Two Artists And One Great Age
The great age, Renaissance was a time when old beliefs were tested. It was a period of intellectual ferment that prepared the ground for the thinkers and scientists of the 17th century. It was an age that bore two great artists: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Leonardo was not a prolific painter like his fellow artists. He was a kind of intellectual painter, a painter who thought a great deal about nature and about how to represent it in art before he picked up the brush. Yet, one might attribute that quality to Michelangelo as well who was clearly a deep thinker. In looking at the works of these artists, their driven personalities and great accomplishments, one sees many similarities. However, they chose different techniques and different mediums. Further, Da Vinci was more of a scientist whereas Michelangelo was more of a loner who was devoted to the love of art and sculpture. Nevertheless, the paintings, statues and unfinished designs created by these two solitary often-abrasive artists are among the most beautiful in the world. Their work is important because it interweaves past revolutionary ideals with modern age of skepticism. If one person could be singled out as the essence of the Renaissance it would be Leo
Michelangelo similarly to Leonardo da Vinci seemed to thrive on challenge and difficulty in work. They thought that man had been blinded for too long, and they did something about it. His painting often lacked a background and he depicts the human form in strong three-dimensional renderings. These studios, however, were the meeting places of the great minds of the day. He was a painter, scientist, engineer and poet. Known as chiaroscuro, this technique gave his paintings the soft, lifelike quality that made older paintings look not proportional and flat. Verocchio's specialty was perspective, which artists had only recently begun to get the hang of, and Leonardo quickly mastered its challenges. He saw the human form through the sculptor's eyes. He was the first artist to study the physical proportions of men, women and children and to use these studies to determine the "ideal" human figure. Leonardo made contact with intelligent men and acquired the skills of scientific inquiry as well as receiving the finest training available in painting and sculpture. His paintings were often referred to as painted sculpture. It dawned on him that objects were not comprised of outlines, but were actually three-dimensional bodies defined by light and shadow. This technique, called sfumato, was originally developed by Flemish and Venetian painters, but Leonardo transformed it into a powerful tool for creating atmosphere and depth. Like da Vinci, Michelangelo is considered one of the greatest examples of the Renaissance man. This call to objectivity became the standard for painters who followed in the 16th century.
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