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Humanism: Quick Facts

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Photos

Marble bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero, shown with short hair and draped clothing, displayed against a black background.
Marble bust of Aristotle with a beard and draped robe, showing detailed facial features and wavy hair, set against a dark background.
Guarino Veronese
Brunetto Latini and Dante
Dante
Engraving of Petrarch wearing a laurel wreath and a robe, holding a closed book in his left hand.
Giovanni Boccaccio
Leon Battista Alberti
Laurentian Library
Painted terracotta bust of Lorenzo de' Medici, attributed to 15th or 16th-century Florentine artists, showing a stern man in a red cap and draped garment.
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Key People

John Calvin
John Calvin
French theologian
Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, shown in dark robes and cap, writing with a quill at a desk, after Quinten Massijs, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Erasmus
Dutch humanist
François Rabelais
François Rabelais
French author
Portrait of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger, showing More in dark robes and a black hat, wearing a gold chain of office, seated against a green and yellow draped background.
Thomas More
English humanist and statesman
Engraving of Petrarch wearing a laurel wreath and a robe, holding a closed book in his left hand.
Petrarch
Italian poet
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Italian poet and scholar
Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti
Italian architect and author
Masaccio: Holy Trinity
Masaccio
Italian painter
Philipp Melanchthon
Philipp Melanchthon
German theologian
Bosio, Jean-Baptiste-François: Portrait of Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet
Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet
French philosopher and humanist
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Lorenzo Valla
Italian humanist
Guicciardini, Francesco
Francesco Guicciardini
Italian historian and statesman
Montúfar, Antonio: Saint Francis of Assisi Appearing Before Pope Nicholas V, with Donors
Nicholas V
pope
Pius II
Pius II
pope
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Poliziano
Italian poet and humanist
Raphael: portrait of Baldassare Castiglione
Baldassare Castiglione
Italian author
Michel de L'Hospital, detail of a portrait by an unknown French artist, 1566; in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
Michel de L’Hospital
French statesman and lawyer
Poggio Bracciolini, Gian Francesco
Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini
Italian scholar
John Oecolampadius
Johann Oecolampadius
German humanist
John Caius
John Caius
British physician