Humanities 200
Essay Topic 1 Question #2
Naturalism is the style of art that details precision and accuracy in displaying things as they are. Artists during would use naturalism by taking realistic figures and depicting those figures in natural setting as realistically as possible. Prior to the Renaissance, artists maintained their dependence upon the ancient tradition of icon painting, mostly of the religious kind. Duccio di Buoninsega of Siena conveyed within his paintings early features of naturalism, which would invoke an expressive and spiritual seriousness to the viewer of these paintings. From his early work on out, Duccio displayed a progressive abandonment of the early forms of art. Displaying the stiff head and shoulders posture of tradition eastern art and beginning the innovating trend in paintings of displaying subtle coloring, curving outlines, and intimacy of gesture. Giotto di Bondone followed Duccio, by creating a new kind of pictorial art, mostly involving space with depth. With Giotto, he personally took the flat world of what was the thirteenth century art and then transformed it into a volumetric sphere for the real world. Finally with the work of Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, it resulted with a acumination of all the developments achieved in the arts of naturalism during the high Renaissance. Raphael artistry during the high Renaissance is heavy praised for its simplicity of composition, the clearness of form and its visual realization of its very humanist ideals.
Duccio, an artist during the pre-Renaissance era, mainly focused his artistic style of the Byzantine but he eventually would go towards the direction of that of involving subtle naturalism. Duccio’s work would be greater improved upon on later throughout Renaissance by various other artists during that era. Duccio would make a link between what he imaged in the spiritual world and real world of the viewer. Duccio’s painting, Madonna and