Renaissance

If someone ever calls you a Renaissance man, take that compliment with a smile. A Renaissance man was considered a jack-of-all-trades, and for a very good reason. During the Renaissance period, the artists were not only artists, but poets, inventors, scientists, engineers, sculptors, musicians, mathematicians, and many other interesting, difficult careers. The four main artists of the time period were Michelangelo,Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, and Raphael, yet there were many other artists as well such as Durer and Botticelli. One of the main areas that holds Renaissance art is the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the walls and ceiling of this huge church. One painting in this chapel depicted the Great Flood that God sent amongst the sinners, only to save Noah. This painting does not hold much natural disaster, yet focuses on the human characteristics to portray their emotions on a higher level. Like other artwork form this time, the humans were painted idealized,showing off every muscle and curve. Theses people are not as idealized as the gods that were painted because they were sinners, having God's wrath shown upon them. In this particular painting, the eye is drawn to a father carying his son out of the rising ocean's depths. Not matter what is going on around them, this painting still has a sense of hope, the maybe-this-will-not-continue-to-happen sense.

Most of the artwork in this era was commissioned by churches and religious folk, therefore, most of the art held religious figures and symbols. Some were the following: the dove for the Holy Spirit and the shell for baptism and new life. One artist, Durer, was famous for beginning the self-portrait era. In our project to paint something inspired by another painting, mine was Self Portrait by Durer. This project was amazing, my favorite in the class by far. I absolutely love drawing, and it was one of the first times we were about to draw our project as apart of the result. This photo is mysterious and spoke to me, so I chose to transform it into one of my artist friends. I believe my project to be decent for the amount of time we had and the amount of effort put into it, and while I know it could have been better, I feel Durer's essence in the painting as well as my friends, which was what I was going for.