Don't Get Lost in the Museum – How to Recognize the Renaissance?

More often than not, a trip to a museum of classical art can seem boring – what's so interesting about looking at rounded nudes with dramatic faces, doing who-knows-what? We believe that walking through a museum is far more interesting once you know the main periods, their features, and their most important artists, once you start to see how art changed over the centuries, what each era brought that was new, and what innovations the most talented masters discovered. All the more so because it was from this old art, as it changed and evolved over many centuries, that the modern art we know today emerged.

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, home to one of the largest collections of Renaissance art. Photo by Michelle Maria https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57766732

Let's begin our journey with the Renaissance, so let's travel back to 1400–1600. The Renaissance, which succeeded the Middle Ages, was born in Italy, in Florence, and not by chance – at that time Italy had grown very strong through trade with Asia and Europe, and trade and crafts flourished in Florence. The wealth gathered during the Crusades also played a part. You might ask, what does art have to do with economics? Renaissance art and money went hand in hand. Painters needed wealthy patrons so they could spend months and months on a single work. Such patrons were usually the church or wealthy families like the famous Medici. This was also, at last, the moment when the ravages of the Black Death finally subsided. The aforementioned Crusades brought not only money – they also allowed the rediscovery of Antique culture, preserved in the Holy Land: philosophers, scholars, mythology, since during the Middle Ages the church had destroyed all books that contradicted its teachings. Speaking of books, the famous Gutenberg printing press made a huge contribution here. Before it, books were a luxury. This invention may not be directly related to painting itself, but more accessible books, books in local languages (until then almost all books, copied by monks, were in Latin), allowed ideas to spread more easily and quickly. Finally, craftsmen and even painters and artists began forming guilds, which ensured product quality and encouraged competition. If a painter wanted to receive good commissions, he had to belong to a guild, and to join a guild he had to reach a certain level of mastery. Leonardo da Vinci himself belonged to one of the most famous painters' guilds in Florence. That's enough history for now, so without further ado, let's move on to the main features of the era:

1. Three-dimensional imagery. Hard as it is to believe it took so long, artists finally began using accurate proportions and, for the first time in the history of art, depicted the world with great conviction. Looking at some large-format works, it feels as though you are part of the scene, or could step right into the painting.

"The San Marco Altarpiece" by Fra Angelico, a superb example of three-dimensional depiction, in which the artist uses symmetry and linear perspective to create an impression of depth. Photo Wikimedia Commons

2. Geometric patterns on floors and ceilings. Patterned ceilings and floors not only create a sense of depth but also serve as an anchor point for the entire composition of the painting. Renaissance painters discovered a new way to construct a painting using linear perspective.

"The School of Athens" by Raphael. The patterns on the floor and ceiling reinforce the sense of spatial depth. By the way, if you look closely at the painting, you'll find the artist himself, Raphael, together with a group of friends (see point 12). Photo Wikimedia Commons.

3. Diminishment. Renaissance masters understood that objects further away from us appear smaller. Using this principle, they gave depth to a flat surface.

"The Creation of the Sun and Moon" by Michelangelo. Photo Wikimedia Commons

4. Some painters became so absorbed in their craft that they even turned to optical illusions, such as fake domes or sculptures.

"The Annunciation" by Jan van Eyck. Photo Wikimedia Commons. It's hard to believe this is a painting and not a sculpture.

5. Religious subjects, biblical stories, and the lives of saints are depicted most often.

"The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" by Leonardo da Vinci. Photo Wikimedia Commons

6. Look for figures making symbolic gestures, dressed in fluttering, brightly colored garments painted in incredible detail.

"The Sistine Madonna" by Raphael. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

7. Storytelling. A single frame often contains several moments from the same story.

"The Disputation with Simon Magus and the Crucifixion of St. Peter" by Filippo Lippi. The painting depicts two final scenes from the life of the apostle Peter. On the right, we see him, together with St. Paul, disputing with Simon Magus before Emperor Nero, while on the left is his crucifixion. Interestingly, the man on the left, turned toward the viewer, is the artist himself, and in the group of three men on the right, it is Botticelli who looks out at the viewer. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

8. Although a great deal of religious art was created (the church was an excellent patron), some artists also painted pagan scenes from Greek and Roman mythology.

"Primavera" by Sandro Botticelli. The painting is an allegorical scene based on ancient motifs. At its center we see Venus; to her left, the Three Graces – goddesses of charm, fertility, and beauty, who accompanied Aphrodite. To Venus's left is Flora, goddess of vegetation, and beside her Zephyrus, chasing his wife, the nymph Chloris. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

9. The portrait genre flourishes, as wealthy and prominent people wish to immortalize themselves. Most of them were patrons of the arts.

"Portrait of a Man in a Turban" by Jan van Eyck. It is believed to be a self-portrait of the artist. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

10. Although painting on canvas stretched over a frame was becoming popular, some artists, especially those of the Early Renaissance, continued to paint on polyptychs – joined wooden panels that most often became church altarpieces.

"The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

11. Round-format paintings appear.

"Madonna of the Magnificat" by Sandro Botticelli. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

12. Look out for paintings that feel like a strange dream or a virtual-reality game in which time and space dissolve. Painters often set biblical and ancient scenes in their native Italy. They had no qualms about transplanting events from first-century biblical villages into Tuscan landscapes or fifteenth-century Flemish homes. Sometimes the setting isn't specified, but if you spot ancient Roman architecture, columns and round arches, or castles on the green Tuscan hills and typical Florentine villas, you should suspect that this may not actually be straight out of the Bible. Among the bearded biblical figures in flowing robes, fluttering angels, and Dominican monks, you'll also spot clean-shaven, fashionable Florentine citizens. What's more, in these ancient scenes, painters often included not only wealthy patrons and their families, but also themselves alongside a few friends.

"Madonna in the Meadow" by Raphael. Notice the Tuscan landscape in the background and the anachronism – Jesus receives the cross from John the Baptist, thereby accepting the sacrifice that awaits him. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

"The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin" by Jan van Eyck. An even more curious case, where the 15th-century art patron and commissioner of this painting, Nicolas Rolin, spends time with biblical figures. The setting itself is an anachronism – no one in Christ's day would ever have dreamed of such open galleries; they appeared only in medieval and Renaissance Italy, and the background shows a Gothic church and snow-capped mountains, which you'd be far more likely to see in Rolin's native Burgundy than in Nazareth. Notice how the striking floor patterns create a sense of depth. Photo Wikimedia Commons.