We wrapped up our discussion of the Early Renaissance by looking at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, which is a hallmark work of this period. Botticelli is moving away from the strive for realism that his counterparts were obsessed with. This is partly due to the mythological scene he is depicting – he is not worried about capturing real life because this scene is not real. This painting shows the moment after Venus was born out of the sea foam and is floating toward land on a shell. Botticelli uses some atmospheric perspective when creating the landscape background, but his focus with this work was creating a beautiful and harmonious scene. It is also important to note the significance of having a nude figure in this work. Nude figures are not completely unheard of in this period, but they were often depictions of Eve and come with obvious moral overtones. Here, Venus is nude to show off her perfection and to highlight her as the goddess of love and beauty. Venus is one of the only figures both in Antiquity and in the Renaissance that is almost always depicted nude.
Moving into the High Renaissance, we began with arguably the most remarkable artist from this period, Leonard da Vinci. Leonard was much more than an artist though and was interested in engineering, mathematics, medicine, and much more. One of the first works of his that we looked at is his Vitruvian Man, where he drew inspiration from the writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius. His central idea with this work is that man could be perfectly inscribed in a circle and square, with their centers being at his naval.
His work from this class that most interested me was the Madonna of the Rocks. I was initially drawn to the idea behind it of envisioning how Jesus and John the Baptist met, and Leonardo’s vision of them meeting as small children in this quite peculiar landscape. I was intrigued to learn that this rocky setting comes from references to the Song of Songs from the Old Testament, but then also references to the New Testament with the manger scene and the cave where Jesus was buried and rose. Leonardo’s question he was trying to solve with this piece was how to create symmetrical, but also dynamic composition. His solution was the pyramidal pose with figures anchoring each point of the triangle. This creates a very balanced and stable composition but also makes it visually interesting.