Renaissance Synthesis Asher Period 1 Team 6

Renaissance Synthesis Question

      Michaelangelo, a world renowned painter and sculptor, was commissioned by the church to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The chapel is now decorated with religious affirmations and biblical meanings that interlude Michaelangelo’s asceticism of the Roman Catholic affiliation and his self asceticism. The Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, though it is mainly biblical, also holds a self portrait of Michaelangelo, where his head lay above a disk held by a woman. This shows Michaelangelo’s true feelings towards the church, for he never wanted to paint the Sistine Chapel, but obliged by the church who threatened otherwise. His self portrait, is a severed head, with the eyes closed and mouth slightly gazed open to show his numbness in his reflection towards the church. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was patronized by the Medicis of Italy. The Medicis wanted Leonardo to paint themselves as god like depictions. In the paintings, the Medicis seem to be glistening with a halo and yet the skin is dark and emotions very sinister. Leonardo did the same for religious paintings, where he would paint the requirements given by the church who leashed expansion of imagination to religious. The painted Christ and mother were shown in the front, but show Leonardo’s interest in nature and the surrounding, with the backgrounds depicting specific detail almost luring the rear as a main focus rather than the figures. The artists secular asceticism is being brought out in plain sight, and yet hidden to the simple thoughts as paintings show a religious affiliation at first, but with attention show the artists’ true intentions. The era of Catholicism was being studies, where the Renaissance, an age of rebirth of the arts began to emerge, people studies deeper into the ideas of religion and nature, where realism and fantasy collided to form new thoughts in artists. The society was questioning the church as the Renaissance slowly ended during the 1600’s, after the Black Plague had destroyed the hopes of the people. The artists began to evolve out of their society of Christian affiliation and began to wonder into the evolving society that soon formed a new belief that artists viewed critical in their paintings.