What does "Renaissance man" really mean?

The phrase gets used for anyone who can cook, play the guitar and fix a bicycle. That is generous, and not entirely wrong, but the original idea was grander and more specific, and it has deep Italian roots.

The uomo universale

The Italian term is uomo universale, in Latin homo universalis: the universal man. Interestingly, the English phrase "Renaissance man" is much more recent; it was first recorded in written English in the early twentieth century, according to Wikipedia's article on polymaths. The same article makes an important distinction: calling someone a Renaissance man today implies not just wide interests, but genuine proficiency, even expertise, in at least some of them.

So the ideal is not dabbling. It is depth in several places at once.

Two Italian models

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) is the textbook example. Born in Genoa, he was an architect, writer, artist, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, mathematician and cryptographer, per his Wikipedia biography. His treatise De pictura (1435) contains the first scientific study of perspective; his book on architecture, De re aedificatoria, became hugely influential; and you can still stand in front of his work, from the upper façade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence to Sant'Andrea in Mantua. The historian Jacob Burckhardt portrayed him as a truly universal genius.

Leonardo da Vinci is the other name everyone reaches for, and the polymath article describes him as the archetype of the Renaissance man, defined by restless curiosity and inventive imagination. His notebooks are the best place to see that mind at work; we look at them in what Leonardo wrote in his notebooks.

The courtier's version

The ideal also had a social side. A cultivated gentleman of the period was expected to speak several languages, play an instrument and write poetry. The classic guide is Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier (Il Cortegiano), published in Venice in 1528, as Wikipedia records. Framed as conversations over four evenings at the court of Urbino in 1507, it debates what makes an ideal courtier, and gave the world the word sprezzatura: a graceful ease that hides the effort behind one's skills. We explore that idea on what sprezzatura means.

Castiglione's book was read all over Europe and translated into English in 1561, which helped spread the Italian model of the accomplished, many-sided person far beyond Italy.

Does it still make sense?

Yes, with a few adjustments.

• Nobody knows everything now. Alberti could work at the edges of several fields in a lifetime. Today each of those fields is vast. The modern version is not mastering everything, but being properly good at a few unrelated things.
• It is not only for men. The phrase is a period piece; the ideal is for everyone.
• Generalists have a case. David Epstein's Range argues that people who sample widely and specialise later often do well in complex, unpredictable fields; see what Range argues.
• It is a direction, not a grade. The useful part of the ideal is the habit: staying curious, learning something new as an adult, letting one interest feed another.

The easiest way to start is to take up something unrelated to your work and let yourself be bad at it for a while. Our mindset page on being a beginner as an adult helps with that part.