How is humanism manifested in fine art

This increasing wealth provided the financial support for a growing number of commissions of large public and private art projects, while the trade routes upon which it was based greatly assisted the spread of ideas and thus contributed to the growth of the movement across the Continent. Allied to this spread of ideas, which incidentally speeded up significantly with the invention of printing, there was an undoubted sense of impatience at the slow progress of change.

After a thousand years of cultural and intellectual starvation, Europe and especially Italy was anxious for a re-birth. Paradoxically, the weak position of the Church gave added momentum to the Renaissance.

First, it allowed the spread of Humanism - which in bygone eras would have been strongly resisted; second, it prompted later Popes like Pope Julius II to spend extravagantly on architecture, sculpture and painting in Rome and in the Vatican eg.

Their response to the Reformation c. The Renaissance era in art history parallels the onset of the great Western age of discovery, during which appeared a general desire to explore all aspects of nature and the world.

European naval explorers discovered new sea routes, new continents and established new colonies. In the same way, European architects, sculptors and painters demonstrated their own desire for new methods and knowledge.

According to the Italian painter, architect, and Renaissance commentator Giorgio Vasari , it was not merely the growing respect for the art of classical antiquity that drove the Renaissance, but also a growing desire to study and imitate nature. Why Did the Renaissance Start in Italy? In addition to its status as the richest trading nation with both Europe and the Orient, Italy was blessed with a huge repository of classical ruins and artifacts.

Examples of Roman architecture were found in almost every town and city, and Roman sculpture, including copies of lost sculptures from ancient Greece, had been familiar for centuries. In addition, the decline of Constantinople - the capital of the Byzantine Empire - caused many Greek scholars to emigrate to Italy, bringing with them important texts and knowledge of classical Greek civilization.

All these factors help explain why the Renaissance started in Italy. For more, see Florentine Renaissance Mantegna, Bellini family, Titian, Tintoretto. If the framework for the Renaissance was laid by economic, social and political factors, it was the talent of Italian artists that drove it forward.

The most important painters, sculptors, architects and designers of the Italian Renaissance during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries include, in chronological order:.

Cimabue c. Giotto di Bondone Scrovegni Arena Chapel frescos. Gentile da Fabriano Influential Gothic style painter. Jacopo della Quercia c. Tommaso Masaccio Greatest early Florentine painter. Piero della Francesca Pioneer of linear perspective. Andrea Mantegna Noted for illusionistic foreshortening techniques. Donato Bramante Top High Renaissance architect.

Alessandro Botticelli Famous for mythological painting. Raphael Greatest High Renaissance painter. Titian Greatest Venetian colourist. Correggio Famous for illusionistic quadratura frescoes. Andrea Palladio Dominated Venetian Renaissance architecture , later imitated in Palladianism. Tintoretto Religious Mannerist painter. Paolo Veronese Colourist follower of Titian.

Effects of the Renaissance on Painting and Sculpture. As referred to above, the Italian Renaissance was noted for four things. In Northern Europe, the Renaissance was characterized by advances in the representation of light though space and its reflection from different surfaces; and most visibly in the achievement of supreme realism in easel-portraiture and still life.

This was due in part to the fact that most Northern Renaissance artists began using oil paint in the early 15th century, in preference to tempera or fresco which due to climatic and other reasons were still the preferred painting methods in Italy. Oil painting allowed richer colour and, due to its longer drying time, could be reworked for many weeks, permitting the achievement of finer detail and greater realism.

Oils quickly spread to Italy: first to Venice, whose damp climate was less suited to tempera, then Florence and Rome. See also: Art Movements, Periods, Schools , for a brief guide to other styles. Among other things, this meant that while Christianity remained the dominant theme or subject for most visual art of the period, Evangelists, Apostles and members of the Holy Family were depicted as real people, in real-life postures and poses, expressing real emotions.

At the same time, there was greater use of stories from classical mythology - showing, for example, icons like Venus the Goddess of Love - to illustrate the message of Humanism.

For more about this, see: Famous Paintings Analyzed. As far as plastic art was concerned, Italian Renaissance Sculpture reflected the primacy of the human figure, notably the male nude.

Both Donatello and Michelangelo relied heavily on the human body, but used it neither as a vehicle for restless Gothic energy nor for static Classic nobility, but for deeper spiritual meaning. Note: For artists and styles inspired by the arts of classical antiquity, see: Classicism in Art onwards.

Up until the Renaissance, painters and sculptors had been considered merely as skilled workers, not unlike talented interior decorators. However, in keeping with its aim of producing thoughtful, classical art, the Italian Renaissance raised the professions of painting and sculpture to a new level. Disegno constituted the intellectual component of painting and sculpture, which now became the profession of thinking-artists not decorators.

See also: Best Renaissance Drawings. The ideas and achievements of both Early and High Renaissance artists had a huge impact on the painters and sculptors who followed during the cinquecento and later, beginning with the Fontainebleau School c.

This theoretical approach, known as ' academic art ' regulared numerous aspects of fine art. In short, the main contribution of the Italian Renaissance to the history of art , lay in its promotion of classical Greek values. As a result, Western painting and sculpture developed largely along classical lines. And although modern artists, from Picasso onwards, have explored new media and art-forms, the main model for Western art remains Greek Antiquity as interpreted by the Renaissance.

Renaissance Chronology. It is customary to classify Italian Renaissance Art into a number of different but overlapping periods:. History of Renaissance Art. The Renaissance, or Rinascimento , was largely fostered by the post-feudal growth of the independent city, like that found in Italy and the southern Netherlands. Grown wealthy through commerce and industry, these cities typically had a democratic organization of guilds, though political democracy was kept at bay usually by some rich and powerful individual or family.

Good examples include 15th century Florence - the focus of Italian Renaissance art - and Bruges - one of the centres of Flemish painting. They were twin pillars of European trade and finance. Art and as a result decorative craft flourished: in the Flemish city under the patronage of the Dukes of Burgundy, the wealthy merchant class and the Church; in Florence under that of the wealthy Medici family.

In this congenial atmosphere, painters took an increasing interest in the representation of the visible world instead of being confined to that exclusive concern with the spirituality of religion that could only be given visual form in symbols and rigid conventions. The change, sanctioned by the tastes and liberal attitude of patrons including sophisticated churchmen is already apparent in Gothic painting of the later Middle Ages, and culminates in what is known as the International Gothic style of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth.

Throughout Europe in France, Flanders, Germany, Italy and Spain, painters, freed from monastic disciplines, displayed the main characteristics of this style in the stronger narrative interest of their religious paintings , the effort to give more humanity of sentiment and appearance to the Madonna and other revered images, more individual character to portraiture in general and to introduce details of landscape, animal and bird life that the painter-monk of an earlier day would have thought all too mundane.

These, it may be said, were characteristics also of Renaissance painting, but a vital difference appeared early in the fifteenth century. The realistic aim of a succeeding generation involved the radical step of penetrating through the surface to give a new sense of space, recession and three-dimensional form. This decisive advance in realism first appeared about the same time in Italy and the Netherlands, more specifically in the work of Masaccio at Florence, and of Jan van Eyck c.

In simple terms, this meant that any individual could shape their own character and influence their own future by the way they lived their life. Humanism also placed a greater emphasis on the pleasures and social values of the here and now as opposed to the spiritual values that prepared for a better life to come. This was the mindset that had contributed to the success of the great Classical civilizations and it was believed that its spirit could be resurrected to regenerate Italian society.

A new wave of rational thought and critical analysis challenged the civil and religious authorities of the medieval Italy and revitalized both education and religion by creating a greater respect for intellectual freedom and individual expression. Unlike later forms of Humanism, the Renaissance humanists did not deny their Christian faith. They simply wanted a more direct line to the Almighty, missing out some of the middle management of the Church.

Their aim was to increase the responsibility of the individual in determining their own destiny. A rtistic subject matter at the start of the Early Renaissance was exclusively inspired by Christian doctrine as it was commissioned by the Catholic Church. However, as the influence of humanistic values grew, artists' focus gradually widened to include some secular subjects that were inspired by the epic tales from Classical mythology, a theme that reflected the personal interests of private patrons and collectors.

The study of Classical literature was considered to be an honorable academic pursuit among the educated and wealthy, who in turn commissioned artists to produce allegorical images based on the Greek and Roman classics.

Consequently, artists who had previously been regarded as no more than craftsmen, were elevated to a similar status as scientists, writers and musicians due to the greater analytical and intellectual content of their work. P ortraiture was another subject that emerged as a genre during the Renaissance.

Very few painted portraits had survived from Antiquity so artists looked to Roman and Greek sculptures for their inspiration. Both styles were influential in the development of Renaissance portraiture. Portraiture in Ancient Rome was a highly naturalistic art form based on humanist ideals and used to celebrate military and civic achievements or as propaganda in support of Republican values.

He also invented the horizontal crane and the mechanical hoist needed to lift and place the bricks in the herringbone pattern that made up an inverted arch. His work exemplified the combination of artistic principles, informed by knowledge of classical design, with tireless scientific innovation. At the same time, often keeping his designs and ideas to himself for fear that his rival might appropriate them, he also operated with the belief in the unique knowledge of the inspired and cultivated artist, as he wrote "Let there be convened a council of experts and masters in mechanical art to deliberate what is needed to compose and construct these works.

This famous Early Renaissance painting depicts figures from classical mythology: the god Mercury plucking a golden fruit from a tree, the three graces dancing together, and Venus, the goddess of love, at the center with Primavera, the goddess of spring, to her left.

The meaning of the mysterious scene, located within a woodland garden, has been much debated by scholars, as it has been viewed as an allegory, a depiction of various scenes from the writing of the Roman poet Ovid, or as a purely aesthetic arrangement. At the same time, some critics have deeply analyzed the work, finding its elements, including the hundreds of specific flowers naturalistically depicted, as reflective of Neoplatonic thought.

Neoplatonism emphasized ideal love and absolute beauty as reflections of the ideal forms posited by the Greek philosopher Plato. A sense of the hidden and sublime order of the world that, while pagan, was not inconsistent with Christianity, is shown in the artist's central figure, that simultaneously evokes Venus and the Virgin Mary. Botticelli's use of mythological subjects and his near nude female figures were groundbreaking. As art critic Jonathan Jones puts it, "Botticelli's Primavera was one of the first large-scale European paintings to tell a story that was not Christian, replacing the agony of Easter with a pagan rite.

The very idea of art as a pleasure, and not a sermon, began in this meadow. The artist drew illustrations and wrote commentary on the famous poet's work. Associated with the artistic and intellectual circles around Lorenzo de' Medici, the artist was influenced by Marsilio Ficino.

Later in his career, as Florence was roiled by the rise of Savonarola, a priest who railed against pagan art and influences, Botticelli refuted his earlier subjects and began to focus on a series of illustrations depicting Dante's vision of the suffering souls in Hell and Purgatory. Though his art fell into relative obscurity, it was subsequently rediscovered in the 19 th century and his paintings have become among the most recognizable artworks, reproduced in countless advertisements, brochures, and digital platforms.

This drawing shows the ideally proportioned figure of a man in two superimposed positions, standing within a circle and square. Due to the superimposition of poses and geometric forms, the symmetrical and balanced figure evokes kinetic movement, while the drawing feels almost three-dimensional as if the viewer were looking into a volumetric geometric space. Often called "The Canon of Proportions," and also known as "The proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius," the drawing and Leonardo's accompanying text reference the mathematical proportions of the Roman innovator.

In the upper margin, Leonardo paraphrases from Book III of Vitruvius's De architectura , writing, "Vetruvio, architect, puts in his work on architecture that the measurements of man are in nature distributed in this manner. Leonardo shared the architect's belief that the proportions of the human body were a kind of microcosm of the symmetry and order of the universe. Other Renaissance artists drew the human figure according to Vitruvian proportions, but Leonardo innovatively drew upon his own study of human anatomy, as he realized that the center of the square had to be located at the groin rather than at the navel, as Vitruvius thought, and that the raised arms should be level with the top of the head.

Combining scientific knowledge and mathematical study with the aesthetic principles of ideal proportion and beauty, the drawing exemplified Renaissance Humanism, seeing the individual as the center of the natural world, linking the earthly realm, symbolized by the square, to the divine circle, symbolizing oneness. Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle. Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Kimberly Nichols.