final Portfolio

Here are the details for your final portfolio:

You are to write three full pages of text, double-space 12-point font. Your topic is "High Renaissance". I encourage you to design your own original title. Your three readings (attached below) are 1) the philosopher Pico della Mirandola's essay on "The Dignity of Man", 2) Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari's account of painter Raphael and 3) Vasari's account of sculptor Michelangelo. I also have attached Raphael's "School of Athens" and several photos of Michelangelo's "David". You may wish to consult Google Images to see more details of Raphael's painting and Michelangelo's sculpture (if you look up Michelangelo's "David" please know that his original is indoors; the one featured outside in the piazza is a replica). In your three pages of essay, devote equal time between these three:  Mirandola's ideas, Raphael and Michelangelo. As for the artists, it doesn't matter to me how much space you devote to their biographical details or to their actual painting or sculpture. If you focus on the actual works of art, I have a few items to offer: "School of Athens"--the two central figures are Plato and Aristotle. Plato, holding his Timaeus, is pointing toward heaven, arguing that ultimate reality is spiritual and unchanging. On his side of the composition are clustered all the great minds who were essential platonists, idealists. Aristotle, holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics, is gesturing with outstretched hand to this world of physical phenomena, arguing that ultimate reality is always changing, expanding, evolving. Clustered on his side of the composition are all the great minds who were essentially aristotelians, naturalists. Ralphael's self-portrait is a cameo in the composition (Vasari points it out in his biography), Leonardo da Vinci is the face of Plato, and Michelangelo is the brooding fellow at center left, sitting at a cube in contemplation. Renaissance essentially focused on the great possibilities of human genius, and in this paper I encourage you to offer your own perspective along with the three personalities cited in this research.

·  Pico della Mirandola.pdf  (17.434 KB)(file attach)

·  Michaelangelo.pdf  (75.324 KB)(file attach)

·  RAPHAEL OF URBINO.pdf  (19.844 KB)(file attach)

·  School of Athens.pdf  (232.755 KB)

·  David full image.jpg  (70.9 KB)

·  David closer (2).jpg  (132.369 KB)

·  David portrait and shoulder.jpg  (45.598 KB)

· David hand.jfif  (10.619 KB)