Internet Field Trip: Renaissance Riches on the Web

Michelangelo's "David," carved between 1501 and 1504.

March 6 is the birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, the masterful Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and Renaissance figure born in 1475. More than five centuries later, your students can marvel on the Web at the Renaissance legacy of Michelangelo and others — from scientific discoveries made in the starry heavens to the awe-inspiring ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of Rome. Michelangelo's life provides an excellent jump-off point to discuss Italy as the seat of the Renaissance. To understand the importance of art and architecture there, your class can view Michelangelo's work as chief architect of St. Peter's Church or see the breathtaking 16th century Italian frescos of artist Raphael Sanzio.

The rebirth seen in the Renaissance was not only in art but in many fields, which makes it great for cross-curricular study. You can look at the connections of art and science in the Renaissance evident in the work of Galileo and see how the construction of his first telescope and other experiments played key roles in the emerging scientific revolution. To look at how revolutions in science and math evolve, students need to trace the roots of what came before. They can learn how explorations among the ancient Greeks and in the Islamic world set the stage for modern heirs to make discoveries in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The faster spread of knowledge in the Renaissance may never have been possible without Gutenberg's invention of printing from movable type, itself followed by an interest in the design of new typefaces. The painstaking hand-copying of books in the Middle Ages gave way to the printing press and a flourishing of literature, something your students can still appreciate by acting a scene from a play by William Shakespeare.

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