Renaissance Synthesis Question Asher.p4.t9

The paintings of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni and Leonardo Da Vinci reflect a synthesis of religious and secular aestheticism during the Renaissance. Michelangelo was commissioned by the church to paint a number of Frescos in various churches. The Last Judgment, a famous fresco made on the wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City, was filled with controversy; Cardinal Carafa accused Michelangelo of being immoral and obscene, by painting naked figures, with visible genitals, inside one of the most important churches of Christianity. His personal values and beliefs in completely showing the beauty of the human body was combined into his traditional commissions with the Church. He gave the mural a religious yet aesthetic quality to it by combining realism that was dominant in most art in that time and religion by depicting a prominent or at least well known religious character in a somewhat degrading perspective. Da Vinci also adopted his own style of painting into religious art like in the Last Supper. Da Vinci used rising art concepts like realism and perspective and applied them to a religious painting of Jesus having his last supper. Art pieces like these demonstrate a growing integration of people’s sense of worldly beauty into religion. They give form to faith. This synthesis shows that religion is no longer becoming a matter of blind faith. People are beginning to view religion in an objective matter, and this is perhaps one of the first steps of religion being isolated into a personal experience rather than an integral part of society.