A rebirth of ideas
The RENAISSANCE was a REBIRTH of ART, learning and discovery that began in ITALY, and this word search gathers it. You'll be finding the city of FLORENCE, the powerful MEDICI family who acted as a PATRON to artists, the movement of HUMANISM that put people at the centre of learning, and a return to the CLASSICAL ideas of ancient Greece and Rome.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection from the list, so the grid changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a Hard-mode masterpiece once the diagonals and backwards words appear.
Artists, workshops and inventions
The Renaissance produced some of history's greatest minds, and the words are here. There's the PAINTER at his CANVAS or painting a wall FRESCO, the SCULPTURE carved from MARBLE, and the soaring DOME above a church. Giants like LEONARDO, MICHELANGELO and RAPHAEL worked in the busy WORKSHOP, while a poet penned a SONNET. The new PRINTING press spread every INVENTION and idea, and people spoke of true GENIUS for the first time in centuries.
The age that reinvented genius
The word RENAISSANCE means 'rebirth', and the rebirth was of the CLASSICAL learning of ancient Greece and Rome, rediscovered and pushed far further. It flowered first in FLORENCE, ITALY, largely because hugely rich banking families like the MEDICI acted as a PATRON — paying artists to create work that showed off their city and their wealth. That patronage is why one small region produced LEONARDO da Vinci, MICHELANGELO and RAPHAEL within a single lifetime.
These artists were astonishing all-rounders. LEONARDO painted the Mona Lisa yet also filled notebooks with designs for flying machines and studies of the human body; MICHELANGELO carved the marble 'David' and spent four years on his back painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. New techniques — realistic perspective, oil on CANVAS, the giant engineered DOME — changed art forever, while Gutenberg's PRINTING press spread every new idea across Europe faster than ever before. It's the moment art and science truly met, which is exactly why the Renaissance bridges a history and an art topic so well.
Great for a history or art topic
It pairs perfectly with a topic on the Renaissance, its great artists and the printing press — Easy mode keeps the grid small with no diagonals or reverse words. Play online, print a PDF pack, or use our Make Your Own tool to build a grid from your own Renaissance words.