The break was not so marked, however, because for several years Gothic trends and Renaissance trends coexisted.
The term Renaissance was first used in 1855 by Jules Michelet, and thanks mainly to Jacob Burckhardt’s best-known work, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy of 1860, it became established to denote that period of “rupture” with the Gothic tradition that arose in Italy, and particularly in Florence, in the early fifteenth century. The break was not so marked, however, because for several years Gothic trends and Renaissance trends coexisted. Renaissance civilization nowadays is seen more as a continuation and evolution (albeit sharp and animated by different principles and models) of medieval civilization than as an irremediable fracture point.