Humanism and Its Effects on Renaissance Art

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Recommended: the impact that humanism has had on art during the renaissance

Beginning roughly around the year 1400 an era in Europe began; one that would shape the ideas and the lives of men. This era of rebirth or renaissance came within the fifteenth century through the revival of classical texts. One central effect of the Renaissance was the production of a new intellectual idea: humanism. Humanism being defined as a, “[t]erm invented in the 19th century. . . [regarding] developments relating to the revival of Classical literature and learning in European culture from roughly 1300 to 1600” left its mark on all of Europe leaving nothing untouched not even the artist. Both northern and southern art would be affected by humanism but in different ways ranging from changes in the human form, new choices of topic and new religious purpose.

Southern art refers to the art created in what is today Italy however, at the time Italy consisted of many separate and often warring nations. This peninsula held two important advantages which affected the way Italy did art: Rome and Venice. Italy began to produce a kind of art very literally affected by humanism. Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries both the human form and the subject itself moved from two-dimensional religious settings to ideal depictions of mythology. It is in Italy that names such as Brunelleschi and Donatello went to Rome to study the lessons of antiquity concerning architecture and the human form; this directly resulting in Brunelleschi's dome and arches even Donatello’s Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata and his David. All are examples to the revival of antiquities’ ways. These lessons from the ancients developed a new type of beauty. Haughton describes this affect, “The idealized figures of Florentine art are a composite of perf...

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... welcome a new style: Mannerism defined as a being bridge between the Renaissance and Baroque periods . As time propelled Europeans forward there is no doubt that the ancients’ influence was not finished, it would continue to affect the art and the culture of Europe for many generations to come.

Works Cited

Duke, James O. "Humanism." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. http://0-www.oxfordartonline.com.library.acaweb.org/subscriber/article/grove/art/T039396 (accessed February 12, 2011).

Haughton, Neil. 2004. "Perceptions of beauty in Renaissance art." Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology 3, no. 4: 229-233. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 12, 2011).

Wundram, Manfred. "Mannerism." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. http://0-www.oxfordartonline.com.library.acaweb.org/subscriber/article/grove/art/T053829 (accessed February 12, 2011).

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