Renaissance Characteristics

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There are many characteristics that can describe the age of the Renaissance. First of all, the Renaissance was a period of significant political, economic, artistic, and intellectual change. The word renaissance means rebirth, which is what most people describe this era as being. This era was completely different than the dark Middle Ages. During this age the arts were restored. For example, Michelangelo created his famous artwork on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Italy (pg. 337). Jacob Burckhardt, a Swiss historian and art critic described the Renaissance as the birthplace the modern world. Burckhardt also noticed secularism, “perfecting of the individual”, and the revival of antiquity during the Renaissance era. Renaissance Italy had …show more content…
349). Humanist education thought that people can change drastically through education. Humanist educators also wrote books on education and made secondary schools based on their ideas (pg.352). Vittorino da Feltre created the most famous humanist education school in 1423. The school used many ideas from classical education and authors like Cicero and Quintilian. Humanist education had liberal studies at the core of students’ academic training, just like classical education did. Liberal arts were seen as the “key to true freedom” because it let individuals reach their full potential. Some of the liberal studies were history, moral philosophy, letters, poetry, math, astronomy, and music (pg. 352-353). The main goal of humanist education was not to make great scholars but to give students a practical preparation for life (pg. …show more content…
They wanted people to view their piece and see how real the object/event looked. Artists also had a much greater attention to detail than they previously did. The first masterpiece of Early Renaissance art was by Masaccio. His scene of frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel helped to create a new realistic style of painting because of the visual representation of the laws of perspective. Also, the three-dimensional people in his piece made a model for future Florentine artists (pg. 355). Artists would aim to have the figures in their artwork be two-dimensional but look three-dimensional. There were two new forms of art created in the fifteenth century. One of them was the mathematical side of painting and the other was the investigation of movement and anatomical structure. The mathematical side of painting had to do with working out of the laws of perspective and the organization of outdoor space and light by geometry and perspective. The investigation of movement and anatomical structure had to do with the realistic portrayal of the human nude (pg. 355). Later, in the High Renaissance, artists moved to a more individual form of art. The three main artists in the High Renaissance were Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Leonardo da Vinci focused on how nature worked and the details human have even more than in the Early Renaissance. Raphael created all of his pieces with balance, harmony, and order, which are the

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