Origins and causes of the Italian Renaissance

The Renaissance is generally dated from around 1350 to 1600, with its original epicenter in the city-states of Italy. The word "Rinascita" (rebirth) itself was coined only well after the fact, by the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari in 1550, in his "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects," to describe what he saw as a renewal of the arts following the medieval centuries. Three hundred years later, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt gave the idea its modern shape in "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (1860), framing the period as nothing less than the birth of modern individualism and secular self-consciousness.