The impact of the Renaissance on Europe Jacob Burckhardt best describes the renaissance as the prototype of the modern world, for it was the period between the fourteenth and fifteenth century in Italy, when the base of modern civilisation was formed. It was mainly through the revival of ancient learning that new scientific values first began to overthrow traditional religious beliefs. People started to accept a new rational and objective approach to reality and most important of all to rediscover the importance of the individual. The result in Burckhardt words, was the release of the’ full whole nature of man’. However