Renaissance Art Likes

Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

This is something I just found - "Allegory of the Human Life", Alessandro Alori. I like the symbolism /or at least what I think it presents/, of the humanity doing what everyone tries to get done, and the angel trumpets that we are living on a borrowed time.



Edited by Don Quixote - 21-Aug-2011 at 21:24

Durer.

Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim, 1452,Jean Fouquet. I love the way that Mary in this painting has been made into this high class Renaissance figure in the way she is portrayed.

Edited by TheAlaniDragonRising - 24-Aug-2011 at 16:31

Originally posted by Centrix Vigilis Hieronymus Bosch  http://www.all-art.org/early_renaissance/bosch5.html

This is an interesting and useful link, thanks, CV!

A portrait of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's unfortunate second wife and mother of Queen Elizabeth I:

Anne Boleyn as the Queen of Spades:




Edited by Don Quixote - 24-Aug-2011 at 19:12

Renaissance artists in Ottoman Empire;

First portrait painting in Ottomans. It was made in 1480 by Gentile Bellini
   

Leonardo Va Vinci's bridge project for Istanbul


maybe it isn't renaissance period bridge, but its plan is.

Ceccino de Salvati 'Lamentation" 1539-41

Baciccio, "The Pieta", 1667

It is intersesting to compare Renaissance art with the mostly ecclesiastical and artistically sketchy art from the early and mid middle ages. Strict religious pattern of medieval art vs flamboyant, perfect, unrestrained painting of the Renaissance. On Wikipedia, in History of Painting both periods can be compared. What caused such an evoltion in painting through the Renaissance?

Originally posted by Karalem It is intersesting to compare Renaissance art with the mostly ecclesiastical and artistically sketchy art from the early and mid middle ages. Strict religious pattern of medieval art vs flamboyant, perfect, unrestrained painting of the Renaissance. On Wikipedia, in History of Painting both periods can be compared. What caused such an evoltion in painting through the Renaissance?

The Renaissance art was built in the base of the Gothic art; this was the time when art started to be seen as educational medium, since most people were illiterate. I suppose this brought the popularity of art to start with. Then with the interest toward the classical art and studying the Roman/Greek sculptures the idea of prespective was developed, I'm not sure from where because the Greek and Roman pictorial art didn't use perspective; besides I'm not sure how many such pictorial models were available at the time. Brunelleschi was experimenting with perspective, Donatello was using it in this relief:
DONATELLO: Relief: St. George and the Dragon

Masaccio used perspective too, in pictorial presentations, this is his "Tribute Money":

I suppose the combination of the roundness of the classical sculpture with the perspective did the trick - many of Michelangelo's paintings are imitations of sculpture, one can almost see them as sculptures, like in his "Leda and the Swan":



Then the inspiration they were drawing from religion plus the inspiration drawn  from the classical mythology combined and gave rise to hundreds combinations of different aspects of those. The still life appeared, and became very popular in Flanders; I consider this to be a really unique European development, since I don't remember seeing it neither in the classical art, nor in the Arabic one, nor in the Byzantinian one, so it has to be a local development. The Italian painters seen to have been interested more in religious or mythological themes, while in Flanders and the Netherlands a real interest toward the life or ordinary people was developed, and in the simple things of life - an apple, a goose, a vase - very non-pretentious, and still investigated and presented in a most delightful way:
Nicholas Maes, 'Old Woman Dosing", 1656:
Abraham van Beyeren's "Still life with Lobster", 1653
So, it was the combination of old inspirations from the classics, the invention of the perspective, and using loads of imagination in all possible directions, enjoying every part and side of life and loving it in colors - this is my take on the roots of the Renaissance anyway.


Edited by Don Quixote - 29-Aug-2011 at 02:59