Painting And Experience In Fifth Century Italy By Baxandall

With the rise of humanism artists during the early renaissance began to depict lifelike human forms that had realistic proportions, facial expressions, and clothing. Artists started to acquire “modern” techniques in order to apply more life like and three-dimensional characteristics to their paintings. Artists started to study human and animal anatomy in order to really understand how to best portray their subject in their painting. Despite the fact that in the article Painting and Experience in Fifth Century Italy, Baxandall would say that in the early renaissance paintings that were painted with higher quality and material were thought to be more valuable than an individual’s skills. The creation of art began as an idea that
The patron is someone who asks and gives an artist an idea of something to paint and the patron would also sponsor/pay the artist to portray the idea into a painting. Baxandall describes the client as the “second party…an active, determining and not necessarily benevolent agent in the transaction of which the painting is the result”(1). The client would hold a contract (an agreement) with detailed demands that would hold three themes which the painter must follow: “(i) it specifies what the painter is to paint, in this case through his commitment to an agreed drawing; (ii) it is explicit about how and when the client is to pay, and when the painter is to deliver; (iii) it insists on the painter using a good quality of colours, specially gold and ultramarine. Details varied from contract to contract” (8). This concludes that a painter would be paid for their time, materials, and would be offered the superior types of resources needed. Cheaper painting according to Baxandall included “bells, marble paving, brocade hangings or other such gifts to a church were more expensive”(2). The quality of paint used was very important during the early renaissance and the quality of materials used would determine the worth of the paintings during the early renaissance. Higher quality materials showed sophistication and the use of ultramarine was a
In the article we again read about how the lives “of the artists become a metaphor for Florentine civic identity: modern, monumental, innovative and bold” (29). Heston’s Michelangelo embodies the “mythic spirit” of the renaissance Florence. Which in the article is stated to be the willingness to be self-critical. The myth of the creative genius is that everyone