Examples Of Individualism In The Italian Renaissance

A.P. European History The Italian Renaissance was a time of rebirth in which many new ideas arose. People’s ideas of what is most important as well as what is acceptable were changing with new information. Art of the period began to change along with most of the other topics. The artistic ideals that are most evident in the time of the Italian Renaissance include individualism, secularism, and humanism. Individualism can be considered as valuing one person over the whole. Secularism began to occur when the people became less immersed in religion, and became interested with other topics. Humanism was the idea that people should strive to educate themselves in the classics, and much of the time this would involve a return to Greco-roman
All of the paintings and artworks up to this point had been very much religiously centered. Masaccio’s The Holy Trinity was one of the first examples of individualism being shown in artwork. In this painting, the patrons were incorporated into an interpretation of the father, the son, and the holy ghost. Another artist of the time who showed individualism in their art is Lippi. Lippi’s Madonnas were portraits of the virgin Mary, but they were based on real women and the had much more emotion in their faces. This idea of painting pictures of people with no real religious meaning became popular and this was called portraiture. More and more people were commissioning artists to paint portraits of them, and artists were getting better at accurately portraying people. Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper is one more example of the way that artists had become familiar with reflecting people’s emotions on their faces. In the painting, he gives each person individually a very detailed emotion on their face showing their reaction to the scene of the
Botticelli showed this return in his Primavera as well as The Birth of Venus. Both of these paintings had to do with Greek mythology, and they featured nude humans. Accurately portraying the human nude and attempting to understand human anatomy were both very characteristic of Humanism. Lippi and Masaccio both also used Greco-roman architecture in their paintings. Masaccio’s The Holy Trinity featured Romanesque arches and columns; this had to do with the idea of returning to antiquity which stemmed from Humanism. Brunelleschi was commissioned by the Medici family to construct a dome which could be placed free-standing on top of the Florence Cathedral. Before Brunelleschi came along with this knowledge of Greco-roman architecture, the cathedral stood