The Renaissance

The ruins of the Roman Empire, The fall of Constantinople, Wealth from Trade, New ideas from trade, Competition between states, Patrons.

A wealthy person who hired artists to produce artwork

Wealthy Italian city is the 1400s, wool trade/banking, the de Medici’s, sponsored artists and architects

Religious images, encouraging Catholicism

Fewer religious images, ancient Greek/Roman mythology, portraits

Wooden panels, fresco, egg tempera (Powder pigment and egg yolk)

Painting on walls while plaster was wet

Canvas, fresco, paint with oil (precision and timing), sfumato (blurring/smudging, soft)

Flat, 2-D, No depth

Created depth, 3-D, rounded

Not ‘real’, bodies not to scale, lifeless expressions

Anatomy, ‘realistic’, different expressions

1452-1519, Vinci near Florence, apprentice to Andrea del Verrocchio at 14 in Florence, 1482 work for Duke of Milan, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Last Supper, 1499 Florence, Mona Lisa 2 years, mirror writing right to left notebooks, France 1516 King Francis, died there 1519

Visiting artists, outside trade, European rulers becoming patrons, movable printing press (main)

Believed to invent the movable type printing press in 1450

Rapid spread, major by 1500, much cheaper books, more literate people, introduced to new ideas, popularity of fiction, Catholic Church control over learning declined, Latin declined

Dissections, important discoveries about the heart

The idea that human beings are at the centre of everything