This paper examines the major artists of the Italian Renaissance and the lasting influence of their work on the history of art. Beginning with Giotto di Bondone's radical break from Byzantine conventions, the paper traces the development of realism, depth, light, and human emotion through the works of Masaccio, Donatello, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. Drawing on primary scholarly sources, the paper argues that these artists were guided by instinct and a shared desire to represent nature and human experience more faithfully than ever before — collectively giving rise to a new artistic movement without deliberately setting out to do so.
The objective of this paper is to examine the artists of the Renaissance and understand the influence of their work on the world. Most artists are unaware that they are making an impression; they simply respond to their instincts. The late Michael Jackson is an example of this. While it can be said that he was destined for greatness, he was actually doing what came very naturally to him. From a child singing to an adult inventing the moonwalk, he followed his artistic flairs wherever they took him. The artists of the Renaissance were no different. They understood art in ways that set them apart from everyone else, and they yearned to express that understanding through their work.
This paper will explore some of these artists and their work, examining what makes both the artists and their creations distinctive. It will also look at how these artists helped shape a new mood and movement without actually attempting to do so. The Italian Renaissance is one of the most fascinating periods in artistic history because it is filled with great thinkers and artists who literally changed the way art was perceived. While the word "Renaissance" means rebirth, that word does not begin to encapsulate everything that was happening in the art world at the time. New ideas about art and how to make art emerged during the Italian Renaissance, and from the very beginning, these artists were seeking better ways to express beauty and nature through faithful representations never before seen.
The following timeline highlights major works produced during the Renaissance period:
1305 — Giotto paints Lamentations
1310 — Giotto paints Madonna Enthroned
1413 — Donatello sculpts Saint Mark
1425 — Masaccio paints Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden
1428 — Masaccio paints Holy Trinity
1432 — Donatello sculpts David
1455 — Donatello sculpts Mary Magdalene
1485 — Botticelli paints The Birth of Venus
1495 — Leonardo da Vinci paints The Last Supper
1500 — Michelangelo sculpts Pietà
1504 — Michelangelo sculpts David
1512 — Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel ceiling
Form and matter underwent a significant transformation during the Renaissance. Artists literally began looking at the creation of their work in new ways. Giotto di Bondone was one of the forerunners of the Renaissance, making a "radical break with the past" (Tansey 634), and his style is best known for its rendering of form. Giotto's "true teacher" (635) was nature — the "world of visual things" (635) — and his revolution in painting consisted in displacing the Byzantine style while introducing a "firm method of pictorial experiment through observation" (635). In addition, he initiated what Tansey calls an "early scientific" era (635) by "stressing the preeminence of the faculty of sight in gaining knowledge of the world" (635). Giotto's successors recognized that the "visual world must be observed before it can be analyzed and understood" (635).
It is important to note that Giotto reveals nature in the process of observing it. Artists moved with Giotto toward a more visible world and replaced an inward vision with an outward one — no longer searching "for the secrets of nature but for union with God" (635). Giotto's fresco Lamentations, painted in 1305, illustrates his ability to create a stage on which many human dramas are depicted. Every event in the painting evokes a "single, intense response within which degrees of psychic vibration, so to speak, are quite apparent" (638). Each group in the painting has its own definition and draws the viewer into the scene, a technique not used before. His new use of depth and mass could not work without a delicate handling of light and space. These techniques represent how Giotto saw the world — as filled with separate stages or events that all come together in the final scene.
Richard Tansey notes that "no other painter in history is known to have contributed so much to the development of a new style" (695) as Masaccio. Masaccio "revolutionized" (695) Giotto's style, a style that generations of Renaissance painters would later study and develop. His work introduced new possibilities for both form and content in painting, and his best work is demonstrated in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. Tansey observes that in Giotto's frescoes, light is "merely the modeling of a mass" (696), while in Masaccio's frescoes, light "comes to have its own nature" (696). Masaccio's Holy Trinity illustrates two "principles" (698) that Renaissance painters were deeply invested in: realism based on observation and the application of mathematics to the art form.
Donatello established himself as one of the founders of the new Renaissance style. In 1411, he sculpted Saint Mark, and while this is among his earliest works, it clearly demonstrates the new direction in which art was headed. Unlike medieval statues, the position of each limb in Saint Mark and its relation to the body as a whole are visible beneath the fabric draping the figure. In essence, the statue looks realistic. Hartt notes that Donatello "represented not only a figure whose physical being is fully articulated, but also a complex personality summoning up all his psychological resources to confront an external situation" (37). His bronze statue of David, sculpted in 1430, was the first freestanding nude since ancient times. This piece reveals Donatello's ability to create realistically: the statue exploits the "contrast between the detached, impassive stare of the victor and the tragic expression of the severed head" (Hartt 40). It is also worth noting that David's nudity symbolized the "nakedness of the soul before God" (40), giving the statue a moralistic dimension.
"Donatello's realist sculpture and Botticelli's Neo-Platonic painting"
"Michelangelo's vision of art as revelation and emotion"
"Da Vinci's pursuit of knowledge through art and observation"
Gilbert, Creighton. History of Renaissance Art. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973.
Keller, Harold. The High Renaissance in Italy. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1969.
Lace, William. Michelangelo. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1993.
Tansey, Richard. Gardner's Art Through the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996.
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