Italian Renaissance Urban Architecture - Essay Example

“The term ‘Renaissance’ might now be defined as a model of cultural history in which the culture of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe is represented as a repudiation of medieval values in favor of the revival of the culture of ancient Greece and Rome” (Campbell, 2004: v-vi). This suggests that the definition of art that emerged during the Renaissance differed significantly from the accepted definitions applied to art during the Middle Ages. However, the word ‘Renaissance’ itself means “rebirth” and it was applied to the ideas of artistic renewal that took place in this time period as the people of Italy and other nations began rediscovering the skill of the ancient world that represented for them a golden age of shared culture, reason, and creativity.

This renewal and rebirth are said to have taken place in all the arts, including the ultimate expression of art, architecture. As the structural ruins of the ancient world were being rediscovered and the principles of science were again coming to light heading into the 1400s, the Italian Renaissance was born. The focus provided during the Renaissance had a different approach from the approach of their predecessors, as the art created during the Renaissance reflected ancient myths and legends as well as contemporary thought and Christian ideals.

As the church simultaneously underwent a period of Reformation, rejecting the focus on material splendors, such as the gold-plated iconography, and turning instead to its simpler, purer early forms, many artists during the Renaissance found themselves pulled between Christianity and paganism, heaven and earth, and found a way to express this conflict in the magnificent works of art and architecture they produced. The artists of the Italian Renaissance were given greater abilities to communicate with their audiences not only in subject matter and the application of scientific principles but also in that they were working with a more educated audience capable of understanding the finer nuances of these works.

The influences of the ancient Greeks and Romans on the development of visual art in the form of paintings and sculpture during the Italian Renaissance have been well-documented.