The spread of the Renaissance outside of Italy The invention of the printing press and its impact The life of William Shakespeare
The spread of the Renaissance
The Renaissance spread from Italy into the rest of Europe. France, England, Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe were eager to follow the example set by Italy and they embraced the ideas of the Renaissance. This was helped by:
• artists visiting Italy and learning directly from Italian masters • outside trade with Italy, which spread the ideas around Europe • northern European rulers and merchants becoming patrons to artists in their own countries
• the invention of the movable type printing press – the single most important cause of the spread of the Renaissance.
The printing press
Before the 1400s, all books in Europe had to be copied by hand. Because of this, very few books were in circulation, they were very precious, and very few people learned to read and write.
Johannes Gutenberg (1398–1468) was a German goldsmith. In 1450, he is believed to have invented the movable type printing press. He placed individual metal letters into a frame to form words, coated them with ink and pressed the frame onto paper. The process could be repeated as many times as copies of the page were needed. He then moved the letters around in the frame to make the next page, and so on. The fi rst book he printed was the Gutenberg Bible.
