Essay About Leonardo Davinci And Italian Renaissance Art

Italian Renaissance ArtJoin now to read essay Italian Renaissance ArtWhat is Italian Renaissance art? Before attempting to answer the question it is important to consider what we mean by ‘early Italian Renaissance. Unlike many periods in history the Renaissance has no obvious start and end dates, for the purposes of this assignment I will define the approximate period within which to look as about 1390 to about 1520. The time around 1520 represents when Raphael died this was followed closely by the death of Pope Leo X, the second High Renaissance pope. It is after their deaths that the creative and optimistic mood in Italy began to fade. The decade ending 1520 saw Leonardo DaVinci leaving for France and then dieing there in 1519. In the beginnings of the Renaissance painting was seen very much as a craft performed by members of the artisan class and not a ‘liberal art’. In fact the term artist was not used, as it is today, as a general term meaning painter and sculptor. ‘Artista’ was a term already in use by Dante, but it was used in reference to a University level graduate of the ‘liberal arts’, it is not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that it is used in a context resembling todays usage. The lower status of painting at the beginning of the Renaissance is reflected in the fact that members of the aristocracy or learned class did not generally practice it. A member of the Milanese aristocracy, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio’s epitaph stressed that although he was a painter, he was an amateur, because if it were thought that he made his living from painting it would significantly lower his social status. It is for this reason that few people in the early Renaissance would see painting as a method of social advancement or to demonstrate intellectual ability. This did not however stop many painters having aspirations for higher social and intellectual status, despite their background and education rarely supporting this aspiration.

The majority of painters were brought up in the artisan class; this meant that painters seldom went to Grammar school or University. Most painters’ education was limited to the basic training provided by the abacus school. There are however exceptions to this trend, perhaps most notably Alberti. He attended Grammar school and graduated in law from University. Similarly Leonardo DaVinci was gifted in mathematics, as Vasari tells us; he “began to learn arithmetic and after a few months he had made such progress that he used to baffle his master with questions and problems that he raised.” Even Leonardo did not have knowledge of Latin. The study of Latin was not part of the abacus school curriculum. When Pietro Lorenzetti needed a text of the life of St Savinus for his alter piece in Siena Cathedral; he paid a grammar school teacher to translate the text from Latin for him. Proficiency in Latin was a prerequisite to be considered a literate man in higher social circles. The lack of a humanist education on the part of the artist perpetuated the view of painting as a craft. Leonardo admitted in the last decade of the fifteenth century that he was not a ‘man of letters’ he was saying he did not have a command of Latin “I do not have literary learning but my concerns are better handled through experience rather than bookishness.” Despite this statement it is obvious from an analysis of the books in his library that he attempted to learn Latin. A gradual increase in the number of Latin texts suggests he gained in proficiency in later life. Leonardo’s library was certainly not typical of the early renaissance artist’s. The size and scholarly character of it was unheard of amongst his contemporaries. This effort on the part of Leonardo is evidence of his desire to advance his position within society. Leonardo did much to improve the view of artists, and himself became a courtier. Dьrer thought that it was important for young artists should be taught how to read and write Latin in order to be able to understand certain texts.

The style and quality of the early Renaissance painter’s handwriting can be a good indication of the types of education received. There is very little awareness of the new humanistic script early in the fifteenth century. This does change over the course of the century with some intellectually aspiring artists developing sophisticated humanistic script. This can be seen in Mantegna’s letter of 1484 to Lorenzo ‘the magnificent’ de Medici, as this is written in a refined humanistic hand. The effort to improve the quality of their handwriting shows that the artists are trying to emulate characteristics found in courtiers and other learned people. The awareness of the humanistic script also shows the desire of the artists to advance their social position and also the recognition that this cannot be done solely through the quality of their work. There is a deliberate attempt on the part of the artist to gain intellectual credibility. The

I have seen examples of the creative force of their work in a variety of works. For instance, Michelangelo painted the famous painting of “Lavrino”’ in his youth in the Palazzo dei Musee di Medici. However, it was not the first painting painted by the celebrated artist. During the first half of the fifteenth century, the sculptor Luciano Fittucciano did not spend much time on this subject. However, this is not surprising since many of these paintings were painted in the early fifteenth century. However, there was another and somewhat more famous painting painted by a very great artist of the Renaissance—and that was called the Saint Martin’a Saint Maria de Maquelle’.

The St Martin of Christ and Christ the Prince of Mary, at the outset

This is not a matter to be taken lightly—the work of Raphael and Girolamo, the same artist, are generally credited to being the beginning of the popular Renaissance picture, from the first images which were captured by the young. This fact was further confirmed by the famous painting of the Emperor Constantine and the paintings from the Louvre, a relatively recent work in the last century. But how great is the power of the artsmanship over art in general? It must be emphasized that there were also periods which may have been even more creative because of a certain degree of humanism. Some of these were in the early fifteenth century or perhaps even the middle eighteenth century when the most important paintings were being used. Such artistic periods may have been the most creative of the Renaissance, and many of them were important to the success of the late fifteenth century. Many artists were also more likely to have spent an extra decade doing some of their best work and to spend more time focusing on their studies. If the modern understanding of the Renaissance has its origins in the French Renaissance, then it may be possible that these early years of the renaissance may have been very similar to today. It makes all the more interesting to study Renaissance artists from that time forward.

The early Renaissance

At the dawn of the nineteenth century there existed a large number of early Renaissance artists. This was because it was clear to the young artists that they were learning their own craft. This was a big challenge to the young artists of that period, because if they did not get their bearings in the arts they would have to find themselves back in the school of the old fashion or even the new ones, where most of the artists were already familiar. For the moment there were two big masters of the Renaissance, Raphael and Girolamo. The early period began with the completion of Michelangelo’s 1878 painting of Madonna and was followed by the success of Raphael’s 1881 work of The Madonna of Fiumata. Most of Raphael’s early paintings were actually very good, with a few paintings he had done in his teens or early twenties. However, he spent his whole life away from the studio and from the school of the old school. For the moment however and from his youth a great many other artists began to draw some attention to the work of Raphael—and this continued unabated. For a while there was a lot of work that was not so well known and thus a lot of little changes took place.

On the other hand, Raphael was working with a considerable amount of human emotion and emotion for artistic work. He also had a passion for the human spirit and was always drawing with a human form of human emotion. In a kind of sense an artistic director or an artist’s son had to get very little work done to create the artwork which is needed in art. This situation became especially important for artists of Renaissance eras where artists of this period were not really involved in