renaissance

Started reading "The Renaissance Bazaar" today at BookPeople. An essay on the silk road to Michelangelo is a contemporary thought on the era of trade of art, ideas and commodities that quintessentially sparked the modern European civilization in 1400-1600. The Renaissance has several depictions, meaning and ideas-this one is a bit dissident. Jerry Brotton labels it as a decisive period of meeting of East & West that brought in cultural and political transformation in Europe - scholars, artists and merchants inspired and emulated the Eastern opulence and other fields of progression. Countries typically traded were Egypt, Portugal, China and Turkey. A period which brought back the lost Graeco-Roman intellectual traditions. He exposes the myth of the western cultural superiority. The iconic images in this era were Hans Holbein, V D Gama, Erasmus and Columbus.