1000 word essay due tonight 11:00pm eastern time

Units/Unit 2/Art of the Renaissance.html

2: Intellectual Change from the 15th to 17th Century

The Art of the Renaissance

The Art of the Renaissance

Many of the new ideas and attitudes that marked the Renaissance times were portrayed in art, and, as a result, art is perhaps the most defining characteristic of the Renaissance.  With humanism putting more focus on human interests, needs, and abilities, this new idea changed how artists painted their subjects as well as the choice of subjects they painted. In the Middle Ages, the subject of almost all European art was religion, specifically Christianity and the Catholic Church. Although Renaissance artists continued to paint religious paintings, Renaissance artists included more secular subjects and tended to focus on the beauty of the human body. They also branched out to other subjects including Greek and Roman mythology, historical subjects, and portraits of individuals. They also focused on the details of everyday life. In general, the reason art advanced so much during the Renaissance was that one generation after another built upon the advances and artistic improvements made by painters and sculptors before them.  The leading experimenter in art though was Leonardo da Vinci.  Unfortunately, he left many of his paintings unfinished, but he left many remnants of works that reveal his curiosity and his effort to discover new ways to portray reality.  Key to his development was the interest in what went on underneath the outer appearance of people. The individual seen at the artistic climax of the Renaissance is Michelangelo.  A true Renaissance man, Michelangelo preferred the three-dimensional art of sculpture, but also was asked to produce a number of paintings, which he did out of economic necessity.  His greatest work was the Sistine Chapel ceiling, commissioned by Pope Julius II.  The ceiling took four years to complete.  It covered 10,000 square feet and includes more than 300 people.  Michelangelo held deep Christian convictions, which come through in his work. 

 Advances were also made in sculpture, including great works by Michelangelo, but the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance and the leader in the changes to the art form was an individual named Donatello.  Donatello began to employ the techniques of perspective in his sculptures and produced remarkably life-like statues.  Up until the Renaissance, painters and sculptors had been considered merely as skilled workers, not unlike talented interior decorators. However, in keeping with its aim of producing thoughtful, classical art, the Renaissance raised the professions of painting and sculpture to a new level. In the process, prime importance was placed on disegno - an Italian word whose literal meaning is 'drawing' but whose sense incorporates the 'whole design' of a work of art - rather than applying coloured paints/pigments. Disegno constituted the intellectual component of painting and sculpture, which now became the profession of thinking-artists not decorators.