Expression of Renaissance Ideals throught the Art of the Period :: European Europe History

Expression of Renaissance Ideals throught the Art of the PeriodThe humanist and secularist beliefs of religion, individuality, and antiquity were evident in the style and illustration of Italian paintings and sculptures in the High Renaissance era. A deep sense of piety, Greek and Roman philosophy, and secularism, can be found in nearly all Renaissance paintings and sculptures, and the take of thought in Renaissance society that regarded the artist as genius contributed to all of these items. Historically, religion is the defining factor of nearly all paintings in novel and medieval European history. The Last Supper by Leonardo, The School of capital of Greece by Raphael, Michelangelos huge sculpture of the ancient Hebrew king David, Giottos paintings of the Virgin Mary and nonsuch Francis of Assisi, and Masaccios The Holy Trinity serve as an infinitesimally small sample of the vast selection of religiously inspired paintings, frescos, sculptures, and architectural endeavors create d by Renaissance artists. The School of Athens by Raphael is an artistic representation of the beliefs and interpretations of the Renaissance humanist philosophers such as Petrarch and Drusus. Great classical mathematicians such as Pythagoras stand under the statue of the Greek goddess of reason, Athena, objet dart intellectuals such as Socrates teach on the right, under the statue of the Greek patron of poetry, Apollo. This fresco also illustrates the existence of an intellectual community of painters, sculptors, and leaders such as Michelangelo and Leonardo, who exist in the painting as Greek philosopher Heraclitus and Plato, respectively. This select group of individuals was in fact the majority of the thinking power of the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci represents most strongly the secularist style in Renaissance art. His painting of The Last Supper shows the very strained emotions of Jesus apostles when he informs them that he is to be betrayed. The lines of emotion an d the expressions on the apostles faces distinctly depict the secularist real, the non-exaggerative, worldly style of secularism exhibited through the writings of Boccaccio and Lorenzo Valla. Michelangelos dome for Saint Peters Basilica and the roof of the Sistine Chapel display the secularist attitude the Roman Catholic church building adopted in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The fact that the Catholic Church, the wealthiest institution in the world, sponsored this art shows the elitist status that artists must have assumed in the Renaissance, and how the church supported the belief that the hand of God worked through the hands of the artists.