Perceptions of beauty in Renaissance art

Abstract

The Renaissance was a cultural revolution that spread from Florence, in 1400, throughout Italy and into the rest of Europe. Its impetus was the philosophy of Humanism, which strove to resurrect and emulate the literature and art of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Artists had previously been limited to formulaic religious iconography. They now began to reproduce descriptions of classical paintings and copy the antique statues that were being newly rediscovered. The Renaissance artist's perception of beauty was therefore determined by his philosophical environment, his visual experience (the 'period eye'), the demands of his patrons and by attempts to enhance his professional status in society to equal that of poets and architects. The image of Venus portrayed by Botticelli as the idealization of beauty in Renaissance Florence is significantly different from the Venus portrayed by the German artist, Lucas Cranach. The northern European Venus is much less voluptuous than her Italian counterpart but is still inspired by humanist principals and retains considerable sexuality. Raphael's paintings epitomise the idealization of female beauty of this period but, by his own admission they were rarely based on real models. Often the same facial type was repeated in many different paintings. Indeed Renaissance portrait artists tended to avoid realistic interpretation, emphasizing instead the positive attributes of their subjects, both physical and political. Thus, Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man not only depicts his subject's idealized appearance but also his scholarship, background and potential. The depiction of beauty in Renaissance art is shown to be more complex than a mere photograph-like representation of sexuality or of a person's physical appearance. Instead, Renaissance art created physically perfect images resulting from scholarly expectation, the artist's ambitions and his developing skills.