From artisan to artist

Before the Renaissance... During Medieval times, artists were considered craftspersons, or artisans—no different from a shoe maker, bricklayer, or baker, working for low wages. Medieval artists did what they were paid to do and never thought of signing their work! The low status of sculptors & painters before the Renaissance was evident from the unions or guilds to which they belonged. Sculptors belonged to the Guild of Masons (mason: a person who builds or works with brick or stone). Painters belonged to the Guild of Doctors & Apothecaries (apothecary: druggist or pharmacist) because they got their painting supplies from them.

A change of status for artists The humanists discovered that the ancient Greeks & Romans had great respect for artists & architects. The rediscovered manuscripts also described forgotten artistic techniques Artists began to take credit for their work and they received more pay. Sometimes they ignored their patron's directions

Sandro Botticelli painted himself in the above painting, called Adoration of the Magi.

The Renaissance was a self-conscious age! Prominent men and important families commissioned portraits and busts of themselves. They were interested in themselves, their social standing, and their own special personalities. This is the OPPOSITE of the people of medieval times - they would have been shocked! By Jan Van Eyck The Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini & His Wife

Portrait painting With the increased interest in self, came an increased emphasis on realism in art. Medieval painters had paid little attention to realistic detail... You could tell the figures were human but didn't look like anyone in particular... Kinda like symbols. Renaissance painters wanted the figures in their portraits to have distinct facial expressions... Revealing emotions that the viewer could understand. They wanted them to look like they lived & breathed. They wanted their pictures to be DRAMATIC!

Renaissance Medieval

The Natural World Renaissance painters began to pay attention to the natural world. Most medieval art had been made for churches. They wanted paintings to look lively & more like the world around them. They wanted their art to show off their skill & creativity. One artist who made one of the most important advances on the road to more realistic depiction of life was Brunelleschi who worked in Florence & Rome in the early 15th century. He was inspired by an essay by ancient Roman writer, Vitruvius, who described buildings and other objects painted on flat surface made to "advance & recede." It would make the painting look more realistic and almost 3- dimensional.

The Rediscovery of Perspective Perspective: a technique that allows artists to show objects as they appear at various distances from the viewer, with distant objects shown smaller & nearby objects larger. Brunelleschi's Dome of the Florence Cathedral Perspective used to paint "School of Athens" by Raphael

Renaissance painters: going forward by looking backward They were now able to place realistic figures in realistic backgrounds. They began to create spaces so realistic that viewers felt they could step through the painting into the world depicted.

Golden Ratio Leonardo Fibonacci came up with a sequence of numbers that, when squared, could be tiled like so: Can you see the pattern? 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…

Mona Lisa Revisited Renaissance men like Leonardo Da Vinci were obsessed with symmetry in nature. uncanny-examples-of-the- golden-ratio-in-nature