Renaissance Art

The Renaissance patrons wanted art that showed joy in human beauty and life's pleasures. Renaissance art is more lifelike than the art of the Middle Ages. Renaissance artists studied perspective, or the differences in the way things look when they are close to something or far away. The Renaissance artists painted in a way that showed these differences. As a result, their paintings seem to have depth.

An artist from Florence named Giotto was one of the first to paint in this new style. Giotto lived more than a century before the beginning of the Renaissance, but his paintings show real emotion. The bodies look solid, and the background of his paintings show perspective. The art produced during the Renaissance would build upon Giotto's style.

Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 in the village of Vinci. His name means Leonardo of Vinci. Leonardo began his career working for a master painter in Florence. By 1478, Leonardo left his master and set up his own workshop. People have been trying to guess the secret behind the smile of Leonardo's Mona Lisa ever since he painted it about 1505. Leonardo's Last Supper shows clearly the different feelings of Jesus and his followers.

Leonardo's fame grew—but not just for his painting. Leonardo was truly a "Renaissance Man," skilled in many fields. He was a scientist and an inventor as well as an artist. He made notes and drawings of everything he saw. Leonardo invented clever machines, and even designed imitation wings that he hoped would let a person fly like a bird.

Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence was one of the greatest artists of all time. Like Leonardo, Michelangelo was a "Renaissance Man" of many talents. He was a sculptor, a painter, and an architect. When Michelangelo carved a statue of Moses, he included veins and muscles in the arms and legs.

Michelangelo was a devout Christian, and the church was his greatest patron. He designed the dome of St. Peter's church in Rome. Nearby, Michelangelo's paintings cover the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the building where new popes have been selected for more than five hundred years. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel illustrates the Book of Genesis, with scenes that span from the Creation to the Flood. The project was very difficult. Working alone, Michelangelo had to lie on his back atop high scaffolding while he painted the vast ceiling.

The ideas and techniques of artists such as Giotto, Leonardo and Michelangelo were copied and improved on by other artists and inventors. In time, the Renaissance that began in Italy would spread through Western Europe.

It’s very easy to think of Shakespeare as a one-off genius with a unique perspective on the world around him. However, Shakespeare was very much a product of the huge cultural shifts that were occurring in Elizabethan England during his lifetime.

He was working in the theater at the height of the renaissance movement, something that is reflected in Shakespeare’s plays.

The Renaissance in Shakespeare's Time

Broadly speaking, the renaissance movement is used to describe how Europeans moved away from the restrictive ideas of the Middle Ages. The ideology that dominated the Middle Ages was heavily focused on the absolute power of God and was enforced by the formidable Catholic Church.

From the Fourteenth Century onwards, people started to break away from this idea. The renaissance movement did not necessarily reject the idea of God, but rather questioned humankind’s relationship to God – an idea that caused an unprecedented upheaval in the accepted social hierarchy. In fact, Shakespeare himself may have been Catholic.

This focus on humanity created a new-found freedom for artists, writers and philosophers to be inquisitive about the world around them.

Shakespeare: the Renaissance Man

Shakespeare was born towards the end of the renaissance period and was one of the first to bring the renaissance’s core values to the theater.

Shakespeare Embraced the Renaissance in the Following Ways:

• Shakespeare updated the simplistic, two-dimensional writing style of pre-renaissance drama. He focused on creating “human” characters with psychological complexity. Hamlet is perhaps the most famous example of this.

• The upheaval in the social structure (people doubting the power of kings) allowed Shakespeare to explore the humanity of every character regardless of their social position. Even monarchs are given human emotions and are capable of making mistakes.

• Shakespeare utilized his knowledge of Greek and Roman classics when writing his plays. Before the renaissance, these texts had been suppressed by the Catholic Church.

Renaissance Literature

Renaissance Architecture

During the Renaissance architects began to look back to the Romans and Greeks for inspiration when designing buildings. Much of Renaissance architecture style was taken from Ancient Rome and Greece and then altered to fit their current lifestyle.

St. Peter's Basilica is a prime example of Renaissance architecture

Filippo Brunelleschi

Brunelleschi was considered the first Renaissance architect. Some historians consider the start of the Renaissance to be 1419, when he won the commission to build the dome above the cathedral of Florence. This dome was an ambitious undertaking as it was to be the largest dome built since the Pantheon in Ancient Rome, which had been built 1500 years earlier.

The dome designed by

Brunelleschi

The entire dome, including the lantern on top, would take much of Brunelleschi's life to complete. The gold ball at the top weighed nearly two tons by itself. It also took over four million bricks to construct the dome. Brunelleschi also had to invent new ways of lifting heavy objects high into the air, which would later be used by other architects.

Brunelleschi also designed two churches in Florence; the church of San Lorenzo and the church of Santo Spirito. These churches were built with symmetry and order. Many more churches throughout Europe would mimic this basic design in the coming years.

Features of Renaissance Buildings

Renaissance architecture had some distinct features that were fairly common to major construction:

• Square - Many buildings were built as square or rectangle symmetrical shapes.

• Front - The front or "façade" of the buildings were generally symmetrical (same on right as on left).

• Columns - They used Roman type columns.• Arches and Domes - Arches and domes were popular. This was

again taken from Roman and Greek architecture.