Antiques.(renaissance arts)

 
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. 
Immanuel Kant, "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher 
Absicht" (Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitian 
Purpose), 1784 

The Renaissance, which emerged from the upheavals of the fourteenth century in Europe, has been described as the transition from the age of faith to the age of reason. It grew out of an age of conflict and uncertainty. Skepticism of what had gone before engendered a revolt against authority, and religion began to lose ground to reason as a model for human inquiry.

By the second half of the seventeenth century a sea change had occurred in Europe and the Renaissance had ushered in the modern world. Among the most significant factors in this transformation was the relocation of large numbers of people, estimated at about one million, to Asia and across the Atlantic Ocean, all made possible by the invention of navigational instruments. Mapmakers could now use tools and instruments to accurately record geographical features that often previously had been delineated on the basis of fantastical descriptions and imagination.

In the realm of ideas, there was a definite break with the past. The desire to learn the secrets of nature and to banish fear of the unknown was in conflict with the cosmic interpretation that had held sway since the thirteenth century. The age of experiment took hold. In political thought, the concepts of the monarch as the savior of society and the divine right of kings (famously summed up by Louis XIV as "L'Etat, c'est moi") were challenged. One of the most important contributions to political theory, the Leviathan (1651) by Thomas ...