Lesson 2 - What Changed?
By now we now that the Renaissance was a rebirth that occurred throughout most of Europe. It was a period in which Europe experienced financial, artistic, social, scientific and political growth. This was a huge change, because in the Middle Ages people had been mostly concerned with the church and religion. People died young and often without warning so everyone's activities centered around getting to heaven rather than life here on earth.
Much of the financial growth that occurred during the Renaissance was used to support the creation of art and architecture. New materials, subjects and techniques established during the Renaissance remain with us today. New trade routes across the Atlantic Ocean aided by innovations in navigation and cartography led explorers to sources of exotic foods, spices, silks, gold and silver. Significant inventions and advancements were made in mathematics, machinery, medicine, astronomy and physics.
But now the question is: What really changed?
We’ll go over some of the bigger changes, but most of these subjects will be dealt with in more detail in later lessons.
Much of the financial growth that occurred during the Renaissance was used to support the creation of art and architecture. New materials, subjects and techniques established during the Renaissance remain with us today. New trade routes across the Atlantic Ocean aided by innovations in navigation and cartography led explorers to sources of exotic foods, spices, silks, gold and silver. Significant inventions and advancements were made in mathematics, machinery, medicine, astronomy and physics.
But now the question is: What really changed?
We’ll go over some of the bigger changes, but most of these subjects will be dealt with in more detail in later lessons.
Changes in Art
The Renaissance was a time of great innovation in the art of portraiture — a drawing, painting, or other representation of someone's face. Before the Renaissance most Europeans thought that a work of art should only represent heavenly figures of the church — Christ and his holy family and saints. But during the Renaissance people began to see themselves as worthy of portraits, and artists began to learn the skills needed to create a likeness of a real person sitting in front of them. But portraits in the Renaissance represented more than just what a person looked like. Eventually Renaissance portraits began to represent a person's character, and how the artist felt about that person.
Assignment
Write a paragraph of 100-200 words about this painting.
Make sure to include the following: Is this a typical painting for the Renaissance? - Give at least two reason why you think so. Also include one reason why this might not be a typical Renaissance portrait. You can use the text below for more research on this topic. Include this paragraph on your website for your final product. |
Imagine that you never saw a picture of anyone you knew. No photographs of friends and family, no advertising posters or billboards, no one familiar on television or in the movies, no painted or sculpted portraits of real people, only people who no one had seen for centuries like Jesus and the saints. That's what life was like in Europe before the Renaissance. The portrait that we know today, a picture that captures the likeness of a person, was revolutionary during the Renaissance.
1200 years before the Renaissance (around 100 A.D.), portraits of the rulers of ancient Rome were sculpted on metal coins and spread throughout the countryside. Coins were easy to carry and easy to distribute, reaching citizens far and wide to announce and identify images of the leaders of Rome. Once ancient Rome stopped producing these images, portraiture in Europe disappeared until Italians first began to represent images of real people in the 1300s. They modeled the portraits on the coins recovered from ancient Rome. In Florence artists like Giovanni del Biondo began to create likenesses of real people in their pictures, in profile, just as in the Roman coins.
Beginning in the 1430s, artists in Flanders began painting portraits of sitters turned in three-quarter view. When these paintings reached Florence, they were very much admired. Unlike the profile, which did not add much to the individuality of the portrait's subject, the three-quarter pose broke down the barriers between the subject and the viewer by allowing the subject to look out of the portrait directly at the viewer.
This new communication between the subject and the viewers of the portrait opened the door to portraiture that explored the character of a person as well as the way he or she looked. A portrait of a person's face became a metaphor for the person's self, and to have your portrait painted, meant your image might live beyond you. The idea was so appealing that merchants and tradesmen, not just royalty and church leaders, began to commission portraits of themselves and their families.
The role of the artist changed as well; artists needed the ability to capture a pleasing likeness of a real person rather than imagine the likeness of a saint. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan from 1466 to 1476, sent his court painter to France to make a portrait of a princess of Savoy he was thinking of marrying. The woman in the portrait was so beautiful that the Duke married her by immediately authorizing a substitute to stand in his place in France. When the new bride arrived in Milan, the Duke's court reported that she was even more beautiful than her picture, and younger looking too! The artist who was sent to France to paint a portrait of the princess knew that to disappoint the Duke with a portrait more beautiful than the real princess would risk his position as court painter.
At the beginning of the Renaissance, most patrons, like the Duke of Milan, provided detailed instructions to artists about how the art they were paying for should look. As the Renaissance continued, artists began to assert their own views about art and their own independent ideas and styles. An artist of today, valued for their original creativity and individual artistic vision, has the Renaissance to thank for his or her independence.
During the Renaissance, artists began to paint portraits of themselves to advertise their skill and promote their images as talented and sensitive observers. The new Renaissance innovations in portraiture spread all over Europe and the portraiture that developed in the Renaissance remains much the same today. While we may use new materials and techniques like photography or video, capturing the essence of another person, both the way they look and the kind of person they are, is an idea that began in the Renaissance.
1200 years before the Renaissance (around 100 A.D.), portraits of the rulers of ancient Rome were sculpted on metal coins and spread throughout the countryside. Coins were easy to carry and easy to distribute, reaching citizens far and wide to announce and identify images of the leaders of Rome. Once ancient Rome stopped producing these images, portraiture in Europe disappeared until Italians first began to represent images of real people in the 1300s. They modeled the portraits on the coins recovered from ancient Rome. In Florence artists like Giovanni del Biondo began to create likenesses of real people in their pictures, in profile, just as in the Roman coins.
Beginning in the 1430s, artists in Flanders began painting portraits of sitters turned in three-quarter view. When these paintings reached Florence, they were very much admired. Unlike the profile, which did not add much to the individuality of the portrait's subject, the three-quarter pose broke down the barriers between the subject and the viewer by allowing the subject to look out of the portrait directly at the viewer.
This new communication between the subject and the viewers of the portrait opened the door to portraiture that explored the character of a person as well as the way he or she looked. A portrait of a person's face became a metaphor for the person's self, and to have your portrait painted, meant your image might live beyond you. The idea was so appealing that merchants and tradesmen, not just royalty and church leaders, began to commission portraits of themselves and their families.
The role of the artist changed as well; artists needed the ability to capture a pleasing likeness of a real person rather than imagine the likeness of a saint. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan from 1466 to 1476, sent his court painter to France to make a portrait of a princess of Savoy he was thinking of marrying. The woman in the portrait was so beautiful that the Duke married her by immediately authorizing a substitute to stand in his place in France. When the new bride arrived in Milan, the Duke's court reported that she was even more beautiful than her picture, and younger looking too! The artist who was sent to France to paint a portrait of the princess knew that to disappoint the Duke with a portrait more beautiful than the real princess would risk his position as court painter.
At the beginning of the Renaissance, most patrons, like the Duke of Milan, provided detailed instructions to artists about how the art they were paying for should look. As the Renaissance continued, artists began to assert their own views about art and their own independent ideas and styles. An artist of today, valued for their original creativity and individual artistic vision, has the Renaissance to thank for his or her independence.
During the Renaissance, artists began to paint portraits of themselves to advertise their skill and promote their images as talented and sensitive observers. The new Renaissance innovations in portraiture spread all over Europe and the portraiture that developed in the Renaissance remains much the same today. While we may use new materials and techniques like photography or video, capturing the essence of another person, both the way they look and the kind of person they are, is an idea that began in the Renaissance.
Vocabulary
There are some more difficult words underlined in this text. Take a look at those words and see if you understand what they mean or if you can guess their meaning by looking at the text and the sentence the word is in. Once you feel a little bit more confident with those words, see if you can pass the test below this text. But watch out, you are also expected to still remember last lesson's vocab.
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Video
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Now it’s time to watch another video. In this video a lot of things you already learned are repeated. However, there are also a couple of new things mentioned.
Write down the following: - A change in art you already heard of. - Two changes in art that are new for you. - A change in a different area (so, not art) that you already knew. - A change in a different area (so, not art) that you didn’t know yet. So, after watching this video you should have written down five things that changed during the Renaissance! |