Italian humanism and the Italian Renaissance together span about two centuries, roughly 1350-1550.

The end came when (a) invasions by the French, the Spanish, and the Holy Roman Empire gradually sapped the strength of the Italian city-states; (b) Italy lost its monopoly on trade routes and therefore its great source of wealth; (c) the Catholic Counter-Reformation, with its Inquisition and Index of Prohibited Books, stifled creativity. At the beginning we find, in the 14th century, an Italian humanist movement that eventually triggered what we may call the Renaissance proper. The "Late" or "High" Renaissance covers the last 60 years or so of this period, beginning around 1490 (near the turn of the century and around the time that Columbus sailed for America), by which time Renaissance currents were flowing into Northern Europe. The three superstar artists of the High Renaissance were Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Raphael. The Northern Renaissance can safely be extended through the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, who died in 1603. In other words, what we call Elizabethan England is the time of the English Renaissance.