Renaissance Themes and the Modern World of Art

Renaissance Themes and the Modern World of Art

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By john726 / March 2, 2012 / A Block / 6 Comments

I think it's important to start this post by mentioning that a comparison of Renaissance art to modern art is like comparing parents and children. Renaissance art did, after all, develop many of the basic ideas of modern art, such as perspective, as well as utilizing objects of focus which are often still present today. There are differences, however. Renaissance art seems to focus more on the human as an individual, while modern art takes a broader picture or one with no humans whatsoever; instead, modern art often utilizes style of painting to get its point across. Modern art is in general more polarized than Renaissance art. Instead of subtle gestures delicately painted into a work, today's artists make sure that they either get their point across strongly or that their work remains entirely unclear.

Renaissance art deals primarily with the natural and supernatural worlds, portraying gods and goddesses (as in Botticelli's Birth of Venus) or humanity at a high point (as in Raphael's School of Athens). Renaissance art often also represents human dimensions accurately; the subjects of modern art are much more abstract, often not including either humans or gods, and most modern artists choose to depict less realistic visions of our world. To me, Picasso pieces are perfect representations of both shifts in subject and shifts in style to that of surrealism and abstract art. However, in modern art, there has been a small shift back towards the objects of focus of Renaissance painters. Paintings of Greek gods have become more common in modern art than in periods before, but not to the same level as the Renaissance. In many cases, in fact, the painting of such gods are entirely intentioned to remind the viewer of Renaissance style.

You may be wondering by now, where is the Christian art? Did Christian art still exist during and after the Renaissance? In short, yes. Christian art continued to be produced in large quantities throughout Europe during the Renaissance. However, in 1453 after the Protestant Reformation, most newly Protestant countries banned the production of Christian art and burned most of what they could get