Renaissance Paintings

Art was dominated chiefly by the Christian church throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance period. Initially, the Christian art was tender and human but eventually the organised theology had an adverse effect on art and it became a vehicle of dogma.

The church patronised art on condition that be symbolic of moral virtues and mysteries of the faith. They endeavoured to make the work appear something more sacred in itself rather than a medium to express an ideal or to portray a science.

The churchmen aimed to widen the line between art and life, to recoil in horror from realism, the human body, and the whole external world. Art tended to become hard, conventional and grotesque under such restrictions. The spirit of humanism required a more uncomplicated and restrained art than what had been typical of the Middle Ages.

The revival of art in Italy began as a response to the domination of the Byzantine tradition. Cimabue (1240-1302) and Giotto (1276-1337) paved the way for the establishment of a new school. Giotto meticulously used his sense of humour in his paintings. He dextrously combined homely incidents with religious themes and took a long step from the formalized technique of previous painting towards a purer form of naturalism.

Paintings were comparatively less influenced by classical works than were architecture and sculpture. The artists of Renaissance had an opportunity to create the original as the paintings of ancient Greece and Rome were appalling. Though the subject matter was distinctly Christian, still the spirit of humanism prevailed in the paintings of this era.

Leonardo-da-Vinci

In Italy, the Renaissance painting received its original impetus and became the representative of the spirit of the Renaissance. There were many painters who hold an important place in the pre-Renaissance period. However, the brilliance of Raphael and Leonardo-da-Vinci overshadowed all of them.

Leonardo-da-Vinci (1452 – 1519) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of “unquenchable curiosity” and “feverishly inventive imagination”. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

His work of genius ‘monalisa’ has become a symbol of mysterious charm. It stands without a rival among portraits, in its beauty of posture, grace of fine raiment and strongly interesting background of pools, streams and crags.

The ‘last super’ is one of the most outstanding studies of character in all paintings and even in its present wrecked condition, has impelling beauty, Christ, surrounded by his disciples, has just announced that one of them will betray him. The scene is living drama. The master’s face is serene, but the psychological effect of the charge is plainly written on the face of each disciple, according to his individual nature.

In ‘The virgin of the rocks’, the virgin and child with Saint Anne create an impression of lovely mystery and rare inward beauty of Leonardo’s painting.

His most discussed and popular works are

• The Baptism of Christ (1472-1475)
  
• Annunciation (1475-1480)
  
• The Last Supper (1498)
  
• Monalisa (1503/1507)
  
• Vitruvian Man (1490)
  

Raphael

Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect, whose work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of the renaissance period.

With the aim of portraying the beauty of a mother and the loveliness of a child, he chose the most beautiful women he could find as models. While the spirit of his work was secularised, he achieved a rare sense of beauty. He died when he was only 37, but he created a number of great paintings. ‘Sistine Madonna‘ is considered as his most famous creation because of its beauty of composition and its lifelike charm.