Italian and Northern European Renaissance:

¶ … Italian and Northern European

Renaissance: Culture And The Arts

By the middle of the fifteenth century A.D., following the social and religious repression of the Medieval and Gothic periods, all of Europe, from the northern regions of the Netherlands and southward into Italy, experienced a great renaissance in thought, culture and the arts, based mostly upon the development of humanism and the support of a number of wealthy and influential leaders and patrons. Under the sponsorship of local rulers, the cities of Florence and Rome became important cultural centers for the arts, symbolized by new interests in literature, the creation of artistic academies and the introduction of the printing press. Also at this time, a new age of navigation, discovery and exploration commenced, all of which paved the way for new ways of thinking, dressing, speaking and learning without the infringement of the church and its non-secular advocates.

Between the years 1495 and 1527, a series of powerful popes created a new social and cultural renaissance in Italy by embellishing cities like Rome and Florence with great works of art and by inviting artists from all over Europe to literally transform the continent from a church-centered to a humanistic-centered society, where all men and women could live and think as they pleased without being persecuted by the church and its ancient dogma. As to art, the period known as the Renaissance produced works of such power and magnitude that later generations of artists became inspired to reproduce the various styles to suit their own social and cultural environments. The art of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Titian was utterly unique as compared to what was produced in earlier periods; in essence, these artists came into their own as master of the fine arts and created a new profession, one symbolized by self-expression and filled with reflections of their own cultural environments.

At about the same time, the lands beyond the Alps were still immersed in the trappings of the Gothic style which persisted in architecture, painting and sculpture well into the sixteenth century A.D.. Part of the reason for this is due to the fact that artists in northern Europe had never truly known classical antiquity as had those in Italy and elsewhere in southern Europe. In Italy, the remains of the classical world were everywhere, especially those of the Romans. However, much like the Renaissance experience in Italy, northern painters and those who patronized the arts developed a new social/cultural structure which broke away from the confinements of the Middle Ages.

The nobles and the clergy continued to rule, but with the creation of a middle class, what were known as guilds came about through which artists obtained commissions, especially related to oil painting. Culturally, the development of northern European art was not unlike that of Italy, particularly when powerful princes created individual states based on wealth and leisure which encouraged the growth of the arts based on commerce and on the patronage of the rich merchants who controlled these states.

This new and versatile artistic medium was exactly right for the formal intentions of the northern painters who wished to create sharp-focused, hard-edged and sparkling clarity of detail in the representation of objects and figures. While the Italian artists were interested primarily in the structure behind the appearances, being perspective, composition, anatomy, the mechanics of bodily motion and proportion, the northern painters were intent on creating appearances themselves, being the bright, colored surfaces of objects and figures touched by natural light.

For example, in Renaissance Italy, Leonardo da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks (ca. 1485) reflects all of the artistic integrity and beauty of the High Renaissance via its dimensional approach, the use of linear lines, undulating contours and crisp edges, not to mention da Vinci's startling use of light and dark contrasts which gives the effect that the figures in this painting are in true physical movement. This was accomplished by utilizing what is known as chiaroscuro, being the subtle play of lightness and darkness which can be seen not only as a physical attribute but also as a psychological attribute via the faces of the figures deep in thought and contemplation.