Renaissance Art and Architecture

Essential Questions1. What factors made Italy the site for the creative flowering of Renaissance

artists and writers in the 14th and 15th centuries?

2. Why did Renaissance thinkers find it so attractive to turn to classical models from ancient Rome and Greece as guides in forming their own ideas and carrying out their own creative efforts?

3. Who were the greatest artists, architects, and writers of the Renaissance, and how did they get the support they needed to carry out their projects?

4. What key features of Renaissance art made it such a dramatic and innovative time for the arts in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries?

5. In what ways was humanism a departure from ways of thinking about human experience more typical of the Middle Ages?

6. In what ways did the Renaissance spirit shift as it moved north of Italy into other parts of Europe?

Giovanni Bellini, Sacra Conversazione

Background1050–1350

• Population growth

• Economic development

• City-states

1200–late 1500s

• Artistic achievements

Intellectual Developments

Titian, Assumption of the Virgin

• Humanism

• Revival of antiquity

• Importance of the individual

• Celebration of humanity

• Secular/worldly focus

Renaissance Italy

Florence

Renaissance Art:Techniques and Themes

• Increasing focus on secular rather than religious subjects

• Realistic-looking figures and scenes

• Perspective/depth

• Sense of movement, activity

• Symmetry/proportionality

Middle Ages Renaissance

Comparing Medieval Art and Renaissance Art

Giotto de Bondone, The Mourning of Christ

Masaccio, Tribute Money