Essay, Research Paper: Art Of High Renaissance

Renaissance is a rebirth , a French word, that first occurred in the Italian city of Florence. It came from those who thought of the Middle Ages as a dark time from which the human spirit had to be awakened. Its origin of this revolutionary view of history can be traced back to the 1330s in the writing of Francesco Petrarca, an early Renaissance humanist who lived in Florence and became the father of humanism . Francesco Petrarca thought of this new era mainly as a revival of the classical forms developed by the ancient Greek and Latin. Art in the Renaissance, unlike the Middle Ages, showed emotions, feelings, and bright colors. Throughout the Early Renaissance period, there were three most important men who initiated the Renaissance. Donattello who reestablish the attitude toward the human body similar to that of classical antiquity and recapture the classical contrapposto in his work. Fillppo Brunelleschi, the master of architecture of this period, invented the scientific perspective; and Masaccio who established the Early Renaissance painting showed the human body in motion in his painting.
Then, in the early 16th century in Europe marked a new phase of Renaissance when it reached its most glorious expression in its paintings, sculpture, and architecture known as High Renaissance . The Key monuments of the High Renaissance were produced between c.1495-1520. The different between the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance is the Early Renaissance artists were limited by numerical ratios of musical harmony and the laws of linear perspective, but the High Renaissance artists were less concerned with rational order than with visual effectiveness. The artists of the High Renaissance, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, achieved the perfection and harmony in their works. Artists in this period evolved a new drama and a new rhetoric to engage the emotions of their beholders. They developed paintings in the narrative style that demonstrated the body in a more scientific and natural manner.
Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most famous painters of this time who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. He was taught by Andrea del Verrocchio who was the greatest sculptor of the Early Renaissance period. Leonardo s famous works of the Renaissance were the Last Supper and Mona Lisa . In his Last Supper , painted in c.1495-98, which portrays Christ and his apostles around a large long table is a first classic statement of the ideals of High Renaissance painting. The painting shows the High Renaissance style of painting in playing light and shade by Leonardo which makes the picture seem a poetic vision rather than an image of reality. A comparison with Castagno s Last Supper which was painted in c.1445-50, the Last Supper of Leonardo shows him discarded the hard outline of Early Renaissance and to bathe his figures in a very dreamlike shadow; the group of apostles is less clear gradually from the center of this painting and Chirst becomes passive rather than physical and spiritual force. However, in Castagno s, the figures are in a pretty strong outline shape and its architecture is rigid symmetry emphasized by the colorful inlays. Both of these two also was treated as an annex to the real interior of the refectory, however, there had a strangely oppressive effect on the figures in Castagno s Last Supper, unlike Leonardo s. Castagno started with the composition of the space that he had before painting his figures. In contrast, Leonardo began with the figural composition, and the architecture had no more than a supporting role from the start., so his perspective was an ideal one. In Castagno s Last Supper, he used the technique of coloring using to make a stronger contrast, focus point, above the heads of Chirst. Comparing to Leonardo s Last Supper, it shows Chirst as symbolic significance by using a central vanishing point behind the head of Chirst. The balance of the composition of Leonardo s Last Supper has been achieved by the reconciliation of competing and even conflicting which can not be found in Castagno s.