Two Great Renaissance Artists

The Renaissance period is known as a period of the rebirth of Greek ideas. The works of this time were more individualized and the artists had more artistic freedom then were allowed in the Medieval or middle Ages. Two of the greatest individuals of the Renaissance time period were Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Not only was Da Vinci a great artist, he was also the best in many fields other than art. “Leonardo is often viewed as the archetype of the "Renaissance Man" because of his expertise and interest in many different areas, including art, science, music, mechanics, the arts of war, politics, philosophy, and nearly every other subject that mattered” (Wikibooks, 2010). Michelangelo Buonarroti is arguably one of the most inspired creators in the history of art and the most potent force in the Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent Western art in general. Both artists had multiple pieces of great art in this time period.
Michelangelo had plenty of influences. When he was young he would sketch things on his way to art class. He soon had lessons from a local artist who was also his art teacher named Francesco Granacci. Granacci worked with him for the next couple of years (Harris). He was amazed at how fast Michelangelo learned and how much he excelled compared to Granacci's other students (Ryan). Around age thirteen Michelangelo moved to Florence and began working as an assistant to Domenico Ghirlanaio, who was a very famous fresco painter in Florence (Cook). Ghirlandaio taught Michelangelo just about everything he knew about art. After one year of apprenticeship with Ghirlanaio, Lorenzo de' Medici, a very wealthy and famous artist, saw potential in Michelangelo and helped greatly in his success.
Medici let Michelangelo roam the gardens and examine all of the sculptures in the Classical statuary. It was at the statuary where Michelangelo began to learn the secrets of sculpting (Ryan). He taught himself by drawing statues and attempting to recreate them in clay. Not only was Michelangelo focusing on art, he was in contact with the most brilliant thinkers, artists, and writers of his day. This experience enriched his life and his consciousness, which also played a key part in developing the astonishing artist that he became.
The Pope Julius II fell in love with Michelangelo’s paintings and saw his talent. He forced Michelangelo to paint, instead of letting him sculpt. Michelangelo also spent much of his life studying nature and science in order to make his works of art as lifelike as possible. Michelangelo had his own special style and when he painted he usually painted people. Most of these people were nude. He also liked to paint scenes from the Bible. He often used Fresco painting. Fresco means to paint on wet plaster. Michelangelo was very talented when it came to sculpting. He often sculpted life like portraits. Leonardo DaVinci was born in Florence on April 15, 1452. He was the illegitimate son of a lawyer and a woman believed to be a servant in DaVinci’s grandparent’s house. “He was sent to be the apprentice to Amdrea del Verrocchio, one of the foremost artists in Florence” (Plumb, 1961). Verrocchio was Leonardo's first major mentor and instructor. He finished his apprenticeship in 1472; however, he stayed in Florence for another ten years. Not only was Da Vinci interested in the arts, he was also interested in mathematics and mechanics. He was especially interested in how living things moved (Plumb, 1961). In 1482, he left Florence and spent the next 20 years in Milan. Milan offered him more that he felt he could receive in Florence.
After he was done working with Verrocchio he went on to get an apprenticeship with a couple of other artists such as Giotto and Masaccio The thing with Leonardo is that his major influence was nature and what the eyes see. That's what he was all about. He considered the eyes to be the most important body part and he wanted to accurately depict what he saw in his work. While most other artists idealized everything, he wanted to paint what he actually saw. He studied people on the streets and things in nature which, to him, were the most beautiful things.
Leonardo da Vinci was and is renowned primarily as a painter and the works of art that Leonardo left behind are very few. He left us numerous masterpieces that we still study and marvel at today, but he never completed a statue and has only about a dozen finished paintings. He left behind many anatomical and mechanical drawing and thousands of sketches (Plumb, 1961). One such masterpiece, the 16th century oil painting of the Mona Lisa, also referred to as ‘La Giaconda’, is considered by the art world to be one of his most famous works. It is the most famous and most parodied portrait. The history of the Mona Lisa has long garnered much attention and stirred controversy with regard to the identity of the woman who sat for the painting.
This painting is so special because of the type of color that Da Vinci created. This type of painting is called Sfumato, which is a type of shading that allowed him to shade differently (Phaidon, 1994). The color is a darker Hue, which also makes the painting even more interesting and Da Vinci has used a large amount of warm color. The lines in this painting are very precise and on point. The Mona Lisa has a geometric shape to it, the woman being the center focusing point in the painting. This painting was created with a symmetrical balance and the rhythm of the painting is very flowing, only having one basic focusing point (Wikipedia , 2009). .
The painting was one of the first portraits to depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape. The enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The sensuous curves of the woman's hair and clothing are echoed in the undulating imaginary valleys and rivers behind her. The blurred outlines, graceful figure, dramatic contrasts of light and dark and overall feeling of calm are characteristic of Leonardo's style.
The Last Supper, also by da Vinci, is the most reproduced religious painting of all time. When da Vinci began the painting The Last Supper, he decided not to use the conventional fresco methods as this required that the painting be completed quickly, and it required the painter to work continuously. This was not how Leonardo wanted to work; he wanted to take his time and to reproduce his vision without the limitation of time. Leonardo developed a new technique that he would use to complete the painting. Throughout the ages, Leonardo has been criticized for the poor technique, but The Last Supper will always remain as one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.
St. John the Baptist is believed to have been da Vinci’s last painting. It is an oil painting on walnut wood. Completed from 1513 to 1516, when the High Renaissance was metamorphosing into Mannerism. The piece depicts St. John the Baptist in isolation. St. John is dressed in pelts, has long curly hair, and is smiling in an enigmatic manner which is reminiscent of Leonardo's famous Mona Lisa. He holds a reed cross in his left hand while his right hand points up toward heaven (like St Anne in Leonardo's cartoon The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist). It is believed that the cross and wool skins were added at a later date by another painter.
The pointing gesture of St. John toward the heavens suggests the importance of salvation through baptism that John the Baptist represents. The work is often quoted by later painters, especially those in the late Renaissance and Mannerist schools. The inclusion of a gesture similar to John's would increase the importance of a work with a religious conceit.
Leonardo was a great man of the Renaissance period. Although he did not leave behind many paintings, the ones that he did leave were great. In addition to his paintings, he was also very knowledgeable and made considerable contributions in other areas such as anatomy, mathematics, and astronomy. His influence on artists of the Renaissance period changed the say that paintings were completed. Without his influence and all his contributions in other areas, what we know in many of these areas today, would not be the same.
Michelangelo was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect and sculptor. Michelangelo was a disciplined artist and had a very versatile style. Michelangelo is responsible for the Statue of David in 1504. He sculpted The Pietà and Bacchus. His most popular painting however is the Sistine Chapel ceiling. This painting took approximately four years to complete. He also sketched, in red chalk, the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in 1564 before he died. It was discovered in the Vatican archives. His works were destroyed when he got older, so findings of his work are very rare. Michelangelo was Da Vinci’s rival and they were opposite painters.
His first masterpiece was the Pietà. The Pietà was a sculpture of Madonna holding Christ's lifeless body in her arms, it was made of marble (Bradbury). Michelangelo overheard a crowd of pilgrims discussing the Pietà and they didn't know who carved the beautiful statue. Michelangelo left without saying anything, but the next day one of the church administrators discovered a sash draped around the statue that said "Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florence, made this(Cook)." Another famous sculpture of Michelangelo's was Bacchus. The statue has Bacchus holding lion skin in his left hand, the symbol of death, and a bunch of grapes in his right hand, the symbol of life, from which the faun is feeding (Harris). This sculpture had a strong physical presence that was very rare in Rome. Bacchus was later placed in Galli's garden, without an arm, to look convincingly ancient (Harris). The most famous statue of Michelangelo's is David.
The statue of David is praised as one of the greatest pieces of art ever made along with its creator, Michelangelo. David is shown by Michelangelo as a lithe nude youth, muscular and alert, looking off into the distance as if sizing up the enemy Goliath. The fiery intensity of David's facial expression is termed terribilità, a feature characteristic of many of Michelangelo's figures and of his own personality. David, Michelangelo's most famous sculpture, became the symbol of Florence and originally was place in the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall. With this statue, Michelangelo proved to his contemporaries that he not only surpassed all modern artists, but also the Greeks and Romans, by infusing formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and meaning.
Michelangelo rarely painted, but when he did they turned out amazing. A very famous painting done by Michelangelo was the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Sistine Chapel was one of Michelangelo's most remarkable works, but there was a noticeable difference of what was painted by his apprentices after he died. The first time Pope Julius II tried to persuade Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, but Michelangelo complained that he was a sculptor, not a painter. After the pope continued to beg, Michelangelo told him he would paint if Julius expanded the original concept into a vast scheme covering five hundred twenty square meters. The pope gave in after much thought. The Sistine Chapel was named after Pope Sixtus IV and is used for meetings of the Conclave (Harris). Michelangelo painted nine stories from the bible, many saints, and many popes in the Sistine Chapel (Bradbury). There are also many paintings around them. The novels were shown in either one or two pictures and could be figured out without even knowing the stories. Some of the most known novels on the Sistine Chapel were the fall of man and the expulsion from paradise, the flood, the drunkenness of Noah, and the last judgment.
Even though he was unhappy with the outcome of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the ceiling turned out to be magnificent. The Sistine Chapel is in the palace of The Vatican in Rome. The ceiling is made up of scenes from the bible. Michelangelo took the text of the bible and painted it on the ceiling the way he interpreted it. According to Robert S. Liebert MD, "...the ceiling is an inseparable amalgam of the biblical text of Genesis, the sin and fall of man, the foretelling of redemption and Michelangelo's own imagination"(145).
It is believed that Michelangelo had a huge dislike for Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo was an entire decade older that Michelangelo and had already acquired his reputation as a very talented painter. In comparison, after Da Vinci achieved tonal unity, Michelangelo went in a different direction using Cangiantismo. Cangiantismo is the use of saturated colors with brilliant contrast to the backgrounds with varied and aggressive brushstrokes. Both artists had a love for the human form, Da Vinci expressed in his art as a divine spirituality, and Michelangelo delivered images that were forceful and dynamic, working with a fully saturated palette. (Einem, 1973)
Both Leonardo and Michelangelo were great men of the Renaissance period. Although Leonardo he did not leave behind many paintings, the ones that he did leave were great. In addition to his paintings, he was also very knowledgeable and made considerable contributions in other areas such as anatomy, mathematics, and astronomy. His influence on artists of the Renaissance period changed the way that paintings were completed. Without his influence and all his contributions in other areas, what we know in many of these areas today, would not be the same. Michelangelo was one of the most recognized sculptor, painter, writer, and poet. He was a true Renaissance man. One of his best works was the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Even though he was unhappy with the outcome of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the ceiling turned out to be magnificent. Both artists contributed greatly to the past without them we would not have the art we do today.

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