ArTHiStOry 9: Renaissance Art

Renaissance Art

As we know the meaning of renaissance is the rebirth or revival of the medieval age of Europe back then. The Renaissance also is the period of European history marking the waning of the Middle ages and the rise at the modern word, usually considered as the beginning in Italy in the 14th century. The spirit, culture, art, science and thought of this period. Characteristics of the Renaissance are usually considered to include intensified classical scholarship and geographical discovery, a sense of individual human potentialities and the assertion of the active and secular over the religious and contemplative life. Beside that, Known as the Renaissance, the period immediately following the Middle Ages in Europe saw a great revival of interest in the classical learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. Against a backdrop of political stability and growing prosperity, the development of new technologies including the printing press, a new system of astronomy and the discovery and exploration of new continents was accompanied by a flowering of philosophy, literature and especially art. Thus, when it came up with art the definition of it is  painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature produced during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe under the combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man. Scholars no longer believe that the Renaissance marked an abrupt break with medieval values historical sources suggest that interest in nature, humanistic learning, and individualism were already present in the late medieval period and became dominant in 15th- and 16th-century Italy concurrently with social and economic changes such as the secularization of daily life, the rise of a rational money-credit economy, and greatly increased social mobility. Artists begins in the late 14th century (1370) and includes famous painters and sculptors. Back then they have an artist such as Leone Battista Alberti (1404–1472) Fra Angelico (c. 1395 – 1455) Biagio d'Antonio (1446 – 1 June 1516) Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) Donatello (c. 1386 – December 13, 1466) Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) Michelangelo (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564) Raphael (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520). 

Gattamelata on horseback, bronze sculpture by Donatello, 1447–53.

Gattamelata, bronze statue of the Venetian condottiere Erasmo da Narni (popularly known as Gattamelata, meaning “honeyed cat”) by the 15th-century Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It was completed between 1447 and 1450 but was not installed on its pedestal in the Piazza del Santo in front of the Basilica of Sant’Antonio in Padua, Italy, until 1453. The statue established a prototype for equestrian monuments in the West. This sculpture shown a story of a greatest soldier. After Erasmo of Narni's death in 1443, according to John Julius Norwich, the Republic of Venice, as a sign of gratitude and respect, paid for a sculpture in his honor. it is the earliest surviving Renaissance equestrian statue and the first to reintroduce the grandeur of Classical equestrian portraiture.After its conception, the statue served as a precedent for later sculptures honoring military heroes.The statue, as were all bronze statues of this time, was made using the lost waxmethod. The statue sits on a pedestal, and both the condottiero and his horse are portrayed in life size. Instead of portraying the soldier as larger than life, as in the classical equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, where a sort of hierarchy of size demonstrates the subject's power, Donatello used emotion, position, and symbolism to convey the same message. Thus, Donatello makes a statement of the power of the real-life individual; he does not need to embellish or make grander whom Gattamelata was the simple depiction of the real man is enough to convey his power.