Renaissance Art

Following the Middle and Higher Middle Ages came the Renaisance Era. The word renaissance means rebirth. It refers to the renewing interest in the Greek and Roman culture. The Renaissance began in Italy. Many wonder why it started there and not somewhere else. One of the main reasons it began in Italy is because it was the first counrty to rise and overcome economically from all of the chaos that happened during the Middle Ages.

During this era, many new artists arose. One of the first artists of this time was a sculptor named Donatello. One of his statues, St. Mark, shows the characteristics of the new renaissance era. Unlike the sculptures from the middle ages, Donatello’s sculpture does not depend on its framework for support. The figure is naturalistic and the clothing conforms to the way the “”body”” underneath is. The way this is, it makes us feel as though if the statue moved the garment would flow with it.

Everyday life in the Renaissance era is very much like the daily life during the middle ages. The people were seperated by their social classes. The four classes include the nobles, the merchants, the tradesmen and then there were the unskilled workers. This era included a lot of great change in how children were treated. At the start children were treated like small adults, but once time went on they began to be treated how children are today. The contextual changes over time since this era is the way we live, what we wear, the types of food we eat. Everything has improved and upgraded since this period of time. The Renaissance brought a lot of wealth to Europe. More people were becoming great artists and they acquired money that way. More money meant more people living rich lives and wearing nicer clothes.

One piece of art that depicts my chosen theme, everyday life, very well is the illustration by the Limbourg Brothers called February. This piece’s main focus is the peasants inside their huts, huddled around a fire. This illustration gives the viewer an idea of how some people lived during that time. They did not have much, but they made do with the things they did have, and they were able to live a fairly good life.

This era represents the most important period in human development since the fall of Rome. There was a boom in exploration, trade, marriage and diplomatic excursions and even war. The Renaissance changed the world in just about every way you could think of. It had almost a kinf of snowball effect. With each new intellectual advance paved the way for further advancements. The Black Death wiped out millions of people in Europe. This meant that those who survived were left with proportionally greater wealth. Italy had inherited many “”lost”” classics from the ancient world, and artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Donatello took their tales and other things as a starting point to create amazing art. Renaissance art not only looked very pleasing to the eye, but it gave a new intellectual discipline: perspective was developed, light and shadow were studied, and the human anatomy was pored over. All of this was an effort to capture the beauty of the world as it really was. Art during this era was all about pushing the artisits to their limits to see what all they could acheive.