Essay, Research Paper: Comparing Medieval And Rennaisance Paintings

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