Guest Author - Christine MacNeil Sweet

The word renaissance is derived from Greek re- (renew) and the French naissance meaning birth. This time period reflects the renewal and rebirth of the classical tradition based on the art of ancient Greece and Rome. It is also the revival and return of classical ideals: virtue, humanism, good citizenship, knowledge, learning, history, and artistic interests. The time period prior to the revival of these traditions was considered the dark period intellectually. The emphasis was not on the individual or the intellect during that time but on God and the divine.

About the turn of the 14th century this renewed interest in the human condition started in literature with Dante’s Divine Comedy. There was a desire to focus on the individual in all aspects of life. The literature of the time focused on the quest of understanding the individual – a philosophical quest essentially. The collapse of the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire brought many scholars seeking escape to Italy, the link between the East and West. They had attended universities and brought their libraries with them that were mostly in Greek. They studied the original Greek texts of Aristotle and Plato. They began to teach as they had in the East, in Italy. It was the renewed interest in these philosophical ideas that fed the rebirth of the philosophical quest to ponder the individual.

In art, the artist tried to capture what they actually saw in their work. Everything was measured in relationship to the individual in two parts: the body for the visual elements; and the soul for the mind/emotions. The “body” of the work was the form/style/composition that comprised the line, colors, textures, space, and shape of the forms within the work. The “soul” was in Christian terms and dealt with the iconography/subject matter/content of the work.

Works of art took two forms: religious and secular. The religious works dealt with subjects of mythological stories, lives of the saints, the life of Christ and Mary. Secular subjects included portraits of individuals, landscapes, allegorical representations, and still life paintings. For the Renaissance artist, who considered himself the center of the Earth in true Renaissance thinking, he sought to understand his place in the world and the world itself by looking at nature.

The first artist whose works were considered the turning point for the Renaissance was Giotto. He was invited to go to Padua and design a small chapel and decorate its interior. What he created in the Arena Chapel was the beginning of several hundred years of art that is now classified as Renaissance. One of the simplest but most obvious changes Giotto made was to paint the sky blue – not gold – in his frescoes that decorated the chapel. It was one of the things that began the change towards painting what one saw, not what was usually done.

Many things combined to create the start of the Renaissance. A specific set of circumstances happened to allow the Renaissance era to be born. The collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the power of the ruling Medici family who were tremendous collectors of ancient Greek and Roman art that they brought back to Florence, the inspiration of Giotto to begin painting as he saw not as he was taught, the writings of Dante – to name but a few. This combination began the Renaissance movement and changed the face of art forever.