‘The Other Renaissance’ Review: Northern Lights

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That the Renaissance took place north as well as south of the Alps is not news, but in his enlightening and fascinating study, "The Other Renaissance," Paul Strathern demonstrates the weight and significance—and the coherence—of the revolutions in art, culture and science in northern Europe between, as he has it, the beginning of the 15th and the middle of the 17th centuries. Indeed, he argues that "three of the most significant events of the entire Renaissance era [took] place north of the Alps." These were Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, the Lutheran reformation of the Catholic Church, and Copernicus's overturning of the belief that the Earth stands at the center of the universe.

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‘The Other Renaissance’ Review: Northern Lights