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), came up with the idea to convert Canary Wharf into a back office. Further discussions with G Ware Travelstead led to proposals for a new business district and included the LDDC developing an inexpensive light metro scheme, the Docklands Light Railway, to make use of a large amount of redundant railway infrastructure and to improve access.


title: Canary Wharf

text: The project was sold to the Canadian company Olympia & York and construction began in 1988, master-planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with Yorke Rosenberg Mardall as their UK advisors, and subsequently by Koetter Kim. The first buildings were completed in 1991, including One Canada Square, which became the UK's tallest building at the time and a symbol of the regeneration of Docklands. By the time it opened, the London commercial property market had collapsed, and Olympia and York Canary Wharf Limited filed for bankruptcy in May 1992.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Initially, the City of London saw Canary Wharf as an existential threat. It modified its planning laws to expand the provision of new offices in the City of London, for example, creating offices above railway stations (Blackfriars) and roads (Alban Gate). The resulting oversupply of office space contributed to the failure of the Canary Wharf project.


title: Canary Wharf

text: In October 1995, an international consortium that included investors such as Alwaleed, bought control for $1.2 billion. Paul Reichmann, of Olympia & York, was named chairman, and Canary Wharf went public in 1999. The new company was called Canary Wharf Limited, and later became Canary Wharf Group.


title: Canary Wharf

text: In 1997, some residents living on the Isle of Dogs launched a lawsuit against Canary Wharf Ltd for private nuisance because the tower interfered with TV signals. The residents lost the case.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Recovery in the property market generally, coupled with continuing demand for large floorplate Grade A office space, slowly improved the level of interest. A critical event in the recovery was the much-delayed start of work on the Jubilee Line Extension, which the government wanted ready for the Millennium celebrations.


title: Canary Wharf

text: In March 2004, Canary Wharf Group plc. was taken over by a consortium of investors, backed by its largest shareholder Glick Family Investments and led by Morgan Stanley using a vehicle named Songbird Estates plc.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Canary Wharf contains around of office and retail space, of which around (about 49%) is owned by Canary Wharf Group. Around 105,000 people work in Canary Wharf, and it is home to the world or European headquarters of numerous major banks, professional services firms, and media organisations, including Barclays, Citigroup, Clifford Chance, Credit Suisse, Ernst & Young, Fitch Ratings, HSBC, Infosys, JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, MetLife, Moody's, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bank, S&P Global, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, State Street, The Economist Group and Thomson Reuters. Until 2018, Canary Wharf also hosted two European Union agencies, European Medicines Agency and European Banking Authority, that moved to Amsterdam and Paris respectively due to Brexit.


title: Canary Wharf

text: West India Quays and Poplar Dock are two marinas that are used as moorings for barges and private leisure river craft and is owned by the Canal & River Trust.


title: Canary Wharf

text: A local public library, called Idea Store Canary Wharf, is in Churchill Place shopping mall and run by Tower Hamlets Council which opened on Thursday 16 March 2006 as part of the Idea Store project and is the borough fourth Idea Store.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Canary Wharf hosts two multiplexes (cinemas), one on West India Quay run by Cineworld. and another at Crossrail Place called Everyman Cinema.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Canada Square is one of the central squares at Canary Wharf. It is a large open space with grass, except during the winter when it is converted into an ice rink. The square is named after Canada, because the original developers of modern Canary Wharf, Olympia & York, wanted to reflect their heritage. Underneath the square is Canada Place shopping mall.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Westferry Circus is on the west side of Canary Wharf. It is a garden at ground level, and below is a roundabout allowing traffic to flow through. The garden is enclosed by bespoke hand-crafted ornamental railings and entrance gates by artist Giuseppe Lund. The area has a long history, dating back to 1812, when the Poplar and Greenwich Roads Company operated a horse ferry between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs. It operated on the West Ferry and East Ferry Roads, which the names survived. Westferry Circus was chosen as the name for the roundabout and park by virtue of its proximity to Westferry Road.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Cabot Square is one of the biggest squares at Canary Wharf, with a large fountain at the centre. The inner perimeter has additional fountains covered by trees. The square has large circular glass ventilation holes to allow gases to escape from the underground car park. The square is named after John Cabot and his son Sebastian, who were Italian explorers who settled in England in 1484.


title: Canary Wharf

text: A small square on the west side of Canary Wharf named after Christopher Columbus. The first phase of Canary Wharf was completed in 1992, 500 years after Columbus arrived in America.


title: Canary Wharf

text: A passageway south of Cabot Square. Named after Richard Chancellor who sailed with Sir John Willoughby from Greenwich on their voyage through the White Sea to Moscow.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Small area north of Cabot Square. Leads to North Dock footbridge towards Port East. Named after British architect Christopher Wren.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Every four years, residents of Canary Wharf ward elect two councillors to represent them on Tower Hamlets Council.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Stations in Canary Wharf only offer direct connections to London and Berkshire destinations. Regional and national National Rail connections can be found elsewhere in London, including at Liverpool Street, Lewisham, London Bridge, Stratford, Stratford International and Waterloo.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Transport for London (TfL) and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets monitor the air quality around Canary Wharf.


title: Canary Wharf

text: In 2017, an automatic monitoring station in Blackwall found that local air quality failed to meet UK National Air Quality Objectives, recording an annual average Nitrogen Dioxide (NO) concentration of 56 μg/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre). The National Objective is set by the government at 40 μg/m3.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Alternative stations nearer Canary Wharf recorded cleaner air. Monitors at the Limehouse Link/Westferry Road junction and on Prestons Road recorded a 2017 annual average NO concentration of 40 μg/m3, which Tower Hamlets argue fails to meet the UK National Objective.


title: Canary Wharf

text: London Buses routes 135, 277, D3, D7, D8, N277 and N550 call at bus stops near Canary Wharf. Bus 135 links Canary Wharf directly to Liverpool Street in the City of London, and bus D8 to Stratford.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Tower, London Bridge City and Blackfriars are in the City of London. Oyster Cards are valid for travel on TfL-coordinated riverboat services.


title: Canary Wharf

text: London City Airport is three miles from Canary Wharf. Over 4.8 million passengers passed through City Airport in 2018. The airport serves domestic and international destinations, including New York.


title: Canary Wharf

text: London City Airport is on the DLR. Passengers from Canary Wharf can change trains at Poplar for services to the Airport.


title: Canary Wharf

text: The Canary Wharf Group, London Borough of Tower Hamlets and Transport for London (TfL) provide cycling infrastructure in and around Canary Wharf. Several leisure and commuter routes pass through or near the estate, including:


title: Canary Wharf

text: Canary Wharf has been reported since 2017 as part of the Pokémon Go augmented reality game to being the home for the most wanted Pokémon gyms in London including Canary Wharf DLR station and Montgomery Square.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Canary Wharf Group published an official Pokémon map for PokéStop's and Pokémon Gyms, the managing director for retail Camille Waxer said in 2016 that Pokémon Go has serious potential to attract new audiences to the area, particularly food and drink outlets are seeing an increase in footfall.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Canary Wharf features in both the "Doctor Who" and "Torchwood" franchises as the fictional base of the Torchwood Institute, an organisation created by Queen Victoria to combat extraterrestrial threats. Canary Wharf features heavily as the staging post for the 2007 Cyberman invasion of Earth and is heavily damaged during a resulting battle between the Cybermen and the Daleks.


title: Canary Wharf

text: Thom Yorke of Radiohead, during their concert Live at the Astoria in May 1994, explained their song "Fake Plastic Trees" is about Canary Wharf.


title: Canary Wharf

text: The "East London Advertiser" (formerly "The Docklands & East London Advertiser") is a local newspaper printing weekly and also online.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Three Men and a Baby is a 1987 American comedy film directed by Leonard Nimoy. It stars Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson as three bachelors as they attempt to adapt their lives to de facto fatherhood with the arrival of the love child of one of the men. The script was based on the 1985 French film ("Three Men and a Cradle").


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: The film was the biggest American box office hit of that year, surpassing "Fatal Attraction" and eventually grossing $167 million in the United States and Canada and $240 million worldwide. The film won the 1988 People's Choice Award for Favorite Comedy Motion Picture.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Architect Peter Mitchell, satirist Michael Kellam, and actor Jack Holden are happy bachelors in their shared NYC apartment, with frequent parties and flings. One day, a baby named Mary arrives on their doorstep with a note revealing she is the result of Jack’s tryst with an actress named Sylvia during a Stratford Festival Shakespearean production a year prior.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Jack is in Turkey shooting a movie, and makes arrangements with a director friend to have a package delivered to the apartment. Jack asks his roommates to keep the delivery a secret per his friend's wishes; when Mary arrives, they believe she is the "package".


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Peter and Michael are totally befuddled how to care for Mary, and Peter leaves to buy supplies. Their landlady Mrs. Hathaway delivers a small box – the actual "package" of heroin – which Michael tosses aside. They learn to care for Mary, including diaper changes, baths, and feedings.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Four days later, two drug dealers arrive at the apartment for the package. Peter and Michael mistakenly give them Mary, along with a can of powdered milk the dealers believe is the heroin. Peter discovers the actual package; realizing the mix-up, he runs downstairs but trips, spilling the package's contents. He gathers up the drugs and confronts the men outside, causing a scuffle. A police officer on horseback intervenes; Peter rescues Mary, but the dealers flee with the can of powdered milk. The officer detains Peter and Michael at the apartment until Sgt. Melkowitz, a narcotics officer, arrives to question them. Jack calls from Turkey, but Peter and Michael are unable to talk openly as they are being recorded. They successfully hide the drugs, learning that Jack's friend Paul Milner is a drug dealer. A suspicious Melkowitz puts them under surveillance.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Mrs. Hathaway babysits Mary while Peter and Michael go to work. Returning home, they find Mrs. Hathaway bound and gagged and the apartment ransacked by the dealers, but Mary safe; a note threatens, "Next time we'll take the baby". Peter and Michael continue to care for Mary, adjusting to 'fatherhood' and growing attached.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Peter incapacitates an intruder, who turns out to be Jack, returning early after his movie role was cut. Jack assures Peter and Michael he knew nothing about the heroin. He initially denies his connection to Mary, but Sylvia’s note convinces him he is Mary’s father. Peter and Michael pass all parenting responsibility to Jack, who quickly grows to love her.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: They receive a news clipping in the mail – Milner has been attacked by the drug dealers and hospitalized – with another threat: "Don't let this happen to you!" Peter, Michael, and Jack formulate a plan to trap the dealers, arranging a meeting. Jack, disguised as a pregnant woman, leaves the building with Mary, while Peter and Michael leave in a cab, followed by undercover officers, but manage to lose them in another cab driven by Jack. The three meet the dealers at the top floor of a construction site. Michael, hidden in the vents, records Peter’s conversation with the dealers but falls into the room, and a chase ensues. They manage to trap the dealers in an elevator as the police arrive. With the recording, they prove their innocence to Melkowitz, and the dealers are arrested.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Peter, Michael, and Jack fully embrace their role as Mary's guardians, until Sylvia arrives to take Mary with her to London. After she leaves with Mary, the three realize how desperately they miss the baby. Racing to the airport, they just miss Sylvia’s plane for London. Defeated, they return home to find Sylvia and Mary at the door. Sylvia tearfully says she doesn't want to give up acting but must if she has to raise Mary alone. They invite her and Mary to move in; she accepts, and the four live happily with the baby.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: The soundtrack included the Peter Cetera song "Daddy's Girl", which was used for the movie's big music montage sequence, the Miami Sound Machine song "Bad Boy", which opened it, and the John Parr song "The Minute I Saw You", which ended the film.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Just over an hour into the final cut of the film, there is a scene that shows Jack and his mother (played by Celeste Holm) walking through the house with Mary. As they do so, they pass a background window on the left-hand side of the screen, and a black outline that appears to resemble a rifle pointed downward can be seen behind the curtains. As they walk back past the window 40 seconds later, a human figure can be seen in that window. A persistent urban legend began circulating August 1990 (shortly before the sequel, "Three Men and a Little Lady", premiered) that this was the ghost of a boy who had been killed in the house where the film (or this scene) was filmed. The most common version of this myth was that a nine-year-old boy committed suicide with a shotgun there, explaining why it was vacant: because the grieving family left. This notion was discussed on the first episode of "TV Land: Myths and Legends" in January 2007, and was referenced in "Hollywood Babylon", a second-season episode of the TV series "Supernatural".


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: The figure is actually a cardboard cutout "standee" of Jack, wearing a tuxedo and top hat, that was left on the set. It was created as part of the storyline, in which he, an actor, appears in a dog food commercial, but this portion was cut from the final version of the film. The standee does show up later in the film, when Jack stands next to it as Sylvia comes to reclaim Mary. Snopes.com contends that the one in the first scene looks smaller than it does in the later scene because of the distance and angle of the shot, and because the curtains obscure its outstretched arms. As for the contention that a boy died in the house, all the indoor scenes were shot on a Toronto sound stage, and no kind of residential dwellings were used for interior filming.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: The critical response to "Three Men and a Baby" was generally positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 67% based on reviews from 70 critics. The site's consensus reads: "Like the French farce it's based on, "Three Men and a Baby" is too self-satisfied with scatalogical humor to qualify as a bundle of joy, but the role of makeshift daddy brings out the best in Tom Selleck". Metacritic gave the film a score of 61 based on 16 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times", despite noting several aspects he saw as flaws, praised the film, remarking: "Because of Selleck and his co-stars... the movie becomes a heartwarming entertainment". He gave it 3 (out of four) stars. Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" wrote "this story is about four babies, not just one" and "the film bubbles along in a funny if predictable way, with a lot more gags than the earlier film managed".


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: The film opened in theaters on Wednesday, November 25, 1987. It grossed $168 million in the United States and Canada and $72 million internationally for a worldwide gross of $240 million. It was notable for the Walt Disney Studios since it was the first production from the studio to gross over $100 million domestically in its initial run and its highest-grossing film at the time until surpassed in 1990 by "Pretty Woman". It was the highest-grossing film of 1987 domestically, with an estimated 42 million tickets sold in the US.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: In 2010, a third film titled "Three Men and a Bride" was in development. The sequel project entered development hell and was eventually abandoned in favor of a reboot.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: In December 2020, the as-of-yet untitled reboot was announced to be in development, with Zac Efron cast in a starring role. The film is intended to be a streaming exclusive film, for Disney+. In January 2021, Maurice "Mo" Marable was chosen to direct the reboot. By April 2022, Marable stated that the script is nearing completion. The filmmaker said that the project will pay homage to the originals, while introducing a mixed-race cast. He also intends for the stars of the original films to appear in the movie, with a cameo role at minimum.


title: Three Men and a Baby

text: The TV show "Baby Daddy", an American sitcom that premiered in 2012 on ABC Family, was inspired by the film. The series follows Ben, living with his elder brother Danny and close friend Tucker, who raise a baby left at their door. Six seasons were produced, with the final episode airing in 2017.


title: 18 Again

text: 18 Again () is a South Korean television series based on the 2007 film "17 Again" by Jason Filardi, no doubt inspired by the 1988 comedy movie of the (series') same name featuring George Burns. Starring Kim Ha-neul, Yoon Sang-hyun, and Lee Do-hyun. It aired on JTBC from September 21 to November 10, 2020, every Monday and Tuesday at 21:35 (KST). The series is available on Netflix, iQIYI and Viu with multi-language subtitles.


title: 18 Again

text: Jung Da-jung (Kim Ha-neul) and Hong Dae-young (Yoon Sang-hyun) are married and have a set of fraternal twins, Hong Si-a (Roh Jeong-eui) and Hong Si-u (Ryeoun). At first, they have a perfectly happy marriage despite having children at a very young age and having financial problems. Years later, their happy marriage starts crumbling when 37-year-old Da-jung files for divorce and their 18-year-old twins start ignoring Dae-young, except for pocket money. Furthermore, Dae-young's life turns more miserable when he loses his job, after his boss promotes his nephew who has worked in the company for only 4 years, while relocating Dae-young to Busan.


title: 18 Again

text: Wishing he could go back in time and fix his life, Dae-young's 37-year-old body miraculously morphs into the body he had when he was 18 years old (Lee Do-hyun) but retains his 37-year-old mentality. He starts living a new life under his alias "Go Woo-Young" and attends Serim High School, which is his twins' school, and also the school he and Da-jung attended 18 years ago. During Dae-young's life as the 18-year-old Go Woo Young, he learns that his daughter Si-a is working part-time in a convenience store without his permission and his son Si-u is being abused at school by basketball captain Goo Ja-sung (Hwang In-youp). Dae-young also learns about his son's interest and talent in basketball that Si-u always hides from him. Dae-young eventually realizes the true reason behind his family's crumbling bond and gets to know more about his twins. He resolves to use this chance to protect his kids by befriending them and to do his best to be more present to the family despite his appearance as an 18-year-old boy.


title: 18 Again

text: The series adaptation is directed by Ha Byung-hoon, who also helmed the similarly themed romantic fantasy drama "Confession Couple" in 2017.


title: 18 Again

text: "18 Again" was originally scheduled to premiere on September 7, 2020, but it was postponed by two weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: 18 Again

text: The drama's soundtrack is compiled in a two-part album released on 10 November 2020. CD 1 and CD 2 contain the drama's theme songs and musical score, respectively.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Sasha Pieterse-Sheaffer (; born February 17, 1996) is a South African-born American actress, singer and songwriter. She is known for her role as Alison DiLaurentis in the Freeform series "Pretty Little Liars" and its spin-off "". Upon the success of "Pretty Little Liars", Pieterse earned a supporting role as Amy Loubalu in the 2011 Disney Channel film "Geek Charming".


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: In 2013, she starred in the teen comedy film "G.B.F.". In 2017, Pieterse participated in the 25th season of "Dancing with the Stars" and finished in 10th place.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Pieterse was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on February 17, 1996. Moving to the United States in 2001, she was raised in Las Vegas, before moving to Los Angeles. She became accustomed to a career in entertainment at an early age, as her parents were a professional acrobatic dance team who performed internationally. Pieterse was homeschooled and graduated at 14.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: At four years old, Pieterse began modeling and appearing in commercials. She appeared in an advertisement for Wenner Bread Products at five years old, and later appeared on a national billboard for hair salon franchise SuperCuts and modeled for Macy's Passport fashion show. Pieterse appeared in numerous magazines, including on the covers of "BELLO"'s "Young Hollywood" issue (December 2014), "TeenProm" (2015 issue), "Seventeen" (August 2016), "Social Life" (August 2019).


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: At six years old, Pieterse got her start in television, co-starring in 2002 as Buffy on The WB's remake of the CBS sitcom "Family Affair". She guest starred in the "Stargate SG-1" episode “Grace” with Amanda Tapping as a little girl named Grace. In 2005, she appeared on an episode of "House" titled "Autopsy", portraying Andie, a young girl with terminal cancer. That same year, she made her film debut in "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D" as Marissa, the Ice Princess, and also appeared as Millie Rose for two episodes of the short-lived TNT series "Wanted", alongside her former "Family Affair" co-star, Gary Cole.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Pieterse appeared in the 2007 film "Good Luck Chuck", playing a young goth girl who places a curse on the titular character. She played the younger version of Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in the 2007 film "The Air I Breathe", along with such co-stars as Kevin Bacon, Forest Whitaker, and Emile Hirsch. She also played a leading character in the Hallmark original film "Claire", also released in 2007.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Pieterse was 13 years old in late 2009, when she was cast in the Freeform teen drama television series "Pretty Little Liars" (2010–2017) as Alison DiLaurentis, the former "queen bee" of her high school clique. She had a regular role in the series from the first four seasons, until later became a main role in the fifth season, with one of the five girls. Since its debut, the series has received mixed reviews from television critics, but remained a success for Freeform, garnering a large fandom. Pieterse reprised her role as Alison, in the spin-off series titled "" on Freeform in 2019. On "Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists", she portrayed the grown-up version of Alison who is working as a teaching assistant at Beacon Heights University.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Other roles Pieterse has had include a 2009 appearance in "Without a Trace", and a recurring role as Amanda Strazzulla, an abandoned daughter, in Heroes. In 2011, she appeared as Amy Loubalu in the Disney Channel Original Movie "Geek Charming", and also as a teenage girl in the film "". More recently, Pieterse has appeared in the film "G.B.F." and in an episode of "Hawaii Five-0" as a terrorist pupil named Dawn Hatfield. Pieterse played Japonica Fenway, a young lady involved with cocaine, in the film "Inherent Vice" (2014), based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Pynchon. In September 2017, Pieterse was announced as one of the celebrities to compete on the "Dancing with the Stars" – season 25. She was paired with professional dancer Gleb Savchenko. They were the 4th couple eliminated, on October 16, 2017, finishing in 10th place.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: On August 16, 2021, "Deadline" announced that Pieterse has been cast in Netflix's film adaptation of Annie Barrows’ New York Times bestselling book series "Ivy + Bean" alongside Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Lynch and Nia Vardalos.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Pieterse describes her music as "country with southern rock". Her debut single "This Country is Bad Ass" was released on April 12, 2013. Pieterse described the patriotism behind the song: "I just love this country so much and I would never have been able to be where I am if I wasn't in America, so we decided to come up with this [track]." Her second single, "R.P.M", was released on June 13, 2013.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Her third single, "I Can't Fix You", was released on July 12, 2013. On December 10, 2013, she released her fourth single "No", an upbeat track about "standing strong in your convictions" and saying no when an unfaithful, lying ex-boyfriend asks for a second chance.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Her cookbook "Sasha in Good Taste: Recipes for Bites, Feasts, Sips & Celebrations" was published by Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins on October 8, 2019. In the book Pieterse shares cooking and baking recipes, tips for inexpensive party planning, do it yourself projects and ideas for desserts. "San Francisco Book Review" wrote that the book is "full of good ideas".


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: Pieterse has developed an online and social media presence, including 13 million followers on Instagram as of December 2021. She endorses products such as beauty and wellness products on Instagram and has partnered with Lightlife Foods, and Pokemon Go.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: In June 2019, Pieterse and her husband worked together with Habitat for Humanity to help build houses in New Orleans.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: On December 22, 2015, Pieterse became engaged to her long-term boyfriend Hudson Sheaffer. They were married on May 27, 2018 at Castle Leslie in Glaslough, Ireland. On May 27, 2020, Pieterse announced that she and Sheaffer were expecting their first child. Their son was born in November 2020. As of 2022, the family resides in Nashville, Tennessee.


title: Sasha Pieterse

text: At the start of season 25 of "Dancing with the Stars", Pieterse revealed that she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, which causes symptoms such as irregular periods and weight gain.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The Italian Renaissance ( ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it started around the year 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields, a Proto-Renaissance, beginning around 1250, is typically accepted. The French word "renaissance" (corresponding to "rinascimento" in Italian) means 'rebirth', and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries during what Renaissance humanists labelled as the "Dark Ages". The Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari used the term "rinascita" 'rebirth' in his "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects" in 1550, but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the work of scholars such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The Renaissance began in Tuscany in Central Italy and centred in the city of Florence. The Florentine Republic, one of the several city-states of the peninsula, rose to economic and political prominence by providing credit for European monarchs and by laying down the groundwork for developments in capitalism and in banking. Renaissance culture later spread to Venice, heart of a Mediterranean empire and in control of the trade routes with the east since its participation in the crusades and following the journeys of Marco Polo between 1271 and 1295. Thus Italy renewed contact with the remains of ancient Greek culture, which provided humanist scholars with new texts. Finally the Renaissance had a significant effect on the Papal States and on Rome, largely rebuilt by humanist and Renaissance popes, such as Julius II () and Leo X (), who frequently became involved in Italian politics, in arbitrating disputes between competing colonial powers and in opposing the Protestant Reformation, which started .


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The Italian Renaissance has a reputation for its achievements in painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, music, philosophy, science, technology, and exploration. Italy became the recognized European leader in all these areas by the late 15th century, during the era of the Peace of Lodi (1454–1494) agreed between Italian states. The Italian Renaissance peaked in the mid-16th century as domestic disputes and foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil of the Italian Wars (1494–1559). However, the ideas and ideals of the Italian Renaissance spread into the rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance from the late 15th century. Italian explorers from the maritime republics served under the auspices of European monarchs, ushering in the Age of Discovery. The most famous among them include Christopher Columbus (who sailed for Spain), Giovanni da Verrazzano (for France), Amerigo Vespucci (for Portugal), and John Cabot (for England). Italian scientists such as Falloppio, Tartaglia, Galileo and Torricelli played key roles in the Scientific Revolution, and foreigners such as Copernicus and Vesalius worked in Italian universities. Historiographers have proposed various events and dates of the 17th century, such as the conclusion of the European wars of religion in 1648, as marking the end of the Renaissance.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Accounts of Renaissance literature usually begin with the three great Italian writers of the 14th century: Dante Alighieri ("Divine Comedy"), Petrarch ("Canzoniere"), and Boccaccio ("Decameron"). Famous vernacular poets of the Renaissance include the epic authors Luigi Pulci (author of "Morgante"), Matteo Maria Boiardo ("Orlando Innamorato"), Ludovico Ariosto ("Orlando Furioso"), and Torquato Tasso ("Jerusalem Delivered", 1581). 15th-century writers such as the poet Poliziano (1454–1494) and the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) made extensive translations from both Latin and Greek. In the early 16th century, Baldassare Castiglione laid out his vision of the ideal gentleman and lady in "The Book of the Courtier" (1528), while Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) cast a jaundiced eye on "la verità effettuale della cosa" 'the effectual truth of things' in "The Prince", composed, in humanistic style, chiefly of parallel ancient and modern examples of virtù. Historians of the period include Machiavelli himself, his friend and critic Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) and Giovanni Botero ("The Reason of State", 1589). The Aldine Press, founded in 1494 by the printer Aldo Manuzio, active in Venice, developed Italic type and pocket editions that one could carry in one's pocket; it became the first to publish printed editions of books in Ancient Greek. Venice also became the birthplace of the "commedia dell'arte".


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Italian Renaissance art exercised a dominant influence on subsequent European painting and sculpture for centuries afterwards, with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), Raphael (1483–1520), Donatello (–1466), Giotto (–1337), Masaccio (1401–1428), Fra Angelico (–1455), Piero della Francesca (–1492), Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448–1494), Perugino (–1523), Botticelli (–1510), and Titian (–1576). Italian Renaissance architecture had a similar Europe-wide impact, as practised by Brunelleschi (1377–1446), Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), and Bramante (1444–1514). Their works include the Florence Cathedral (built from 1296 to 1436), St. Peter's Basilica (built 1506–1626) in Rome, and the Tempio Malatestiano (reconstructed from ) in Rimini, as well as several private residences. The musical era of the Italian Renaissance featured composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (–1594), the Roman School and later the Venetian School, and the birth of opera through figures like Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) in Florence. In philosophy, thinkers such as Galileo, Machiavelli, Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) and Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) emphasized naturalism and humanism, thus rejecting dogma and scholasticism.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: By the Late Middle Ages (circa 1300 onward), Latium, the former heartland of the Roman Empire, and southern Italy were generally poorer than the North. Rome was a city of ancient ruins, and the Papal States were loosely administered, and vulnerable to external interference, particularly by France, and later Spain. The Papacy was affronted when the Avignon Papacy was created in southern France as a consequence of pressure from King Philip the Fair of France. In the south, Sicily had for some time been under foreign domination, by the Arabs and then the Normans. Sicily had prospered for 150 years during the Emirate of Sicily and later for two centuries during the Norman Kingdom and the Hohenstaufen Kingdom, but had declined by the late Middle Ages.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: In contrast, Northern and Central Italy had become far more prosperous, and it has been calculated that the region was among the richest in Europe. The Crusades had built lasting trade links to the Levant, and the Fourth Crusade had done much to destroy the Byzantine Roman Empire as a commercial rival to the Venetians and Genoese. The main trade routes from the east passed through the Byzantine Empire or the Arab lands and onward to the ports of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. Luxury goods bought in the Levant, such as spices, dyes, and silks were imported to Italy and then resold throughout Europe. Moreover, the inland city-states profited from the rich agricultural land of the Po valley. From France, Germany, and the Low Countries, through the medium of the Champagne fairs, land and river trade routes brought goods such as wool, wheat, and precious metals into the region. The extensive trade that stretched from Egypt to the Baltic generated substantial surpluses that allowed significant investment in mining and agriculture. By the 14th century, the city of Venice had become an emporium for lands as far as Cyprus; it boasted a naval fleet of over 5000 ships thanks to its arsenal, a vast complex of shipyards that was the first European facility to mass-produce commercial and military vessels. Genoa as well had become a maritime power. Thus, while northern Italy was not richer in resources than many other parts of Europe, the level of development, stimulated by trade, allowed it to prosper. In particular, Florence became one of the wealthiest of the cities of Northern Italy, mainly due to its woolen textile production, developed under the supervision of its dominant trade guild, the "Arte della Lana". Wool was imported from Northern Europe (and in the 16th century from Spain) and together with dyes from the east were used to make high quality textiles.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The Italian trade routes that covered the Mediterranean and beyond were also major conduits of culture and knowledge. The recovery of lost Greek classics brought to Italy by refugee Byzantine scholars who migrated during and following the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century were important in sparking the new linguistic studies of the Renaissance, in newly created academies in Florence and Venice. Humanist scholars searched monastic libraries for ancient manuscripts and recovered Tacitus and other Latin authors. The rediscovery of Vitruvius meant that the architectural principles of Antiquity could be observed once more, and Renaissance artists were encouraged, in the atmosphere of humanist optimism, to excel in the achievements of the Ancients, like Apelles, of whom they read.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: After the destruction of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, the Catholic Church rose to power in Europe. As the gatekeepers, their ruling power applied from the king to the common people. In the Middle Ages, the Church was considered to be conveying the will of God, and it regulated the standard of behaviour in life. A lack of literacy required most people to rely on the priest’s explanation of the Bible and laws.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: In the eleventh century, the Church persecuted many groups including pagans, Jews, and lepers in order to eliminate irregularities in society and strengthen its power. In response to the laity’s challenge to Church authority, bishops played an important role, as they gradually lost control of secular authority, and in order to regain the power of discourse, they adopted extreme control methods, such as persecuting infidels.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The Church also collected wealth from believers in the Middle Ages, such as through the sale of indulgences. It also did not pay taxes, making the Church's wealth even more than some kings.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: In the 13th century, much of Europe experienced strong economic growth. The trade routes of the Italian states linked with those of established Mediterranean ports and eventually the Hanseatic League of the Baltic and northern regions of Europe to create a network economy in Europe for the first time since the 4th century. The city-states of Italy expanded greatly during this period and grew in power to become de facto fully independent of the Holy Roman Empire; apart from the Kingdom of Naples, outside powers kept their armies out of Italy. During this period, the modern commercial infrastructure developed, with double-entry book-keeping, joint stock companies, an international banking system, a systematized foreign exchange market, insurance, and government debt. Florence became the centre of this financial industry and the gold florin became the main currency of international trade.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The new mercantile governing class, who gained their position through financial skill, adapted to their purposes the feudal aristocratic model that had dominated Europe in the Middle Ages. A feature of the High Middle Ages in Northern Italy was the rise of the urban communes which had broken from the control by bishops and local counts. In much of the region, the landed nobility was poorer than the urban patriarchs in the High Medieval money economy whose inflationary rise left land-holding aristocrats impoverished. The increase in trade during the early Renaissance enhanced these characteristics. The decline of feudalism and the rise of cities influenced each other; for example, the demand for luxury goods led to an increase in trade, which led to greater numbers of tradesmen becoming wealthy, who, in turn, demanded more luxury goods. This atmosphere of assumed luxury of the time created a need for the creation of visual symbols of wealth, an important way to show a family's affluence and taste.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: This change also gave the merchants almost complete control of the governments of the Italian city-states, again enhancing trade. One of the most important effects of this political control was security. Those that grew extremely wealthy in a feudal state ran the constant risk of running afoul of the monarchy and having their lands confiscated, as famously occurred to Jacques Cœur in France. The northern states also kept many medieval laws that severely hampered commerce, such as those against usury, and prohibitions on trading with non-Christians. In the city-states of Italy, these laws were repealed or rewritten.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The 14th century saw a series of catastrophes that caused the European economy to go into recession. The Medieval Warm Period was ending as the transition to the Little Ice Age began. This change in climate saw agricultural output decline significantly, leading to repeated famines, exacerbated by the rapid population growth of the earlier era. The Hundred Years' War between England and France disrupted trade throughout northwest Europe, most notably when, in 1345, King Edward III of England repudiated his debts, contributing to the collapse of the two largest Florentine banks, those of the Bardi and Peruzzi. In the east, war was also disrupting trade routes, as the Ottoman Empire began to expand throughout the region. Most devastating, though, was the Black Death that decimated the populations of the densely populated cities of Northern Italy and returned at intervals thereafter. Florence, for instance, which had a pre-plague population of 45,000 decreased over the next 47 years by 25–50%. Widespread disorder followed, including a revolt of Florentine textile workers, the "ciompi", in 1378.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: It was during this period of instability that authors such as Dante and Petrarch lived, and the first stirrings of Renaissance art were to be seen, notably in the realism of Giotto. Paradoxically, some of these disasters would help establish the Renaissance. The Black Death wiped out a third of Europe's population. The resulting labour shortage increased wages and the reduced population was therefore much wealthier, better fed, and, significantly, had more surplus money to spend on luxury goods. As incidences of the plague began to decline in the early 15th century, Europe's devastated population once again began to grow. The new demand for products and services also helped create a growing class of bankers, merchants, and skilled artisans. The horrors of the Black Death and the seeming inability of the Church to provide relief would contribute to a decline of church influence. Additionally, the collapse of the Bardi and Peruzzi banks would open the way for the Medici to rise to prominence in Florence. Roberto Sabatino Lopez argues that the economic collapse was a crucial cause of the Renaissance. According to this view, in a more prosperous era, businessmen would have quickly reinvested their earnings in order to make more money in a climate favourable to investment. However, in the leaner years of the 14th century, the wealthy found few promising investment opportunities for their earnings and instead chose to spend more on culture and art.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Unlike Roman texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Italy. Ancient Greek works on science, maths and philosophy had been studied since the High Middle Ages in Western Europe and in the Islamic Golden Age (normally in translation), but Greek literary, oratorical and historical works (such as Homer, the Greek dramatists, Demosthenes and Thucydides) were not studied in either the Latin or medieval Muslim worlds; in the Middle Ages these sorts of texts were only studied by Byzantine scholars. Some argue that the Timurid Renaissance in Samarkand was linked with the Ottoman Empire, whose conquests led to the migration of Greek scholars to Italy. One of the greatest achievements of Italian Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Another popular explanation for the Italian Renaissance is the thesis, first advanced by historian Hans Baron, that states that the primary impetus of the early Renaissance was the long-running series of wars between Florence and Milan. By the late 14th century, Milan had become a centralized monarchy under the control of the Visconti family. Giangaleazzo Visconti, who ruled the city from 1378 to 1402, was renowned both for his cruelty and for his abilities, and set about building an empire in Northern Italy. He launched a long series of wars, with Milan steadily conquering neighbouring states and defeating the various coalitions led by Florence that sought in vain to halt the advance. This culminated in the 1402 siege of Florence when it looked as though the city was doomed to fall, before Giangaleazzo suddenly died and his empire collapsed.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Baron's thesis suggests that during these long wars, the leading figures of Florence rallied the people by presenting the war as one between the free republic and a despotic monarchy, between the ideals of the Greek and Roman Republics and those of the Roman Empire and Medieval kingdoms. For Baron, the most important figure in crafting this ideology was Leonardo Bruni. This time of crisis in Florence was the period when the most influential figures of the early Renaissance were coming of age, such as Ghiberti, Donatello, Masolino, and Brunelleschi. Inculcated with this republican ideology they later went on to advocate republican ideas that were to have an enormous impact on the Renaissance.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Northern Italy and upper Central Italy were divided into a number of warring city-states, the most powerful being Milan, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Ferrara, Mantua, Verona and Venice. High Medieval Northern Italy was further divided by the long-running battle for supremacy between the forces of the Papacy and of the Holy Roman Empire: each city aligned itself with one faction or the other, yet was divided internally between the two warring parties, Guelfs and Ghibellines. Warfare between the states was common, invasion from outside Italy was confined to intermittent sorties of Holy Roman Emperors. Renaissance politics developed from this background. Since the 13th century, as armies became primarily composed of mercenaries, prosperous city-states could field considerable forces, despite their low populations. In the course of the 15th century, the most powerful city-states annexed their smaller neighbours. Florence took Pisa in 1406, Venice captured Padua and Verona, while the Duchy of Milan annexed a number of nearby areas including Pavia and Parma.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The first part of the Renaissance saw almost constant warfare on land and sea as the city-states vied for preeminence. On land, these wars were primarily fought by armies of mercenaries known as "condottieri", bands of soldiers drawn from around Europe, but especially Germany and Switzerland, led largely by Italian captains. The mercenaries were not willing to risk their lives unduly, and war became one largely of sieges and manoeuvring, occasioning few pitched battles. It was also in the interest of mercenaries on both sides to prolong any conflict, to continue their employment. Mercenaries were also a constant threat to their employers; if not paid, they often turned on their patron. If it became obvious that a state was entirely dependent on mercenaries, the temptation was great for the mercenaries to take over the running of it themselves—this occurred on a number of occasions. Neutrality was maintained with France, which found itself surrounded by enemies when Spain disputed Charles VIII's claim to the Kingdom of Naples. Peace with France ended when Charles VIII invaded Italy to take Naples.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: At sea, Italian city-states sent many fleets out to do battle. The main contenders were Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, but after a long conflict, the Genoese succeeded in reducing Pisa. Venice proved to be a more powerful adversary, and with the decline of Genoese power during the 15th century Venice became pre-eminent on the seas. In response to threats from the landward side, from the early 15th century Venice developed an increased interest in controlling the "terrafirma" as the Venetian Renaissance opened.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: On land, decades of fighting saw Florence, Milan, and Venice emerge as the dominant players, and these three powers finally set aside their differences and agreed to the Peace of Lodi in 1454, which saw relative calm brought to the region for the first time in centuries. This peace would hold for the next forty years, and Venice's unquestioned hegemony over the sea also led to unprecedented peace for much of the rest of the 15th century. At the beginning of the 15th century, adventurers and traders such as Niccolò Da Conti (1395–1469) travelled as far as Southeast Asia and back, bringing fresh knowledge on the state of the world, presaging further European voyages of exploration in the years to come.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Until the late 14th century, prior to the Medici, Florence's leading family were the House of Albizzi. In 1293 the Ordinances of Justice were enacted which effectively became the constitution of the republic of Florence throughout the Italian Renaissance. The city's numerous luxurious palazzi were becoming surrounded by townhouses, built by the ever prospering merchant class. In 1298, one of the leading banking families of Europe, the Bonsignoris, were bankrupted and so the city of Siena lost her status as the banking centre of Europe to Florence.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The main challengers of the Albizzi family were the Medicis, first under Giovanni de' Medici, later under his son Cosimo de' Medici. The Medici controlled the Medici bank—then Europe's largest bank—and an array of other enterprises in Florence and elsewhere. In 1433, the Albizzi managed to have Cosimo exiled. The next year, however, saw a pro-Medici Signoria elected and Cosimo returned. The Medici became the town's leading family, a position they would hold for the next three centuries. Florence organized the trade routes for commodities between England and the Netherlands, France, and Italy. By the middle of the century, the city had become the banking capital of Europe and thereby obtained vast riches. In 1439, Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos attended a council in Florence in an attempt to unify the Eastern and Western Churches. This brought books and, especially after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, an influx of scholars to the city. Ancient Greece began to be studied with renewed interest, especially the Neoplatonic school of thought, which was the subject of an academy established by the Medici.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Florence remained a republic until 1532 (see Duchy of Florence), traditionally marking the end of the High Renaissance in Florence, but the instruments of republican government were firmly under the control of the Medici and their allies, save during the intervals after 1494 and 1527. Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici rarely held official posts but were the unquestioned leaders. Cosimo was highly popular among the citizenry, mainly for bringing an era of stability and prosperity to the town. One of his most important accomplishments was negotiating the Peace of Lodi with Francesco Sforza ending the decades of war with Milan and bringing stability to much of Northern Italy. Cosimo was also an important patron of the arts, directly and indirectly, by the influential example he set.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Cosimo was succeeded by his sickly son Piero de' Medici, who died after five years in charge of the city. In 1469 the reins of power passed to Cosimo's 21-year-old grandson Lorenzo, who would become known as "Lorenzo the Magnificent." Lorenzo was the first of the family to be educated from an early age in the humanist tradition and is best known as one of the Renaissance's most important patrons of the arts. Lorenzo reformed Florence’s ruling council from 100 members to 70 , formalizing the Medici rule. The republican institutions continued, but they lost all power. Lorenzo was less successful than his illustrious forebears in business, and the Medici commercial empire was slowly eroded. Lorenzo continued the alliance with Milan, but relations with the papacy soured, and in 1478, Papal agents allied with the Pazzi family in an attempt to assassinate Lorenzo. Although the Pazzi conspiracy failed, Lorenzo's young brother, Giuliano, was killed, and the failed assassination led to a war with the Papacy and was used as justification to further centralize power in Lorenzo's hands.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Renaissance ideals first spread from Florence to the neighbouring states of Tuscany such as Siena and Lucca. The Tuscan culture soon became the model for all the states of Northern Italy, and the Tuscan dialect came to predominate throughout the region, especially in literature. In 1447 Francesco Sforza came to power in Milan and rapidly transformed that still medieval city into a major centre of art and learning that drew Leone Battista Alberti. Venice, one of the wealthiest cities due to its control of the Adriatic Sea, also became a centre for Renaissance culture, especially Venetian Renaissance architecture. Smaller courts brought Renaissance patronage to lesser cities, which developed their characteristic arts: Ferrara, Mantua under the Gonzaga, and Urbino under Federico da Montefeltro. In Naples, the Renaissance was ushered in under the patronage of Alfonso I, who conquered Naples in 1443 and encouraged artists like Francesco Laurana and Antonello da Messina and writers like the poet Jacopo Sannazaro and the humanist scholar Angelo Poliziano.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: In 1417 the Papacy returned to Rome, but that once-imperial city remained poor and largely in ruins through the first years of the Renaissance. The great transformation began under Pope Nicholas V, who became pontiff in 1447. He launched a dramatic rebuilding effort that would eventually see much of the city renewed. The humanist scholar Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini became Pope Pius II in 1458. As the papacy fell under the control of the wealthy families, such as the Medici and the Borgias, the spirit of Renaissance art and philosophy came to dominate the Vatican. Pope Sixtus IV continued Nicholas' work, most famously ordering the construction of the Sistine Chapel. The popes also became increasingly secular rulers as the Papal States were forged into a centralized power by a series of "warrior popes".


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The nature of the Renaissance also changed in the late 15th century. The Renaissance ideal was fully adopted by the ruling classes and the aristocracy. In the early Renaissance artists were seen as craftsmen with little prestige or recognition. By the later Renaissance, the top figures wielded great influence and could charge great fees. A flourishing trade in Renaissance art developed. While in the early Renaissance many of the leading artists were of lower- or middle-class origins, increasingly they became aristocrats.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: As a cultural movement, the Italian Renaissance affected only a small part of the population. Italy was the most urbanized region of Europe, but three-quarters of the people were still rural peasants. For this section of the population, life remained essentially unchanged from the Middle Ages. Classic feudalism had never been prominent in Northern Italy, and most peasants worked on private farms or as sharecroppers. Some scholars see a trend towards refeudalization in the later Renaissance as the urban elites turned themselves into landed aristocrats.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The situation differed in the cities. These were dominated by a commercial elite; as exclusive as the aristocracy of any Medieval kingdom. This group became the main patrons of and audience for Renaissance culture. Below them, there was a large class of artisans and guild members who lived comfortable lives and had significant power in the republican governments. This was in sharp contrast to the rest of Europe where artisans were firmly in the lower class. Literate and educated, this group did participate in the Renaissance culture. The largest section of the urban population was the urban poor of semi-skilled workers and the unemployed. Like the peasants, the Renaissance had little effect on them. Historians debate how easy it was to move between these groups during the Italian Renaissance. Examples of individuals who rose from humble beginnings can be instanced, but Burke notes two major studies in this area that have found that the data do not clearly demonstrate an increase in social mobility. Most historians feel that early in the Renaissance social mobility was quite high, but that it faded over the course of the 15th century. Inequality in society was very high. An upper-class figure would control hundreds of times more income than a servant or labourer. Some historians see this unequal distribution of wealth as important to the Renaissance, as art patronage relies on the very wealthy.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The Renaissance was not a period of great social or economic change, only of cultural and ideological development. It only touched a small fraction of the population, and in modern times this has led many historians, such as any that follow historical materialism, to reduce the importance of the Renaissance in human history. These historians tend to think in terms of "Early Modern Europe" instead. Roger Osborne argues that "The Renaissance is a difficult concept for historians because the history of Europe quite suddenly turns into a history of Italian painting, sculpture and architecture."


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The end of the Italian Renaissance is as imprecisely marked as its starting point. For many, the rise to power in Florence of the austere monk Girolamo Savonarola in 1494–1498 marks the end of the city's flourishing; for others, the triumphant return of the Medici family to power in 1512 marks the beginning of the late phase in the Renaissance arts called Mannerism. Other accounts trace the end of the Italian Renaissance to the French invasions of the early 16th century and the subsequent conflict between France and Spanish rulers for control of Italian territory. Savonarola rode to power on a widespread backlash over the secularism and indulgence of the Renaissance. His brief rule saw many works of art destroyed in the "Bonfire of the Vanities" in the centre of Florence. With the Medici returned to power, now as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the counter movement in the church continued. In 1542 the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition was formed and a few years later the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" banned a wide array of Renaissance works of literature, which marks the end of the illuminated manuscript together with Giulio Clovio, who is considered the greatest illuminator of the Italian High Renaissance, and arguably the last very notable artist in the long tradition of the illuminated manuscript, before some modern revivals.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Under the suppression of the Catholic Church and the ravages of war, humanism became "akin to heresy".


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Equally important was the end of stability with a series of foreign invasions of Italy known as the Italian Wars that would continue for several decades. These began with the 1494 invasion by France that wreaked widespread devastation on Northern Italy and ended the independence of many of the city-states. Most damaging was the 6 May 1527, Spanish and German troops' sacking Rome that for two decades all but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art and architecture.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: While the Italian Renaissance was fading, the Northern Renaissance adopted many of its ideals and transformed its styles. A number of Italy's greatest artists chose to emigrate. The most notable example was Leonardo da Vinci, who left for France in 1516, but teams of lesser artists invited to transform the Château de Fontainebleau created the School of Fontainebleau that infused the style of the Italian Renaissance in France. From Fontainebleau, the new styles, transformed by Mannerism, brought the Renaissance to the Low Countries and thence throughout Northern Europe.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: This spread north was also representative of a larger trend. No longer was the Mediterranean Europe's most important trade route. In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India, and from that date the primary route of goods from the Orient was through the Atlantic ports of Lisbon, Seville, Nantes, Bristol, and London.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The thirteenth-century Italian literary revolution helped set the stage for the Renaissance. Prior to the Renaissance, the Italian language was not the literary language in Italy. It was only in the 13th century that Italian authors began writing in their native language rather than Latin, French, or Provençal. The 1250s saw a major change in Italian poetry as the "Dolce Stil Novo" ("Sweet New Style", which emphasized Platonic rather than courtly love) came into its own, pioneered by poets like Guittone d'Arezzo and Guido Guinizelli. Especially in poetry, major changes in Italian literature had been taking place decades before the Renaissance truly began.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: With the printing of books initiated in Venice by Aldus Manutius, an increasing number of works began to be published in the Italian language in addition to the flood of Latin and Greek texts that constituted the mainstream of the Italian Renaissance. The source for these works expanded beyond works of theology and towards the pre-Christian eras of Imperial Rome and Ancient Greece. This is not to say that no religious works were published in this period: Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy" reflects a distinctly medieval world view. Christianity remained a major influence for artists and authors, with the classics coming into their own as a second primary influence.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: In the early Italian Renaissance, much of the focus was on translating and studying classic works from Latin and Greek. Renaissance authors were not content to rest on the laurels of ancient authors, however. Many authors attempted to integrate the methods and styles of the ancient Greeks into their own works. Among the most emulated Romans are Cicero, Horace, Sallust, and Virgil. Among the Greeks, Aristotle, Homer, and Plato were now being read in the original for the first time since the 4th century, though Greek compositions were few.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The literature and poetry of the Renaissance was largely influenced by the developing science and philosophy. The humanist Francesco Petrarch, a key figure in the renewed sense of scholarship, was also an accomplished poet, publishing several important works of poetry. He wrote poetry in Latin, notably the Punic War epic "Africa", but is today remembered for his works in the Italian vernacular, especially the "Canzoniere", a collection of love sonnets dedicated to his unrequited love Laura. He was the foremost writer of Petrarchan sonnets, and translations of his work into English by Thomas Wyatt established the sonnet form in that country, where it was employed by William Shakespeare and countless other poets.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Petrarch's disciple, Giovanni Boccaccio, became a major author in his own right. His major work was the "Decameron", a collection of 100 stories told by ten storytellers who have fled to the outskirts of Florence to escape the black plague over ten nights. The "Decameron" in particular and Boccaccio's work, in general, were a major source of inspiration and plots for many English authors in the Renaissance, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Aside from Christianity, classical antiquity, and scholarship, a fourth influence on Renaissance literature was politics. The political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli's most famous works are "Discourses on Livy", "Florentine Histories" and finally "The Prince", which has become so well known in modern societies that the word "Machiavellian" has come to refer to the cunning and ruthless actions advocated by the book. Along with many other Renaissance works, "The Prince" remains a relevant and influential work of literature today.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: There were many Italian Renaissance humanists who also praised and affirmed the beauty of the body in poetry and literature. In Baldassare Rasinus's panegyric for Francesco Sforza, Rasinus considered that beautiful people usually have virtue. In northern Italy, humanists had discussions about the connection between physical beauty and inner virtues. In Renaissance Italy, virtue and beauty were often linked together to praise men.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Petrarch encouraged the study of the Latin classics and carried his copy of Homer about, at a loss to find someone to teach him to read Greek. An essential step in the classic humanist education being propounded by scholars like Pico della Mirandola was the hunting down of lost or forgotten manuscripts that were known only by reputation. These endeavours were greatly aided by the wealth of Italian patricians, merchant-princes and despots, who would spend substantial sums building libraries. Discovering the past had become fashionable and it was a passionate affair pervading the upper reaches of society. "I go", said Cyriac of Ancona, "I go to awake the dead". As the Greek works were acquired, manuscripts found, libraries and museums formed, the age of the printing press was dawning. The works of Antiquity were translated from Greek and Latin into the contemporary modern languages throughout Europe, finding a receptive middle-class audience, which might be, like Shakespeare, "with little Latin and less Greek".


title: Italian Renaissance

text: While concern for philosophy, art, and literature all increased greatly in the Renaissance, the period is usually seen as one of scientific backwardness. The reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation that was not governed by laws or mathematics. At the same time, philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: During the Renaissance, great advances occurred in geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, manufacturing, anatomy and engineering. The collection of ancient scientific texts began in earnest at the start of the 15th century and continued up to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. Although humanists often favored human-centered subjects like politics and history over study of natural philosophy or applied mathematics, many others went beyond these interests and had a positive influence on mathematics and science by rediscovering lost or obscure texts and by emphasizing the study of original languages and the correct reading of texts.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Italian universities such as Padua, Bologna and Pisa were scientific centres of renown and with many northern European students, the science of the Renaissance spread to Northern Europe and flourished there as well. Figures such as Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo made contributions to scientific thought and experimentation, paving the way for the scientific revolution that later flourished in Northern Europe. Bodies were also stolen from gallows and examined by many like Andreas Vesalius, a professor of anatomy. This allowed him to create more accurate skeleton models by making more than 200 corrections to the works of Galen who dissected animals.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: Major developments in mathematics include the spread of algebra throughout Europe, especially Italy. Luca Pacioli published a book on mathematics at the end of the fifteenth century, in which he first published positive and negative signs. Basic mathematical symbols were introduced by Simon Stevin in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Symbolic algebra was established by the French mathematician François Viete in the 16th century. He published "Introduction to Analytical Methods" in 1591, systematically sorting out algebra, and for the first time consciously using letters to represent unknown and known numbers. In his other book "On the Recognition and Correction of Equations," Viete improved the solution of the third degree and fourth-degree equations, and also established the relationship between the roots and coefficients of quadratic and cubic equations, which is called “Viete's formulas” now. Trigonometry also achieved greater development during the Renaissance. The German mathematician Regiomontanus’s "On Triangles of All Kinds" was Europe's first trigonometric work independent of astronomy. The book systematically elaborated plane triangles and spherical triangles, as well as a very precise table of trigonometric functions.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: In painting, the Late Medieval painter Giotto di Bondone, or Giotto, helped shape the artistic concepts that later defined much of the Renaissance art. The key ideas that he explored – classicism, the illusion of three-dimensional space and a realistic emotional context – inspired other artists such as Masaccio, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. He was not the only Medieval artist to develop these ideas, however; the artists Pietro Cavallini and Cimabue both influenced Giotto's use of statuesque figures and expressive storylines.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: The frescos of Florentine artist Masaccio are generally considered to be among the earliest examples of Italian Renaissance art. Masaccio incorporated the ideas of Giotto, Donatello and Brunelleschi into his paintings, creating mathematically precise scenes that give the impression of three-dimensional space. The "Holy Trinity" fresco in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella, for example, looks as if it is receding at a dramatic angle into the dark background, while single-source lighting and foreshortening appear to push the figure of Christ into the viewer's space.


title: Italian Renaissance

text: While mathematical precision and classical idealism fascinated painters in Rome and Florence, many Northern artists in the regions of Venice, Milan and Parma preferred highly illusionistic scenes of the natural world. The period also saw the first secular (non-religious) themes. There has been much debate as to the degree of secularism in the Renaissance, which had been emphasized by early 20th-century writers like Jacob Burckhardt based on, among other things, the presence of a relatively small number of mythological paintings. Those of Botticelli, notably "The Birth of Venus" and "Primavera", are now among the best known, although he was deeply religious (becoming a follower of Savonarola) and the great majority of his output was of traditional religious paintings or portraits.