Renaissance, was the period in European civilization immediately after the Middle Ages and was conventionally characterized by an increase in interest in scholarship and classical values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the replacement of the Copernican by the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the sailor's compass and gunpowder. However, for the scholars and thinkers of the day, it was primarily a period of renewal of classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.
The Renaissance created its own invented version of humanism, derived from the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, like that of Protagoras, who said that " man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became evident in art, architecture, politics, science, and literature. The earliest examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable metal accelerated the diffusion of ideas from the 15th century onwards, the changes of the Renaissance were not experienced uniformly throughout Europe.
As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed the innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the resurgence in the 14th century of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries attributed to Petrarch; The development of linear perspective and other techniques of representation of a more natural reality in painting and a gradual but generalized educational reform. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of customs and conventions of diplomacy, and in science to a greater reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits as well as social upheavaland politics, he is perhaps best known for his artistic advances and the contributions of such polemics as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man."
