Comparing Medieval and

Rennaisance Paintings

In the following essay I shall compare and contrast

paintings from the medieval and renaissance period.

Medieval paintings were very realistic and precise.

The king in the painting is in the middle, and

anything painted in the middle is the center of

attraction or the important object in the painting. To

prove this theory, I looked at the painting and the

first thing that caught my eye is the king. The

human body is not too detailed but the actions they

are doing or intend to do are very clear. The painter

created visual space in this painting in a very witty

way; he painted pillars and ceiling ornaments, which

is an indication of height and space. I think it is a

very successful method because the person who is

looking at the painting has space to look around.

The painting in my opinion is more realistic than

naturalistic because I think he attended the

ceremony and then painted what he remembered.

In the following paragraph I shall briefly describe

the renaissance painting. This painting is based on

the story of a poor man who couldn’t pay his

taxes. Then Jesus told him to go to a certain place

where he should cut open a fish and there he shall

find a silver coin to pay his taxes with. He did so

and paid his taxes. On the left of the painting you

can see the barrel of fish, one of the fish is where

he got the silver coin. In the middle Jesus is

explaining the situation to the people. Masaccio

always painted the most important things in the

middle. On the right the man is paying his taxes.

There are many things that the two paintings had in

common some of the reasons are: It is similar in the

layout, A good example would be the objects in the

middle. Jesus and the king are in the middle and

obviously they are the main characters in the

painting. There is also lots of visual space on both

paintings e.g.: mountains, pillars. This is the case

because the renaissance is the rebirth of the classics

and the classics were basically the medieval

paintings. So the renaissance paintings were in a

way based on the medieval ones.

Renaissance paintings also differed from medieval

ones. The Renaissance painting is laid out in a way

which tells a story, however the medieval one is

showing an event which is virtually a fact or a point.

The Renaissance painting shows more detail than

the medieval one and better use of color. The

people in the Renaissance painting are more

detailed and are more colorful. The purpose of

both paintings differed greatly. The Renaissance

painting focuses on telling a tale, everyday basic life

nature, religion and wonders but the medieval

painting consists of royalty, high class and

leadership because of its tone and theme.

In conclusion I would like to state that both

paintings obviously had different philosophies and

that Renaissance paintings were definitely based on

medieval ones.

Word Count: 509