We began today by continuing our discussion on Sandro Botticelli and the Birth of Venus. The unique thing about this piece is that the title is misleading as Venus was already born. This is because Botticelli did not actually give the piece a title as titles were not normally given during this time. In the painting, we can see Zephry the god of the west wind blowing towards Venus and pushing her ashore. We also see that he is holding Nymph Chloris and there are gold highlights all around. It’s also important to note that the main subject is a naked women figure with no overtones, and she is the beautiful goddess of love. Neo Platonic ideals are at play here. We then began our discussion on Raphael and the School of Athens. Here we see Plato and Aristotle, two huge historical figures. Plato’s ideals of it’s in another realm and Aristotle’s ideals of it’s grounded in the “now” are accurately depicted in the image. We then dove into the High Renaissance Italy and Leonardo da Vinci. He was a painter, sculptor, engineer and architect. He dealt with the ideas of macrocosm and microcosm. He stated Nature is only a giant human being. This is the purpose of connecting what’s large with what’s small and finding patterns. We also observed his Vitruvian Man which you can notice that the script is backwards. This is because Leonardo was left-handed and it was easier to write the opposite way. For Leonardo, painting is divided into three aspects, pictorial, graphic and speculative. I found our discussion on the last supper particularly interesting as there were many symbols and meaning embellished within the work. For example, there was patterns of 3 resembling the Holy Trinity. The apostles were grouped in 3’s and there were 3 windows and in the center was Christ. There were also groupings of 4 resembling the gospels. The apostles formed 4 groups and there were 4 dark panels on each side. Additionally, 4+3=7 sorrows of the virgin, vices and virtues. 4×3=12 which is the apostles and months in a year.

We concluded the day by talking about the famous Mona Lisa and the use of sfumato and chiaroscuro. And also, Raphael and the frescoes of the stanza Della segnatura in the Vatican. This was a room likely for important documents.