8/17/2019 The Art of Renaissance

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The Art of the Early Renaissance

1 The relationship of art to nature → realism (naturalistic vs. stylized or hieraticrepresentations)

The artists of the Renaissance believed that art is the imitation of nature and it should be asfaithful as possible to this principle of truthful imitation. Nevertheless, in the Renaissance, art

was less a case of imitating nature (landscape) than of imitating perfect models, namely ancient

ones (classical antiquity). f naturalism is ta!en to mean an interest in nature then it was not afeature of the "arly Renaissance because artists were more interested in man than the nature

surrounding him. #radually, the artists of the Renaissance too! more interest in rendering a

faithful image of nature which becomes an intrinsic part of the narrative and even amplifies thedramatic intensity of the depicted scene.

$atch a video tutorial from %essions &nline %chools of 'rt esign*s +istory of 'rt+ course

on youtube- Nature in Renaissance ainting (http-//www.youtube.com/watch0

v1"y$2#3%i45). 6or a better view of the painting under discussion refer to-http-//www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html

2 The re7discovery of perspective

Perspective 1 an optical phenomenon consisting in the fact that the image of a perceived ob8ect / person diminishes with distance and is deformed depending on its position in relation to the eye

9 perspective is a geometrical phenomenon (precisely calculated and rendered) depending on

the position of the perceived ob8ect and its distance from the observer.

Renaissance painters laid great stress on creating proper perspective: for the artists of the

Renaissance, perspective was an ob8ect of wonder for its mathematical regularity and precision.n their opinion, creating adequate perspective was the true and ultimate s!opos (aim) of artwhich was raised to the ran! of a science. ;lato once declared perspective a negative

 phenomenon, a sign of the imperfection of the human eye, which deforms things<.

n the Renaissance, this obsession with creating the right perspective  became more than an

optical/scientific achievement in art: it was endowed with an aesthetic function too- only those

things which are carefully arranged in a painting according to the laws of perspective areconsidered to be beautiful.