Discuss the relationship between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance - Essay Example

476 - 1453). In form and style, medieval art had normally been confined to subjects of chiefly religious worth, especially as Christianity struggled to cope during the Dark Ages due to barbarian invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire. At the time, the western civilization merely hoped for salvation from havoc and crises through the Roman Catholic Church and this event serves to justify how and why the advent of medieval art, which is Christian art by nature, owed most of its substance to the themes that speak of religious influence (Medieval Art).

As Roman Catholic Church portrayed a principal role in addressing the issues of hostility and brutality of men, the art history of the Middle Ages was inevitably led to depict the essence of Christianity in attempting to resolve the outcome of turmoil thereof. Faith and objects of Scripture, thus, became central to the core content of the medieval art which includes illuminated manuscripts, fresco and panel paintings, embroidery and tapestry art, mosaic, and tessera. Bronze art, ceramic art, as well as metalwork by silversmiths and goldsmiths account for the significant part of the identity and shape of the medieval art whose artists were highly disposed to create pietistic structures such as those inspired by biblical images.

The period further consisted of schemes which brought about models of scriptural beings that were designed via architectures of Romanesque and of Gothic fashion. ‘Renaissance Art’, on the other hand, emerged the time when people of Europe were enlightened by the principle of humanism after all the unfortunate occurrences in the Middle Ages. It blossomed to embody the later historical art period which is characterized by new technique and invention toward a form or style meant to express ample departure from medieval art.

Based on the world history, in general, Renaissance (14th – 17th century) pertains to the era of Enlightenment otherwise understood as the Golden Age or the great span in which European nations gradually learned to leave behind brutish human ways and engage in higher order of intellect as human beings capable of developing a moral society. Human endeavors in the West brought in a number of very indispensable discoveries that sustained the foundation and richness of knowledge in literature, philosophy, and science though religion took on paths toward reform and under these circumstances was the later historical art period given birth.

With Renaissance art, Greco-Roman paintings and sculptures resurfaced to exhibit an artistic evolution that defied former conventions. While the medieval art focused on the symbolist approach of painting and sculpting animal and mythological figures in muted color, the Renaissance art replaced the idea of symbolism with the realization that a human subject of art in three dimensions would promote the value of man in the realm of intelligent existence and journey of change. Artists of the Renaissance added volume to the work and refined details which the artists of the Middle Ages overlooked especially in the aspect of designating visual elements appropriately so as to convey more of nature, sentiment, and thought through the art piece.

Apparently, the humanist perspective of art in the Renaissance was adapted to in the course of enlightening men about the power of the