<P> Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired antiquity and kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past . Nicola Pisano (c. 1220--c. 1278) imitated classical forms by portraying scenes from the Bible . His Annunciation, from the Baptistry at Pisa, demonstrates that classical models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary movement </P> <P> The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of more widely distributed ideas . In the first period of the Italian Renaissance, humanists favoured the study of humanities over natural philosophy or applied mathematics, and their reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe . Writing around 1450, Nicholas Cusanus anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus, but in a philosophical fashion . </P> <P> Science and art were intermingled in the early Renaissance, with polymath artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature . Da Vinci set up controlled experiments in water flow, medical dissection, and systematic study of movement and aerodynamics, and he devised principles of research method that led Fritjof Capra to classify him as the "father of modern science". Other examples of Da Vinci's contribution during this period include machines designed to saw marbles and lift monoliths and new discoveries in acoustics, botany, geology, anatomy and mechanics . </P> <P> A suitable environment had developed to question scientific doctrine . The discovery in 1492 of the New World by Christopher Columbus challenged the classical worldview . The works of Ptolemy (in geography) and Galen (in medicine) were found to not always match everyday observations . As the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation clashed, the Northern Renaissance showed a decisive shift in focus from Aristotelean natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological sciences (botany, anatomy, and medicine). The willingness to question previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major scientific advancements . </P>

One major characteristics of the renaissance was that the