The term renaissance means "rebirth". The European Renaissance was a period in history of renewed interest in the arts. The Renaissance began in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this Renaissance Europe had an increase in politics, urban commercial economy, education, art, and music. People used to believe that the years before the Renaissance were dark and dormant. That is untrue, modern scholars have shattered that theory with newfound discoveries. In years before, monks were able to preserve the Latin language and the works of Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and Seneca with the help of the scriptoria (writing rooms).
New forms of painting, art, and sculpture arose during the Renaissance. People did not consider artists as just artisans anymore, but they considered them as independent personalities and compared them with poets and writers. Many artists started to use mathematics with their art in order to make their measurement and the shape of objects precise. A few people who tried this included the architect Flippo Brunelleschi, and the painter Masaccio. These two painters also used linear perspective, which was invented in Florence, Italy and created a break in medieval tradition. With linear perspective the artisans were able to draw three-dimensional objects on a flat surface.
After the translations of the many ancient works of Hippocrates and Galen in the 15th and 16th centuries, progress was made in medicine and anatomy. The solution of cubic equations and the innovative astronomy of Nicolaus Coperius, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kelper were advances made beyond the ancients. Galileo had taken a big step when he combined mathematical models to the subject matter of physics by the end of the 16th century. With knowledge from exploration beyond Europe and from the first translations of the ancient works of Strabo and Ptolemy, geography was transformed.
Printing helped increase the quantity of books, help cut down on errors, and gave scholars identical books to learn and work with.