areas. One of the most obvious areas to see is in the Renaissance art. Renaissance art was something new to everyone at the time and varied from previous art in many ways. Renaissance art and Medieval art for example had many differences.
In order to see a difference between these two different styles of art, characteristics of each must first be given. The first to be discussed will be the Renaissance. The Italian Renaissance was called the beginning of the modern age. The most obvious changes during Renaissance times are seen in the paintings and sculptures. Artists began to experiment for the first time with oil-based paints. They mixed powdered pigments with linseed oil.1 1Martindale, Andrew, Man and The Renaissance (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York: Toronto, 1966) p.
8The paints dried slowly, and remained workable for a few months. Stonemasons of the Middle Ages began to be replaced by Artists. They used materials like bronze to make the scenes in their bas-reliefs more lifelike.1 Perspective and light were introduced into art. Many Renaissance works of art showed subjects taken from the Bible.
Non-religious subjects from Greek and Roman Mythology were also popular. The painters and artists that lived during the Renaissance changed the way the world looked at art for all time. The 1400s (called quattrocento in Italian) and 1500s (cinquecento) bore witness to a dazzling creativity in painting, architecture, and sculpture.2 In all the arts, the city of Florence first led the way. In the period art historians describe as the High Renaissance (1500-1527) Rome took the lead. The main characteristics of High Renaissance art-classical balance, harmony, and restraint-are revealed in the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Raphael (1483-1520), and Michelangelo (1475-1564), all of whom worked in Rome.21Martindale, Andrew, Man and The Renaissance (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York: Toronto, 1966) p. 82McKay, Hill, Buckler, A History of World Societies (United States, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996)p.
472In early Renaissance Italy, art manifested corporate power. Powerful urban groups such as guilds and religious confraternities commissioned works of art. The Florentine cloth merchants, for example, delegated Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) to build the magnificent dome on the cathedral of Florence and selected Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) to design the bronze doors of the baptistry.2 These works were signs of the merchants’ dominant influence in the community. Corporate patronage is also reflected in the Florentine government’s decision to hire Michelangelo to create a sculpture of David, the great Hebrew hero and king.2 The subject matter of art through the early fifteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, remained overwhelmingly religious. As the fifteenth century advanced, the subject matter of art became steadily more secular. Religious topics, such as the Annunciation of the Virgin, remained popular among both patrons and artists, but classical themes and motifs, such as the lives and loves of pagan gods and goddesses, figured increasingly in painting and sculpture.2 The individual portrait emerged as the distinct artistic genre.
2McKay, Hill, Buckler, A History of World Societies (United States, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996)p. 472People were conscious of their physical uniqueness and wanted their individuality immortalized. In the fifteenth century, members of the newly rich middle class often had themselves painted in a scene of Romantic chivalry or in courtly society.2 Rather than reflecting a spiritual ideal, as medieval painting and sculpture tended to do, Renaissance portraits mirrored reality. As important as realism was the new “international style,” so called because of the wandering careers of influential artists, the close communications and rivalry of princely courts, and the increased trade in works of art.2 Rich color, decorative detail, curvilinear rhythms, and swaying forms characterized the international style.
As the term international implies, this style was European, not merely Italian.2Medieval art will now be described. In spite of the vast production of works of art during the Middle Ages, little is known about their creation. Most of the contemporary references to creativity are tantalizingly meager and some of these are even fanciful.3 2McKay, Hill, Buckler, A History of World Societies (United States, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996)p. 4723Virginia, Wylie, Egbert, The Mediaeval Artist at Work (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton, University Press 1967) p.19To medieval minds, imbued with the conception of God as the “great artificer,” legends about are miraculously wrought were especially appealing. The Virgin Mary was often credited with coming to the aid of artists, and many stories relate the supernatural origin of art objects.3The predominantly didactic character of medieval art would lead one to expect the great majority of representations of artists as illustrations for texts, for episodes from the Bible, or from the lives of saints. Over half however are the portrayals of artists for their own sake.3 Among these, only a few are unquestionably self-portraits, and the only instance of an artist shown making such a portrait is a miniature executed in 1402.3 By far the largest number of artists shown in the act of creating works of art belongs to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Not only has more art of that period survived, but it was a period which gave rise to a greater interest in naturalism and in everyday life. Now the differences between Medieval art and Renaissance art will be explained. The Renaissance witnessed the birth of the concept of the artist as genius. 3Virginia, Wylie, Egbert, The Mediaeval Artist at Work (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton, University Press 1967) p.19In the Middle Ages, people believed that only God created, albeit through individuals; the medieval conception recognized no particular value in artistic originality.4 Boastful Renaissance artists and humanists came to think that a work of art was the deliberate creation of a unique personality, of an individual who transcended traditions, rules, and theories.
A genius had a peculiar gift, which ordinary laws should not inhibit.4 Renaissance humanists were a smaller and narrower group than the medieval clergy had ever been. In the Middle Ages, high churchmen had commissioned the construction of the Gothic cathedrals, but, once finished, the buildings were for all to enjoy.2 Nothing comparable was built in the Renaissance. A small, highly educated group of literary humanists and artists created the culture of and for an exclusive elite. They cared little for ordinary people.2It is acceptable that Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam are not like typical works of the preceding Middle Ages, the sculptures of Chartres or the mosaics of Monreale. All four wish to state something believed by referring to things in the world that have been seen before.4 2McKay, Hill, Buckler, A History of World Societies (United States, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996)p.
4734Gilbert, Creighton, History of Renaissance Art (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1973) p. 15But in the Middle Ages the concept believed plays a stronger role, so that the qualities of the things in the world can be freely altered to help in expounding it.4 For example, human beings can be shown near each other in very different sizes, which is different from our experience but effectively states the claim that one is more important than the other. The Renaissance does not permit such violations of outside reality; at most, it uses a convention agreed on as being true to it.4 Either the artists must report just what they see, as in portraits (it is typical that the Middle Ages practically excluded portraits), or, when they present an invisible subject, such as God creating man, they are required to find a means that assimilates the theme to standards of visual truth. The event is then shown just as actors, even in the Middle Ages, might perform it in a pageant.4You might also notice that very much unlike the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, literature in the High Renaissance makes the drama its greatest vehicle. But before that happens the dramatic imagery of human situations is central to the greatest painting and sculpture, 4Gilbert, Creighton, History of Renaissance Art (Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., New York, 1973) p. 15just as the device of perspective sets up a stage-like environment for human events in painting first and in the drama later.4Another difference between Renaissance art and Medieval art could be explained by saying that in the Renaissance the lead in the visual arts changes from architecture, where it had certainly been before, to painting, where, if in any single place, we wold have to locate it in the later age. It seems characteristic that many Renaissance painters and sculptors receive architectural commissions, and not the reverse.4 But it may be better to think not of a shift from one medium to another but of a decline in the value given to all-embracing systems and organizations. The career of the Renaissance artist shows a changed relation to his public. Today there is widespread understanding of the status of medieval artists. They are viewed as skilled craftsmen who might command respect for their mastery of the specialty, with an established and secure social position but neither ranking high nor expected to express their personalities; the most successful might be compared to dentists or instrumental musicians today.4 The position of the Renaissance artists is quite different.
4Gilbert, Creighton, History of Renaissance Art (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1973) p. 16They are like celebrities within the society, and are comparable to the trial lawyer or architect today, a professional sought out by usually rich clients to serve their ends by articulating his own personality. He is often the more famous the more he has idiosyncrasies, but his imagination genuinely is used to help the client. Today we would not expect the lawyer to “express himself” in a case, nor, usually, the architect, and the Renaissance artist likewise was entirely committed to his society; an outsider’s standpoint would not have occurred to him.4 To accept this motivation in Renaissance art is easier if we avoid an unhistorical universalizing of our own habits for other ages, in the way that anthropology has taught us not to apply our attitudes to other civilizations of the present. The Renaissance period had a great impact in many areas.
One of the most obvious areas to see is in the Renaissance art. Renaissance art was something new to everyone at the time and varied from previous art in many ways. Renaissance art and Medieval art for example had many differences. After have researching this topic it has been revealed to me that many differences exist between Renaissance art and Medieval art.
The differences ranged from very small to changing the whole way of thinking and how artists performed.
