Humanities, Discuss the Relationships Between Two Historical Art Periods
The Renaissance and Ancient Greece
The social order is constantly experiencing progress as a result of its tendency to move forward by making use of earlier ideas. The masses generally modify earlier ideas with the purpose of creating new ones, as each period throughout history was inspired from period before it. The classical period was one of the most influential eras in the history of mankind and it is only safe to say that it inspired a series of attitudes in the Western world. Early Greek history has fueled thinking in several domains and much of the ideas present in the contemporary society originate there.
Classical Greece marked a period of maturity when regarding matters both from an intellectual and from an artistic point-of-view. Athens and Sparta experienced significant cultural achievements during the period and secured their position in the Hellenistic world by concepts that were revolutionary for the time. It was obvious, by the fifth century B.C., that conditions had changed and that the Greek community was determined to change much of its thinking. "Greek artists of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. attained a manner of representation that conveys a vitality of life as well as a sense of permanence, clarity, and harmony" (The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480 -- 323 B.C.)).
Bronze was often the choice of artists when considering statues, as they expressed much interest in its ductility and in the fact that it could be used to create beautiful forms. Even with this, there are very few fifth century B.C. sculptures in the present,...
As artists struggled to create artwork that was as beautiful as it could possibly be, they started to focus on devising effective methods to represent the human body more realistically. These artists wanted concepts like clarity and harmony to be dominant ideas in their works and got actively involved in making great achievements in representing the body, both with clothes and without clothes, and both at rest or moving.
Vase painters like Douris, Makron, and Kleophrades played important roles in assisting society experience progress and they virtually enabled the masses to focus on the complexity of the human mind while trying to find ways to make true representations of the human body.
The Renaissance period was meant to mark the fact that people wanted to go back to their roots by focusing on uninhibited periods that actually encouraged creativity of the highest levels. "It was in Italy, surrounded by the ruins of the ancient world, that men first dreamed of reviving the spirit of classical antiquity" (Graham-Dixon 12). People practically came to the conclusion that their society was negatively affected by the Dark Ages and that it was essential for them to develop ways of combating this concept.
Individuals during the Renaissance believed that the best method to raise public awareness while influencing the masses to focus on the importance of art was to search for the lost…
