SSTEIN--- Sir Anthony Blunt. Artistic Theory in Italy

SSTEIN--- Sir Anthony Blunt. Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1600

                                Leonardo, 23-38 and Michelangelo, 58-81

 MICHELANGELO

Michelangelo’s artistic theories can be broken into three different periods in the first period; Michelangelo follows a view on arts that is influenced greatly by high renaissance humanism. Like Leonardo he was influenced by the scientific tradition of scientific tradition of Florentine art. However, Michelangelo was focused more on beauty than science and truth. Michelangelo's work shows heroic quality and emphasizes beauty of the human body. He did not believe in exact imitation of nature. He beloved in the beauty of nature and he put emphasis on it in his works. Michelangelo would paint his Venus by using a mixture of beautiful features on women to create the perfect woman. He wanted to capture the male gaze. 

                With the split of the church and weakening of the pope, a change in outlook affected Michelangelo's works. In his painting, the last judgment he didn’t make the nude beautiful like he once had. Instead the bodies were lumpy, heavy, and ungraceful. He wasn’t looking for beauty, more of a spiritual meaning. He is conveying that physical beauty will pass. Love is spiritual. But love is triggered most easily through beauty and what we see.  He was becoming spiritually minded in has age and beauty was becoming less of the physical world and more of the spiritual world. His work was more toward the inward mental image and still less of the naturally world. 

                Michelangelo created many sculptures. He said that he created these sculptures not only with his ideas but the as a subtractive process the form was already within the stone he was carving. As he carved at the stone his ideas would be revealed and uncovered trough his skills. In his statues he relied on his own imagination and inspiration rather than following standards of beauty laid forth by past artists. 

                In the last stages of his life, Michelangelo was extremely representative. He began to give up classical subjects and religious subjects. Instead he showed tragedy with nothing supernatural. He was working more towards spirituality and Christianity. 

 LEONARDO

                 Leonardo dominated the philosophical field of art. He was all about studding science and natural phenomenons of the world. He also studied mathematics to improve observation and experimentation. This is a bit different than that of Michelangelo because Leonardo loved nature and wanted to decipher everything that he could about it. He recorded what he actually saw in the anatomy of life form Plants animals and Humans. His strengths lie in the observation of natural phenomenon. His painting was a scientific study of perspective and nature. They are based on true principles of live from his own observations. He follows three facts when he paints: the eye is the sense that can least easily be derived, the painter does not rely on just his eye but measurements, and painting is based on the study of geometry. He describes that way he works as defining the world in the most perfect way he can. He says that people who ignore science will not be able to produce a good work of art.

                Leonardo uses light has one of his strongest ways to represent the real world. Without the study of light and shadow a painting will not appear believable or real. It needs to have relief to create dimension. He studied the colors they were made when a shadow was cast upon a certain object. He studied something much further that perspective, he studied atmospheric perspective, or how object become less focused from a distance. His paintings were mainly focused on this exact imitation of nature unlike Michelangelo. He stays away from improving the nature because it will only lead to the depiction of an unnatural world. As for anatomy he observes that all men can be well proportioned. The proportions are usually fixed to an ideal mans height. But he still urges people to realize that the men will vary in looks as most all people do. 

               As an inventor he encouraged new ideas, but did not believe in the creation of something that excels nature. All inventions must be plausible and real in nature itself. Leonardo is the perfect mix of scientific observer and imaginative creator to the point where his ideas are plausible and not too farfetched to be made realistic.