ABSTRACT
The great burst of artistic and intellectual activity, the Renaissance associate with Italy. They supported scholars, gave abundant commissions to the artists they assembled about them from all Europe and were tremendously influential in the Renaissance. Commercial relations with Constantinople brought them in constant contact with Byzantine art and so, if indirectly, with at least a little Greek art their language reminded them of the ancient Latin culture. But whereas the Gothic church was so completely organic, the Renaissance fagade frequently concealed the true structure of the building behind it. Renaissance painters were even more numerous than the architects and we can give them only the politest of bows. In 1498 Sebastian Cabot, in the service of Henry VII of England, rediscovered Newfoundland and coasted along the northeast shore of America searching for a sea route to the Far East outside the sphere of Spain's claims.
