The Top 50 Renaissance Artists A Quick Reference

By Rick Martens

The Renaissance was a time when artists, scholars, scientists, philosophers, and architects, in their hunger for insight and enlightenment, began to look back to the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome for answers. This fresh outlook spurred on pursuits in anatomy, linear and aerial perspective, geometry, astronomy, anything that could help man to accomplish the goal of understanding his place in his new and awakened state within the world. This guide is an introduction to some of the major artists of the period. It is designed to whet the appetite, to give the basics with some interesting facts that will hopefully inspire the curious reader to further explore these fascinating individuals who did so much to forward the cause of artistic expression.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rick Martens
• Release date: May 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370679539

Rick Martens

Rick Martens has a passion for research that's focused on culture, art, and pretty much anything related to history. In his other life, he's a civil engineering designer and sometime blogger. Along with a love of travel and culture, he's rediscovering an interest in playing golf, when not out exploring his home state of North Carolina with his wife Bonnie.

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Introduction

The term Renaissance, rinascita in Italian, meaning rebirth, refers to a time period from about the mid 1300’s through the mid 1500’s. The term was first used by Giorgio Vasari in his historic biography on the artists of the period. It was a time when man began to look at the individual and his place in the physical environment.

With this fresh outlook, the human body and the environment in which that body moved, spurred on pursuits in anatomy, linear and aerial perspective, geometry, astronomy, anything that could help man to accomplish the goal of understanding his place in his new and awakened state within the world. And to accomplish this, artists, scholars, scientists, philosophers, and architects, in their hunger for insight and enlightenment, began to look back to the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome for answers.

In painting, the prevailing style of the day was the Byzantine, Gothic style, and its sole purpose was the veneration of God. Creativity, form and environment took a backseat to the message that man was here to serve God.

In the middle of the 13th century, Giotto di Bondone, considered a master of the late Gothic period, began to illustrate his figures in a more realistic fashion reflecting the physical world in which he lived. His scenes were more naturalistic, with concepts such as form, proportion, and perspective used to inject drama and realism into classical Biblical narratives. His weighty characters, inspired by the sculptors of his day, like Pisano, showed a vision well ahead of his time. It was an understanding of Humanism and Classicism that would be the central qualities of the Renaissance masters to come.

But then the innovation stopped. The transition from Gothic to Renaissance would have to wait. For the most part, this gap was due to the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the 14th century, infecting Italy by 1347 and spreading across the continent over the next four years. Entire communities were wiped out. Medieval society was changed forever.

Almost a century later, the innovations first seen in the works of Giotto were reintroduced by the Florentine painter Masaccio. Masaccio saw what Giotto was doing and brought his ideas forward in a new and robust way.

Like Giotto, Masaccio drew inspiration from the sculptors of his time, Donatello and Lorenzo Ghiberti, to create realistic, solid images using perspective and lighting while injecting emotion into his pictures.

From this time forward, artists would adhere to this philosophy to create works based on the reality of human existence with Florence as the epicenter of this early movement. Driven by an enlightened and supremely wealthy merchant class, artists found eager patrons interested in underwriting their new efforts in art, architecture, and literature.

The Medici family, who were and are still considered some of the greatest patrons of the arts in history, led the wealthy classes of merchants who showed a willingness to pour a significant amount of their resources into the promotion of the arts, revolutionizing the Italian peninsula and spreading through Europe and ultimately changing the world.

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