The Era of Renaissance - Essay Example

The spiritual content of painting changed where subjects from Roman history and mythology were borrowed. Devotional art of Christian orientation became classically humanized. The classical artistic principles, sensible expressions including harmonious parts as well as logical postures of Greek and Roman Artistry were adopted by Italian artist during this period. The rebirth of art in Italy was associated with the rediscovery of ancient philosophy, literature, and science and the growth of practical methods of study in these fields, consequentially the subject matter relative to Greek and Roman history and mythology is usually injected as the core theme of almost all artistic masterpieces at this time.

Art became respected as a means for religious and social teaching, and a form of personal, visual expression. Both Italian renaissance and classic antiquity utilized human form as their subject but the prevalence of vibrant color and boldness was more depicted in the Italian renaissance art. Although much of the influence at this time was borrowed from the classic antiquities, what sets this era apart is the uniqueness brought about from blending the old and the new concepts. While it is true that the artistic talents of the Italian painters were made possible through the influences of many Greek artist who fled to Florence to seek refuge after the downfall of Constantinople, the improvements and modern touch of art depicted in most masterpieces during this time was mostly because of the imaginative perspectives of the artist honed and further developed through the newly acquired contemporary ideas and skills from Greek and Romans (Hunt. pg. 507).

Where as the classical antiquity was confined to walls of catacombs, the Italian renaissance art were revered by many in many great cathedral ceilings, and although depicting heavenly subjects, realistic stories were conveyed even including the characteristic improvement of human form which the Greeks did not have in their style. The distinction and improvement of the depiction of the human form in the classic antiquity and Italian renaissance art is also quiet evident in the manner with which the Italian sculptures utilizes the S shape curve which is a characteristic feature where figures are described as emotionally restrained, graceful, elongated with delicate features.

Sculpture further developed with the increasing accuracy of the human body. Idealized figures with the classic tradition of heroic nudity are commonly depicted (Hunt. pg.513).In the aspect of educational system, books and paintings contained many of the same stylistic qualities where manuscripts grew in demand as a form of social standard for those few literate where illustration figures are shown also in the S-shaped curve and are usually elongated with the modeling of garments to show volume (Hunt. pg.509).

Where as printing is the new form of keeping annals of history as suppose to the old norms of classic antiquities which requires several scribed to hand write the pertinent information, both Greece and Italy were similar in the sense that there is an immense need to improve intellect during this time. They differ in the sense that while it takes time to handwrite the information this requiring more time to transmit information, this is greatly improve with the introduction of paper and