Renaissance
The artist of Primavera is Sandro Botticelli. Sandro Botticelli was a famous Florentine painter at the end of the 15th century and the last painter of the Florentine school in the early Renaissance. In this painting, characters are arranged in a citrus forest. Venus is one of these characters, and the little Cupid is above her. On the right side of the picture is the god of the west wind and the god of forest (the goddess of the earth or spring). On the left of Venus were the three graces, and on the far left stood the messenger, Morchuli. (Stokstad,634) Botticelli, in this painting, used the plane decoration of composition, so the number of people arranged in the appropriate position. All nine people are arranged from left to right in a row, without overlapping and interspersing. Also, proper movements are arranged according to their different roles in the painting.
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| Sandro Botticelli. Primavera Late 1470s or early 1480s. |
It was painted for Lorenzo of the Medici family, the ruler of Florence at
that time. He was rich enough to extend the family's political status, so he
arranged for his nephew Lorenzo di per Francesco to marry the daughter of a
rival family, Remillard. "Spring" was the commission he had asked
Botticelli to make for the marriage. Therefore, the theme of spring is love, but
it was a political marriage with no romantic beauty, so the painter chose to
create with mythological figures related to love. During the Renaissance,
people liked to show off their wealth, so many artists were hired to paint for
these rich people. This phenomenon shows that in the early Renaissance, the
once lofty theocracy began to disintegrate, God is no longer the object of fear and money gradually became the
dominant force in society.
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| Raphael，The School of Athens，1509-1511
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was an italian artist of the hign renaissance. The whole picture is set against the background of a tall building with a deep opening, depicting 57 famous people in 11 groups. At the center of the picture are Plato and Aristotle, Plato was pointing to the sky while Aristotle was looking to the earth; and they walk and talk, quoting scripture. Plato and Aristotle were flanked by people who were listening to the debates of the two masters. On Plato's left, Socrates, his great teacher, was in his habit of snapping his fingers and discussing something with a group of people, while the young soldier in armor and helmet opposite him did not seem to be listening to him attentively. Some say this armored man was a student of Aristotle, King Alexander. (Stokstad,665)
In the crowd to the left of the platform below the steps, the central figure is Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher, and mathematician, who is sitting there intently calculating the mathematical ratios that are in harmony with the music. A child holds up a piano board for him, and the diagram on it may have essential reference to Pythagoras' mathematical calculus; meanwhile, an older man is secretly copying his formula from the side. In the group to the right of the platform below the stairs, Archimedes, the balding mathematician, was the central figure, bent over the slab and drew geometric figures with his compass; Four young students were watching closely behind him as the crowned globe bearer was Ptolemy, Egypt's great geocentric astronomer; On the other hand, Zoroaster was a Persian prophet and Zoroaster. On the far right, Perugino, Raphael's teacher, and Sodom, Raphael's friend, the painter; Next to him was Rafael himself. On the whole, the characters walked, talked, argued, calculated, and pondered, all immersed in a thick academic atmosphere and free debate.
In 1509, Pope Julius ii hired the 26-year-old Raphael to decorate his Vatican palace. The murals are divided into four rooms. Raphael paints the fourth room with his students. The mural in that room is the School of Athens, which is the most outstanding mural in this group of paintings. Raphael's painting style absorbed the factors of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, and the painting creation tended to be integrated, which was also reflected in the school of Athens. The school of Athenian is based on the story of the Athenian school held by Plato. By recalling the highly ideal ancient golden age, the Athenian Academy expresses the relationship between the Renaissance and its worship, ancient Greece . The glorification of ancient Greece seems to recall the glorious ancient civilization, but it is, in fact, a challenge to the power of the church and the aristocracy, which represent the closure and control in 15th. This trend laid the ideological foundation for the later vigorous European capitalist revolution.
Quentin Massys, money changer and his wife, 1514
The money changer and his wife was painted by Renaissance painter Matsys Quentin, (1456 ~ 1530), Quentin Flemish painter. He became a painter of the Antwerp painters' guild in 1491 and had many apprentices. The husband and wife in the painting are absorbed in their business, and behind their actions, there are both practical and spiritual meanings. The wife put her hand on the open book, pinched the page she was turning over, which has the picture of Virgin Mary. she looked anxiously at the scale in her husband's side, a look on her face that showed she knew that business had no sacredness. it would be easy to jump to the con-clusion that this is a moral fable, Warning of the danger of losing sight (literally) of religious obligations because of a preoccupation with affairs of business. But the painting is not that simple. An inscription that ran around the Origi nal - frame quoted Leviticus so, - "You shall have hon - est balances and could weights" - claiming just business practices as a form of righteous living. Perhaps the paint - ing 's moral juxtaposes Not worldliness and "spirituality," but attentive and distracted devotional practice. "(Stokstad,716)
This picture reflects the development of the European capitalist economy durning Renaissance. The status of the church and the gods was still sacrosanct in people's minds, but with the rapid growth of commerce, the wealth in people's hands increased. Luxury items that once belonged only to the nobility and the church, such as the gorgeous clothes worn by the wife in the painting, could be bought with money. Although the bourgeoisie was still not strong enough to challenge the aristocracy and the church directly at that time, they accumulated their wealth and social power under the premise of obedience to the old order, as shown in this picture. When their economic status gradually surpassed that of the church and the aristocracy, they would no longer be full of awe and fear for the old order like the wife in the painting, Because at that time, it was against doctrine to make money by lending money. They would destroy the old order, take away the rights belonging to the king and the church, and even kill the aristocracy,(France, England) to establish representative government representing the interests of the bourgeoisie. 
Rembrandt van Rijn THE ANATOMY LESSON OF DR. NICOLAES TULP 1632.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) was one of the greatest painters of the 17th century in Europe and the most celebrated painter in Dutch history. Dr. Tulp, head of the surgeons’ guild from 1628 to 1653, sits right of center, while a group of fellow physicians gathers around to observe the cadaver and learn from the famed anatomist. Rembrandt built his composition on a sharp diagonal that pierces space from right to left, unit- ing the cadaver on the table, the calculated arrangement of speaker and listeners, and the open book into a dramatic narrative event.(Stokstad,758).The light came from the left and fell right on the body and all the faces of the characters so that they were painted more accurately. This kind of scene portraiture not only reflects the new requirements of the emerging Dutch bourgeoisie on painting but also shows the spirit of scientific exploration in that era.
What is more valuable than the expression of the person in the picture, or the dead body that looks like a real thing, is the reverence it expresses for science. Before the Renaissance, the study of corpses was forbidden by the church. However, with the development of the Renaissance, people's minds were liberated from traditional theology, and the study of human body was no longer taboo. It can be said that it is because people have a deeper understanding of the human body that the works created by artists become more and more like real people rather than dull puppets. As taboos have been broken, so has anatomy. The Renaissance freed previously imprisoned geniuses from the shackles that bound their talents, promoted the development of science and technology throughout Europe, and laid the foundation for the later industrial revolution. Renaissance is never a pure art movement, but the whole of Europe from the feudal era to capitalism, to the industrial age, to the beginning of age of discovery. It was the Renaissance that freed the shackles of thought, and Europe's economic, technological, and political talents exploded.
works cited:
Stokstad, Marilyn, and Michael Watt Cothren. Art History. Sixth ed., II, Pearson, 2018. wikipedia contributes. "money changer and his wife". wikipedia, the money chanager and his wife,17 March 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Money_Changer_and_His_Wife wikipedia contributes. "the school of athens". wikipedia, the school of athens, 14 October 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens |
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