Renaissance ArtA Discussion

What is the title of the statue?

Who is the artist?

Relate the biblical story behind the sculpture.

What might be the artist’s message be by portraying the subject as slim and youthful?

What is the title of the statue?David

Who is the artist?Donatello

Relate the biblical story behind the sculpture.David has slayed Goliath and is standing on his head for which he had just decapitated.

What might be the artist’s message be by portraying the subject as slim and youthful?Virtue overcomes oppression. It may also show the religious commitments of the author, that despite certain Greco-Roman commitments in the art forms, Donatello chooses to display David as he might be imagined in the biblical account.

Questions to Consider:

How would you compare and contrast Michelangelo’s portrayal of David with Donatello’s?

How would you describe the mood/attitude portrayed by Michelangelo’s David?

Artists use science to mimic what the eye sees.Brunelleschi’s linear perspective Identify the vanishing point in this paining.

Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper depicts what critical moment? Can you identify Judas in the picture? Also, note the use of chiaroscuro, the method of using contrast between light and shadow to show how people and things look to us in the real world.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has puzzled art scholars for centuries. Its relatively small size for one thing until we learn that he carried it with him wherever he went on his travels.

One art critic suggested the following experiment: Cover the left side of her face with an index card, and you will see a warm, sensuous woman gazing at you.

Cover the right side of her face and you will see an aristocratic woman who finds something mildly amusing.

If this is so, Leonardo could be revealing the ambiguity of human nature through this famous portrait.

Michelangelo’s The Pieta, as exquisite as it is, had its critics. What do you think they found wrong with the sculpture?

What is your response?

Michelangelo’s The Pieta, as exquisite as it is, had its critics. What do you think they found wrong with the sculpture?Mary’s age in the picture is too young.

What is your response?

Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment that sits behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel was originally painted with bodies in the nude. After his death, painters were hired to cover the nudity.

Why do you think Michelangelo painted the figures in The Last Judgment without any covering?

Do you think it was the right thing to do to alter the paintings by adding clothing?

Raphael’s The School of Athens uses Linear Perspective. Identify the vanishing point in the painting. Who are the people represented in the painting? Why were they chosen?

There is also a self-portrait of the artist (Raphael) himself. Can you find him?