Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino and Salvador Dali - Essay Example

?Comparison between the Renaissance artist and the twentieth century artist- Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino and Salvador Dali Raffaello Sanzio(1483-1520)was an excellent artist and an Italian painter of the so called high Renaissance. He studied the old paintings and works of Leonardo and Michelangelo which helped him improve his art and style. While being in Florence, Raffaello tried to imitate the coloring of Fri Bartolommeo of S. Marco and did his part by teaching him the methods of perspective. In his works, Raffaello imagines the feelings, e.g. grief of loving relations in carrying to burial the body of the loved one, honor, gracefulness. His paintings contain diligence, tenderness, expressions of the figures, the beauty of draperies and so on. He style Raffaello learned from Pietro when he was young was slight, dry and defective in design, and not being able to throw it off, he found it difficult to learn the beauty of nudes, and the method of difficult foreshortening of the cartoon of Michelangolo Buonattoty for the Hall of the Council at Florence. But with great effort, he managed to get rid of the Pietro’s style and reached Michelangolo’s which was full of difficulties. When Raffaello began to improve his style, he did not do it the way it should be done, but the way he saw his previous master Pietro do it, with natural grace. He compared the muscles of a dead men with those of the living. Later he realized how soft and fleshy parts should be made, the swelling, lowering and raising a part of the whole body, how the bones are composed, nerves and veins, and he became a master in all the parts, as any great painter should. However, in this area, he could not get close to the perfection of Michelangolo, and he realized that he does not necessary have to paint the nude figures, but that painting has a large field that he can fill out with good invention and order which deserves a great and skilled artist. He realized that he could enrich his works with variety of perspective, landscapes, a delicate and light treatment of the draperies, sometimes causing the figure to get lost in the darkness, and on the other hand, sometimes also to come into the clear light, making the figures more alive and realistic, making beautiful heads of women, children and old people endowing them with, for them, suitable movement. He also thought about how important is the flight of horses in the battle, as well as the courage of the soldiers, the knowledge of many kinds of animals, but most of all, the method of making men look more life-like when drawing portraits putting them into a relation with other things such as shoes, helmets, hair, beards, trees, caves, rain, clouds, night time, bright sun, fine weather, all kinds of hair styles, and all the other things that are the necessities of today’s painting. Realizing that he cannot be better than Michelangolo in some aspects, he did not imitate him, but tried hard to become the best in some other aspects, and in that way surpass Michelangolo. Having made this resolution and admitting that Fra Bartolommeo of S. Marso had a god painting method, solid design and coloring that is pleasant, although sometimes using shadows in a manner that is too free to obtain greater grief, Raffaello borrowed from him what he thought that would be useful for his own art. So he used a medium style in design and coloring and combined them with some of the best things of other masters. Furthermore, he formed one single style out of many that he borrowed from other painters, and that style was always considered as his own and even highly estimated by other artists. Raffaello learned the Florentine method of a composition in depth with pyramidal figure masses, and also, he made use of Leonardo’s chiasoscuro(strong contrast between light and dark). Moreover, he was influenced by his sfumato (use of fine, soft shading istead of line to delineate forms and features). He went beyond Leonardo in creating new figure types whose gentle faces reveal typically human sentiments that are raised to perfection. His Alba Madonna (1508; National Gallery, Washington) shows the calm, peaceful sweetness of the Florentine Madonnas, but at the same time shows the maturity of emotional expression and sophistication in the technique in which the poses of the figures are painted. The virgin’s pose is reminiscent to those of classical sculpture. Here the baby Christ accepts the cross of his life and his burden and this action seems to be well understood by his mother and his cousin. It was followed by the Madonna di Foligno (1510; Vatican Museum) , where oly figures seem to have a conversation and draw the audience into their discussion. The Virgin is sitting on clouds, holding esus, while surrounded by angels. They look down. Conti who is kneeling in a fine red cape,is presented by St. Jerome on the right with his lion, appealing for the Virgin's protection. On the left are the kneeling St. Francis of Assisi and St. John the Baptist, who is standing and wearing a tunic of skins.  and the Sistine Madonna (1513; Gemaldegalerie, Dresden), which consists of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child, Saint Sixtus, and Saint Barbara who is looking down at the little cherubs whose facial expression seems to imply boredom and restlessness. They all look like they are just waiting to complete their holy duties so they can be free to play. There is some kind of intrigue added to this scene. Both paintings show the richness of color and the new composition with a lot of boldness, which will be later typical for Raffaello in his Roman period. The theme that appears the most in the works of Raffaello very often revolve around religious themes, often depicting the Virgin Mary as his main character. The biggest difference between him and Dali is that Dali is more self-conscious and self absorbed, freely representing his emotions and desires, while Raffaello was more conservative and did not compromise himself that much through his work and his themes were more serious in the spiritual way. Salvador Dali (1904-1989) revolutionized the art of the twentieth century. His efforts to improve his techniques that he had already mastered did not bring him any fame. However, his goal was to fulfill the needs of his mental and social life by using a new form of art. That new form of art was Surrealism and it allowed Dali to express his sexual desires through art and at the same time change the way people viewed art. Dali was armed with a very rich imaginary baggage that was a result of his erotic desire for women. His precise style enhanced the nightmare of his paintings. One of his most prominent works during his Surrealist period is The Great Masturbator , which represents a large female figure with a fractured head which is surprisingly calm and shows deep emotions. The cracks on her face show physical exhaustion. As his style matured, Dali’s works were more and more affected by the concept of psychoanalysis influenced by the thoughts of Sigmund Freud. Dali’s works became shaped like dreamlike illustrations, which was clearly seen in the work which is considered to be the most famous, The Persistence of Memory , in which there are several clocks that are melted in a desert, while the water, probably an ocean, can be seen below the horizon. This dream contained a large part of his live as he would take midday rests in which he would encounter more and more dreams. However, his dreamlike style was in a way combined with his sexual desires to give a variety of works with different themes. In The Specter of Sex Appeal he depicts himself as a child who is watching a body of a woman that is brutalized and barely able to support herself with the sticks. Her head looks like it blends with the background. The woman is exhausted and tired of using crutches to help her support her back and arm. The dominant themes in Dali’s career revolved around his sexual desires in his childhood and also on the study of the unconscious mind. References The Specter of Sex Appeal retrieved from http://www.3d-dali.com/Tour/sexappeal.htm on May 05, 2011 The Persistence of Memory retrieved from http://abacus-gallery.com/reproduction/oil-painting/1264479307/Salvador-Dali/The-Spectre-of-Sex-Appeal-1934.html on May 05, 2011 The Great Masturbator retrieved from http://dali.urvas.lt/page01.html on May 05, 2011 Alba Madonna retrieved from http://www.lib-art.com/tag/biographer.html on May 05, 2011 Sistine Madonna retrieved from http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/raphael/p-raphae23.htm on May 05, 2011 Madonna di Foligno retrieved from http://www.parrocchiadellaguardia.it/storia/quadro_madonna/Madonna_di_Foligno.asp on May 05, 2011 Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech retrieved from http://thedali.org/history/biography.html on May 05, 2011 Raphael (Raffaello)  Sanzio retrieved from http://www.3d-dali.com/Artist-Biographies/Raphael_Sanzio.html on on May 05, 2011 Read More