| What was the importance of Art during the Renaissance? |
| Renaissance painters and sculptors believed in portraying people and nature realistically. They would even design buildings smaller to make people aware of their own power and dignity. Florentine painter Giotto was probablly the first artist to portray nature realistically. His fresoes (paintings on damp plaster) were highly acclaimed and were sought for by churches in Florence, Padua and Assisi. He emphisized paintings with lifelike figures with real emotions and realistic settings. Brunellschi was defiantly the first Renaissance architect to recreate the ancient Roman style of architecture. He used arches and columns and other aspects of classical architecture into his designs. His best known building would have to be the Pazzi Chapel in Florence that was "beautifully and harmoniously proportioned". This was one of the first Renaissance style buildings and he was the first artist to use linear perspective, a mathematical system in which painters could show space and depth on a flat surface. Donatello was a man who made his sculptors of humans show the dignity of the human body in a realistic fashion with dramatic detail. His statues of david (with the most famous the free-standing youth) the biblical hero. His 1.5metre youth was the first free-standing youth nude made in western art since classical antiquity. Arts of the late 1400's and early 1500's were dominated by three famous men. Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci. Michelangelo was skilled as a painter, architect and poet. On top of that he has been called the greatest sculptor in history. He was a master of the human figure. His famous statue the "Israelite leader Moses" desplays physical strength with spiritual power. Though his most famous work would have to be ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The frescoes painted on the ceiling are rated as one of the most significant achievements of Renaissance art. Raphael's paintings are softer in outline and more poetic than those of Michelangelo's. He excelled in perspective and was an increadible judge of colour. He painted many beautiful portraits including pictures of Madonna (Virgin Mary) and another would be his painting of the fresco School of Athens.It incorperated classical antiquity and Italian culture of the time. Leonardo Da Vinci is responsible for two of the most renoun pictures of all time. "The Last Supper" and the increadibly famous "Mona Lisa". He seeked to find the going on of everything he observed and thus in more than 4000 pages of notebooks he drew detailed diagrams and wrote down observations. He made drawings of human skeletons and muscles, trying to decifer the way the body worked. Because of his enquiring mind, he became a symbol of the Renaissance spirit of learning, intellectual curiosity and of cultural richness in art and the liberal arts. |