1. The Plague’s effect on art

2. The Black Plague changed many things about medieval Europe. Of the most significant things that it changed was art.

3. Before the Plague, art was flat, with dull colors and a lack of perspective.

4. Perspective means that art looks more like it would look in real life rather than all the figures and images being on top of one another. This is a really good example of perspective.

5. Compare the previous picture to pre-Plague art. See the difference?

6. Pre-Plague art also focused heavily on religious images, especially Christ or the Virgin Mary (or both of them).

7. Here are more examples of pre- Plague art.

13. During and directly after the Plague, however, art changed dramatically. Artists began to focus on themes of death and Hell.

14. Death was shown as a skeleton, taking people’s lives when they were doing ordinary things. Death, Artists showed, could happen at any time, as it did during the Black Plague. A young woman being taken by Death in the prime of her life.

17. This picture deliberately mocks the Virgin Mary/Christ pictures.

18. People also began to focus on what happened after death, particularly Hell. This is a picture by a famous artist who focused on these themes: Hieronymus Bosch.

21. Not long after the Plague, however, came a new revolution in art: the Renaissance. The Renaissance focused on the human body, classical themes going back to the Greeks and Romans, and used art techniques like perspective and foreshortening to make art look more realistic.

25. Religion was still an important theme, but pictures showed God and Christ being much closer to ordinary people. The Church had lost some of its mystery. In this famous painting by Michelangelo, God touches the hand of man.

26. Artists also began to focus on the use of color and light. This technique is called chiaroscuro. This painting is by a Dutch artist, Johannes Vermeer.

27. Other famous Renaissance artists were Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, Michelangelo Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Sandro Botticelli.

33. The Renaissance also led to new discoveries in science, changes in government and religion, and gave people new desires to learn more about the world in which they lived. (That will the topic for our next unit!)

34. THE end!!!!!!!!