Ophelia (by the pond) John William Waterhouse
As Hamlet said to Ophelia, "God has given you one face, and you make yourself another." The battle between these two halves of identity...Who we are and who we pretend to be, is unwinnable. "Just as there are two sides to every story, there are two sides to every person. One that we reveal to the world and another we keep hidden inside. A duality governed by the balance of light and darkness, within each of us is the capacity for both good and evil. But those who are able to blur the moral dividing line hold the true power.” ― Emily Thorne
Renaissance Humanism developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a result of intellectual reform by scholars, writers, and civic leaders, known as humanists. During this period when the emphasis was on scientific, practical, theologian, law, and scholastic studies, Humanism began to surface, which provided an emphasis on grammar, history, poetry and philosophy, or what is referred today as the Humanities.
The early Humanists - Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati and Poggio Bracciolini, and later, to a degree, the Renaissance Neo-Platonists, such as Marsilio Ficino, began to reconcile Christianity with Plato's work, as well as the work of Dante and Machiavelli, which would express the individual's intellect and personal expression.
Even while Humanists continued practicing their Faith during the sixteenth century, the Reformation began to challenge previously held Catholic beliefs and if Renaissance Humanism were to evolve and expand, it would need to be free of anti-Christian or heretical views.