The characteristics of art can be described by imitation, expression, exchange of emotions and other substances. During the Romantic period, art was seen as “a special field of the human mind, like religion and mscience.”
During the Romantic period, art was seen as “a special field of the human mind, like religion and mscience.”
Flowers in a Metal Vase Abraham Mignonc. 1670
The concept of art is only relatively conventional Beauty is eternal timelessness
“Modernism emphasizes the artist's personal imagination, culture, emotions, memories and memories”.
Medieval Art Renaissance Art
Before The Black Death
Byzantine Art
Early Christian and Late Antique Art
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
The Creation of Adam
T his period saw a downfall when the Roman empire saw a deterioration in the cultural and economic phase. For over 1000 years, this artwork has covered the major places of Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa. It depicted national and regional art, revivals, the artists’ crafts and genres. Technically, medieval artists lacked numerous factors such as lack of perspective, colors and tones. Lack of accuracy led to the origin of Renaissance and High Renaissance Art.
The first several centuries of the Middle Ages in Europe — up to about 800 AD - saw a decrease in prosperity, stability, and population, followed by a fairly steady and general increase until the massive setback of the Black Death around 1350. The increase in prosperity, for those who survived, was much less affected by the Black Death. Until about the 11th century most of Europe was short of agricultural labour, with large amounts of unused land, and the Medieval Warm Period benefited agriculture until about 1315.
The medieval period eventually saw the falling away of the invasions and incursions from outside the area that characterized the first millennium. The Islamic conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries suddenly and permanently removed all of North Africa from the Western world, and over the rest of the period Islamic peoples gradually took over the Byzantine Empire, until the end of the Middle Ages when Catholic Europe, having regained the Iberian peninsula in the southwest, was once again under Muslim threat from the southeast.
At the start of the medieval period most significant works of art were very rare and costly objects associated with secular elites, monasteries or major churches and, if religious, largely produced by monks.
By the end of the Middle Ages works of considerable artistic interest could be found in small villages and significant numbers of bourgeois homes in towns, and their production was in many places an important local industry, with artists from the clergy now the exception.
Byzantine art is the art of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire formed after the division of the Roman Empire between Eastern and Western halves, and sometimes of parts of Italy under Byzantine rule. It emerges from Late Antiquity in about 500 CE and soon formed a tradition distinct from that of Catholic Europe but with great influence over it. In the early medieval period the best Byzantine art, often from the large Imperial workshops, represented an ideal of sophistication and technique which European patrons tried to emulate.
Early Christian art, more generally described as Late Antique art, covers the period from about 200 (before which no distinct Christian art survives), until the onset of a fully Byzantine style in about 500. There continue to be different views as to when the medieval period begins during this time, both in terms of general history and specifically art history, but it is most often placed late in the period. In the course of the 4th century Christianity went from being a persecuted popular sect to the official religion of the Empire, adapting existing Roman styles and often iconography.
Over this period imperial Late Roman art went through a strikingly “baroque” phase, and then largely abandoned classical style and Greek realism in favour of a more mystical and hieratic style—a process that was well underway before Christianity became a major influence on imperial art. Influences from Eastern parts of the Empire—Egypt, Syria and beyond, and also a robust “Italic” vernacular tradition, contributed to this process.
Figures are mostly seen frontally staring out at the viewer, where classical art tended to show a profile view - the change was eventually seen even on coins.
The individuality of portraits, a great strength of Roman art, declines sharply, and the anatomy and drapery of figures is shown with much less realism. The models from which medieval Northern Europe in particular formed its idea of “Roman” style were nearly all portable Late Antique works, and the Late Antique carved sarcophagi found all over the former Roman Empire; the determination to find earlier “purer” classical models, was a key element in the art all’antica of the Renaissance. But by the end there were a number of lavish mosaics in churches built under Imperial patronage.
Was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.
The Last Supper is a mural painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1495–1498. The painting represents the scene of the Last Supper of Jesus with the Twelve Apostles, as it is told in the Gospel of John – specifically the moment after Jesus announces that one of his apostles will betray him.
The Last Supper
was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.
David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in the public square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504.
The Renaissance is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas and achievements of classical antiquity.
As modern art began to improve, it started focusing on humans and their lives. The pictures thus depicted man as independent and self-reliant. Two of the most popular artists of this time were Filippo Brunelleschi and sculptor Donatello. During this period, they made Renaissance painters compose more realistic paintings.
The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the Middle Ages.
The Creation of Adam (Italian: Creazione di Adamo) is a fresco painting by Italian artist Michelangelo, which forms part of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, painted c. 1508–1512. It illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life to Adam, the first man. The fresco is part of a complex iconographic scheme and is chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis. The painting has been reproduced in countless imitations and parodies. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam is one of the most replicated religious paintings of all time.
Several hypotheses have been put forward about the meaning of The Creation of Adam's highly original composition, many of them taking Michelangelo's well-documented expertise in human anatomy as their starting point. God is depicted as an elderly white-bearded man, wrapped in a swirling cloak while Adam, on the lower left, is completely naked. God’s right arm is outstretched to impart the spark of life from his own finger into that of Adam, whose left arm is extended in a pose mirroring God’s, a reminder that man is created in the image and likeness of God
Michelangelo’s main source of inspiration for his Adam in his Creation of Adam may have been a cameo showing a nude Augustus Caesar riding sidesaddle on a Capricorn. This cameo is now at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland. The cameo used to belong to cardinal Domenico Grimani who lived in Rome while Michelangelo painted the ceiling. Evidence suggests that Michelangelo and Grimani were friends. This cameo offers an alternative theory for those scholars who have been dissatisfied with the theory that Michelangelo was mainly inspired by Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Adam in his Creation of Adam.
Derived from a Portuguese word, Barocco, which means irregular pearl or stone. Starting from Rome, this artistry spread rapidly to other locations such as France, northern Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, southern Germany and Russia. It focused on how to intricate ornamentation. Baroque artists introduced cartouche, baskets of fruit or flowers, and others made in marquetry, stucco or carved, trophies and weapons. Similar to other periods, the Baroque period saw a decline, and many other art periods started to flourish. Being powerful and extravagant, this type of art helped people to draw their ideas and create an extra imagination.
Girl With A Pearl Earringis an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665. Going by various names over the centuries, it became known by its present title towards the end of the 20th century after the earring worn by the girl portrayed there. The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary and cinematic treatments.
The work is oil on canvas and is 44.5 cm (17.5 in) high and 39 cm (15 in) wide. It is signed “IVMeer” but not dated. It is estimated to have been painted around 1665.
Results included the presence of delicate eyelashes, a green curtain behind the head, changes made, and details of the pigments used and where they came from. The lack of eyebrows and featureless background had led to speculation that Vermeer was painting an idealised or abstract face; the later discoveries showed that he was painting a real person in a real space. The pearl has been described as an illusion due to having no contour and also no hook to hang it from the girl’s ear
The ground is dense and yellowish in colour and is composed of chalk, lead white, ochre and very little black. The dark background of the painting contains bone black, weld (luteolin, Reseda luteola), chalk, small amounts of red ochre, and indigo. The face and draperies were painted mainly using ochres, natural ultramarine, bone black, charcoal black and lead white.
The term Baroque, derived from the Portuguese ‘barocco’ meaning ‘irregular pearl or stone’, refers to a cultural and art movement that characterized Europe from the early seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century.
Baroque emphasizes dramatic, exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted, detail. Due to its exuberant irregularities, Baroque art has often been defined as being bizarre, or uneven.
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The Baroque… endlessly produces folds. It does not invent things: there are all kinds of folds coming from the East, Greek, Roman, Romanesque, Gothic, Classical folds…..Yet the Baroque trait twists and turns its folds, pushing them to infinity, fold over fold, one upon the other
Impressionism was developed by Claude Monet and other Paris-based artists from the early 1860s. (Though the process of painting on the spot can be said to have been pioneered in Britain by John Constable in around 1813–17 through his desire to paint nature in a realistic way).
The end of the 18th century saw the rise of Impressionism, a radical art movement. Being the first art of the modern period, Impressionism focused on nature as a subject. Claude Monet, who was a French artist by profession, gave the idea of Impressionism. Throughout his life, he captured new images and transferred them to achieve abstract quality.
Born into an upper-middle class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in predominantly Roman Catholic southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially; the two kept a long correspondence by letter.
Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. As he became famous only after his suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination.
Little is known of Van Gogh’s activities during the two years he lived with his brother, Theo, in Paris, 1886–1888. The fact that he had painted Sunflowers already is only revealed in the spring of 1889, when Gauguin claimed one of the Arles versions in exchange for studies he had left behind after leaving Arles for Paris.
Little is known of Van Gogh’s activities during the two years he lived with his brother, Theo, in Paris, 1886–1888. The fact that he had painted Sunflowers already is only revealed in the spring of 1889, when Gauguin claimed one of the Arles versions in exchange for studies he had left behind after leaving Arles for Paris.
Little is known of Van Gogh’s activities during the two years he lived with his brother, Theo, in Paris, 1886–1888. The fact that he had painted Sunflowers already is only revealed in the spring of 1889, when Gauguin claimed one of the Arles versions in exchange for studies he had left behind after leaving Arles for Paris.
