Download Renaissance Artists

From artisan to artist
Before the
Renaissance...
During Medieval times, artists were considered craftspersons, or
artisans—no different from a shoe maker, bricklayer, or baker,
working for low wages.
Medieval artists did what they were paid to do and never thought
of signing their work!
The low status of sculptors & painters before the Renaissance was
evident from the unions or guilds to which they belonged.
Sculptors belonged to the Guild of Masons (mason: a person who
builds or works with brick or stone). Painters belonged to the Guild
of Doctors & Apothecaries (apothecary: druggist or pharmacist)
because they got their painting supplies from them.
A change of status for artists
The humanists discovered that
the ancient Greeks & Romans
had great respect for artists &
architects.
The rediscovered manuscripts
also described forgotten artistic
techniques
Artists began to take credit for
their work and they received more
pay.
Sometimes they ignored their
patron's directions
Sandro Botticelli painted himself in the above painting,
called Adoration of the Magi.
The Renaissance was a self-conscious age!
Prominent men and important
families commissioned
portraits and busts of
themselves.
They were interested in
themselves, their social
standing, and their own
special personalities.
This is the OPPOSITE of the
people of medieval times they would have been
shocked!
The Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini &
His Wife
By Jan Van Eyck
Portrait painting
With the increased interest in self, came
an increased emphasis on realism in art.
Medieval painters had paid little attention
to realistic detail ... You could tell the
figures were human but didn't look like
anyone in particular ... Kinda like
symbols.
Renaissance painters wanted the figures
in their portraits to have distinct facial
expressions ... Revealing emotions that
the viewer could understand. They
wanted them to look like they lived &
breathed. They wanted their pictures to
be DRAMATIC!
Renaissance
Medieval
The Natural World
Renaissance painters began to pay attention to the natural world. Most medieval art had been made for churches.
They wanted paintings to look lively & more like the world around them.
They wanted their art to show off their skill & creativity.
One artist who made one of the most important advances on the road to more realistic depiction of life was
Brunelleschi who worked in Florence & Rome in the early 15th century.
He was inspired by an essay by ancient Roman writer, Vitruvius, who described buildings and other objects painted
on flat surface made to "advance & recede." It would make the painting look more realistic and almost 3dimensional.
The Rediscovery of Perspective
Perspective: a technique that allows artists to show objects as they appear at various distances from
the viewer, with distant objects shown smaller & nearby objects larger.
Perspective used to paint "School of Athens" by
Raphael
Brunelleschi's Dome of
the Florence Cathedral
Renaissance painters:
going forward by looking backward
They were now able to
place realistic figures in
realistic backgrounds.
They began to create
spaces so realistic that
viewers felt they could
step through the
painting into the world
depicted.
Golden Ratio
Leonardo Fibonacci came up with a
sequence of numbers that, when squared,
could be tiled like so:
Can you see the pattern?
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…
Mona Lisa Revisited
Renaissance men like
Leonardo Da Vinci
were obsessed with
symmetry in nature.
http://io9.com/5985588/15uncanny-examples-of-thegolden-ratio-in-nature