The term "Renaissance" - its legitimacy

Previous views on Renaissance#

Pre-20th century, initiated by the Germans, “the great revival of arts and letters under the influence of classical models”; the humanists deplored the overthrow of Greek and Roman culture by ecclesiastical bigotry or Gothic barbarism.
20th-century, reaction against the glorification of the Renaissance which based on nationalistic or religious prejudice deplored the intrusion of Mediteranean DIesseitigkeit upon “Nordic” or Christian transcendentalism (which occasionally extended its hostility to classical antiquity itself).
Later, it was acknowledged that the Renaissance was linked to the Middle Ages by a thousand ties; that the heritage of classical antiquity, even though the threads of tradition had become very thin at times, had never been lost beyond recuperation.
A growing tendency to contest not only the uniqueness of the Renaissance but its very existence ("the classical humanism of Renaissance was fundamentally medieval and fundamentally Christian"). [W. Jaeger, Humanism and Theology; the contrast between philosophia Christia, theologia Planotica and sacra doctrina]

I actually sense more than politics in the variance of the attitude towards Renaissance. See, for example, Eric Gill's attitude; there's nothing explicitly political (though Arts and Crafts movement is right-wing in terms of its locality and regionalism), only a demand for truth in terms of integrity in the symbolic content.

Panofsky's views#

(Supposedly,) it was in the middle of the 15the century that the terms such as media aetas or mediium aevum came into being [G. S. Gordon, Medium Aevum and the Middle Ages]. Further more in addition to defining and naming what it believed to have left behind, this present conferred a style and title not only upon what it claimed to have achieved (renaissance in Pierre Belon's French, rinascita in Vasari's Italian, Wiedererwachsung in Duerer's German) but also upon waht it claimed to have restored: the world of the Antique, not designated (supposedly) by a colelctive noun before, came to be known as antiquitas, sancta vetustas, sacra vetustas, sacrasancta vetustas.

The basic idea of a “revival under the influence of classical models” was conceived and formualted by Petrarch. Petrarch looked upon culture in general and classical culture in particular through the eyes of the patriot, the scholar and the poet. Even the ruins of Rome failed to evoke in him what we would call an “aesthetic” response. He conceived of the newe era for which he hoped largely in terms of a political regeneration, and above all, of a purification of Latin diction and grammar, a revival of Greek and a return from medieval compilers, commentators and originators to the old classical texts.

The inclusion of painting in the theory of revival resulted in a kind of bifurcation or dichotomy within what may be called the Petrarchian system of history: between Petrarch's principal theme “back to the classics” - in connection with the revival of sculpture and architecture - and “back to nature” of Boccaccio and Villani, which is in connection with the revival of painting.

Writings with the characteristics of Geschichtskonstruktion were much more prevalent in architecture than in painting and sculpture. Perhaps due to the fact that both the novelty and the classical implications of the new style were much more conspicuous in architecture than in the representational arts, and that because the physical presence of the Roman buildings, reduced to ruins, demonstrated so vividly the idea of decay and revival.