Humanism In Renaissance Art
After the Medieval Times, came the Renaissance, the time when some of the world’s greatest artists were born, and when they created magnificent paintings that showcased the new and popular belief of humanism. The Medieval Times was a dull time; where everyone solely depended on religion and the church for everything. When the Renaissance came, people’s viewpoints changed, they finally stopped using religion to explain their life, and began humanism, an ideal that encourages science, art, and the idea that humans are magnificent creatures. Mostly every person from the Renaissance believed in the humanism in one way or another, even people of the once strict church. Famed artists, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci display their belief in humanism
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Michelangelo exhibits this belief in The Downfall of Adam and Eve, a tile on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The painting presents Adam and Eve before they eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge, looking healthy and casual, and after when God banished them from the Garden of Eden, where they look haggard and fearful. In both parts of the painting Michelangelo fully demonstrates the human body in a natural and realistic way. He does not make Adam and Eve any more beautiful than they should be, nor does he make them any uglier, he makes them look simply human. Similarly, Leonardo Da Vinci painted The Mona Lisa with the humanist idea of love for the human body. She is perfectly proportioned because of the golden ratio, is completely detailed, and Da Vinci’s use of shadows and shading can be clearly seen. Viewers can see that whoever modeled for the painting was wealthy because she follows the Renaissance fashion of shaving off their eyebrows, and she is plumper from having the money to be fed. However, Mona Lisa is tanner, which was not in “fashion” at the time, but it presents that Da Vinci used realism because he didn’t make her paler to fit in with the Renaissance idea of beauty. In the Middle Ages, almost every person in the artwork looks the same because everyone was made to fit the cookie-cutter idea of beauty. Conversely, the dawn of humanism during the Renaissance caused artists such as Michelangelo and Da Vinci to see humans as they really were and to paint them that
Michelangelo exhibits this belief in The Downfall of Adam and Eve, a tile on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The painting presents Adam and Eve before they eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge, looking healthy and casual, and after when God banished them from the Garden of Eden, where they look haggard and fearful. In both parts of the painting Michelangelo fully demonstrates the human body in a natural and realistic way. He does not make Adam and Eve any more beautiful than they should be, nor does he make them any uglier, he makes them look simply human. Similarly, Leonardo Da Vinci painted The Mona Lisa with the humanist idea of love for the human body. She is perfectly proportioned because of the golden ratio, is completely detailed, and Da Vinci’s use of shadows and shading can be clearly seen. Viewers can see that whoever modeled for the painting was wealthy because she follows the Renaissance fashion of shaving off their eyebrows, and she is plumper from having the money to be fed. However, Mona Lisa is tanner, which was not in “fashion” at the time, but it presents that Da Vinci used realism because he didn’t make her paler to fit in with the Renaissance idea of beauty. In the Middle Ages, almost every person in the artwork looks the same because everyone was made to fit the cookie-cutter idea of beauty. Conversely, the dawn of humanism during the Renaissance caused artists such as Michelangelo and Da Vinci to see humans as they really were and to paint them that