Renaissance Art Research Paper

An In Depth Look At Renaissance Principles The Renaissance was an explosion of art, science, literature, and architecture. Thousands of ideas, new and old, were introduced to brilliant minds and influenced some of the greatest works of art in history. New advances in technology allowed for magnificent accomplishments such as the Dome in Florence, and old schools of thought reintroduced perspective and naturalism into art. Many schools of thought clamored for attention in the Renaissance, and three in particular influenced the humanities in this period: individualism, naturalism, and humanism. Perhaps one of the most enduring schools of thought that came from the Renaissance, individualism continues to dominate Western thinking. Individualism
Scientific naturalism is the study and development of techniques to make art look more realistic and detailed. Artists did this by rendering atmospheric perspective, linear perspective, and detailed expressions of forms in paintings. This first technique, atmospheric perspective, is not present in most European art before the Renaissance. Backgrounds were all treated similarly and seemed to distort the perspective. However, true atmospheric perspective is displayed in Masaccio’s “The Tribute Money” quite excellently. As you move into the background, the sky and mountains seem to really be further away from each other. This is achieved by altering color and blurring lines and shapes. This technique was employed in numerous works of art, especially in landscape paintings, during the Renaissance. Another important technique from scientific naturalism is linear perspective. Before the Renaissance, paintings had unrealistic figures and unnatural spaces. Figures were unnaturally big and could not fit into their surroundings correctly. Pre-Renaissance, artists began experimenting with perspective, and they came close but never quite mastered the technique leading to paintings with multiple points of perspective. Linear perspective was mastered during the Renaissance, and Masaccio’s “The Tribute Money” exemplified it. Perfect orthogonals define the building on the right and the painting leads our eye to the vanishing point on Christ’s head (Masaccio’s The Tribute Money). Linear perspective gave paintings a finer sense of space and size which made them more realistic. The final ideal in scientific naturalism was the attention of detail in individuals. Pre-Renaissance, artists painted in a style that elongated figures and made them look unnatural. Unimportant figures also had undistinguishable features. But once scientific naturalism began to take hold during the Renaissance, more