Account for the Centrality of Life Drawing as a Key Form of Training for Artists Since the Renaissance.
Account for the centrality of life drawing as a key form of training for artists since the Renaissance. Illustrate your answer with reference to at least THREE images/or photographs of life classes including Zoffany’s Royal Academy School, 1771.
The practice of life drawing has always been a strong aspect of training artists since the Renaissance age; it has not only provided training in the technical aspects of making a piece of art such as the handling of materials and learning to observe a subject in order to translate it into a picture but also the mental process of creating an image that is personal to the artist. Yet the position life drawing holds in the modern practice of art, while still of importance it is not the defining teaching. This essay will examine the rise of figure drawing and what has kept it in the curriculum of art for so long; yet also the obstacles it provided for some as well as what values it has and still does provide for the skills of artist and the visual arts.
The formal study of the nude as part of a curriculum in the teaching of the arts was established during the Renaissance in Italy from the 13th to the 16th centuries: the nude figure became a prominent subject in the Western artistic vision. The key concepts that produced and developed this style in Western art were the ideas of Humanism, a philosophy that was centred heavily upon achievements: what was and could be the potential of humanity and the importance of the human as an individual. Visually the art of the Renaissance was influenced by Classical Roman and Grecian sculpture, which placed a strong emphasis on the accuracy of proportions and realism of the human form. This desire for realism in Classical sculpture was a quality which Renaissance artists were keen to imitate, especially in an age when there was a collective eagerness to gain knowledge of the world through practices such as science and mathematics. Why couldn’t the world be explored though the medium of
The practice of life drawing has always been a strong aspect of training artists since the Renaissance age; it has not only provided training in the technical aspects of making a piece of art such as the handling of materials and learning to observe a subject in order to translate it into a picture but also the mental process of creating an image that is personal to the artist. Yet the position life drawing holds in the modern practice of art, while still of importance it is not the defining teaching. This essay will examine the rise of figure drawing and what has kept it in the curriculum of art for so long; yet also the obstacles it provided for some as well as what values it has and still does provide for the skills of artist and the visual arts.
The formal study of the nude as part of a curriculum in the teaching of the arts was established during the Renaissance in Italy from the 13th to the 16th centuries: the nude figure became a prominent subject in the Western artistic vision. The key concepts that produced and developed this style in Western art were the ideas of Humanism, a philosophy that was centred heavily upon achievements: what was and could be the potential of humanity and the importance of the human as an individual. Visually the art of the Renaissance was influenced by Classical Roman and Grecian sculpture, which placed a strong emphasis on the accuracy of proportions and realism of the human form. This desire for realism in Classical sculpture was a quality which Renaissance artists were keen to imitate, especially in an age when there was a collective eagerness to gain knowledge of the world through practices such as science and mathematics. Why couldn’t the world be explored though the medium of