Humanism, which reinstates Antiquity to the seat of honour, spreads during the middle of the 15th century in the Italian courts in Florence and surrounding the Medici family. This intellectual movement, which draws inspiration from literature, philosophy, and the history of Greece and Rome, exerts a significant influence on sculpture and architecture, imparting a new canon of proportion. After Italy, France is equally influenced by Humanism, illustrated through the poets of the Pléiade, such as Ronsard, or philosophers like Montaigne. The majority of Renaissance painters, from Mantegna in Padua, Botticelli in Florence, or Holbein in Germany, were in contact with these learned men and writers who frequented humanist circles.
