Renaissance Heritage

The Renaissance is the cultural and artistic movement that dominated Italy during the 15th century and the rest of Europe during part of the 16th century. Philosophers, writers and artists were inspired by the classical world of Greece and Rome and they revived the spirit of the classical period. During the Renaissance everything turns around the human being, the confidence in the happiness through the thought, the knowledge and the art. The ideal person of the Renaissance is that versatile and universal man who knows and dominates all the branches of the knowledge. His maximum representation is found in the Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

After the great social and political convulsions and the economic and demographic changes of the 15th century, the Catalonia of the following century entered already in the phase of convalescence and even of slow economic and demographic recovery which allowed also a reflation of the constructive and artistic activities. However, others political factors had a less positive incidence on the structure and the nature of artistic demand. In this sense, it is necessary to take into account that the absence of the monarch and the court, with precendents in the 15th century, became really usual after the marriage of Ferran II and Isabel of Castella and finally irreversible with Carles V and Felip II, despite of the sporadic visits. As a consequence of these circumstances, the absentisme and the castilianization of the high Catalan nobility were also produced.

This context brought the slow and problematic dissemination of the Renaissance novelties in Catalonia, within a period that we can name ‘time of the Renaissance’ only in a conventional way because it is a Gothic period yet. In spite of this, there are many Renaissance works which are still kept in several cities of the Costa Daurada. Some of these constructions can be found in Tortosa and Torredembarra, with the Royal Schools of Sant Lluís and Sant Doménech and the Castle of the Icard respectively.