vince’s ear

For about the past week I’ve been posting some introductory chapters of a book I’m working on called Masters of The Renaissance. It’s basically a compilation of brief biographical looks at some of the finest and most influential artists of the Renaissance in Europe during the 15th through 16th centuries. The purpose is to be informative, as well as entertaining as I can only hope the majority of the posts on vince’s ear are. It starts out with a brief history of art, then describes the Middle Ages in Europe, which lay the foundation for the Renaissance. Then it goes into each artist and some of their contributions.

Starting in Florence, Italy at around the middle of the 15th century and later spreading throughout Northern Europe, the cultural movement was called a “rebirth” for its general tendencies for reverting to classical themes when it came to education and the arts. Historians argue about the importance of the period, but most can agree that it marks a transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era.

The artists of this period were highly creative and were using some innovative techniques new to the time such as linear perspective. Oil painting at this time was achieving popularity and the old method of tempera was slowly dying out, though fresco painting was still widely used at the start of the Renaissance. “Renaissance men” like Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were masters in numbers of trades and contributed to science, architecture, sculpture, painting, and engineering. Michelangelo was shocking the Church with his highly realistic rendering of the human body as opposed to the traditional ideal human. “Man was made in God’s image,” he said. Leonardo, besides invented several of his own painting techniques, studied the secrets of the universe predicted machines such as helicopters and airplanes centuries before they were ever even thought of. Raphael at this time was surprising his much older contemporaries Leonardo and Michelangelo with his skill. His skill came into such demand, that after he painted “The School of Athens,” the majority of his work was done entirely by assistants. He was regarded as the greatest painter who ever lived.

The book is being written for the Amazon Kindle and will only be available on that format, to be sold in the Amazon Kindle store. The next week or so I’ll be putting most of the chapters, or at least overviews of them, here on vince’s ear, in between other random posts as usual. Here and there in the book you’ll see some stuff taken from here anyway, but generally if you’re a steady reader of the blog you’ll catch most of it here. That way, Dear Reader, you won’t have to pay a penny for anything.

This is a working table of contents for what’s completed, but obviously much more is to come. I intend to include about 30 artists, and as I have said from the beginning it is by no means meant to be the definitive Renaissance artist biography. Included are only several of the most influential, innovative, and important painters, sculptors, and architects of the time.

Contents

Introduction- What is Art?
Part I- Early Art

• Cave Paintings
• Art From The Early Civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome
• Early Eastern Art

Part II- The Middle Ages

• Europe Between the Romans and the Renaissance
• The Black Death and the Danse Macabre
• Religious Art and the Middle Ages

Part III- The Renaissance

• A Period of Rebirth
• Painting
• Sculpture
• Architecture

Part IV-The Masters of the Renaissance

• Giuseppe Arcimboldo
• Hieronymus Bosch
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder
• Albrecht Dürer
• Matthias Grünewald
• Hans Holbein the Younger
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Michelangelo Buonarroti
• Raphael Sanzio

Part V- Conclusions

• The Baroque and Beyond
• The Future of Art