Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CIVILIZATION AND
MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS
FROM THE WEST
Lecture 6 Renaissance and the Birth of
Humanism
Lecturer: Dr. Terence Leung
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
The Renaissance, literally meaning “the rebirth,”
is a period of a great revival in intellectual and
artistic creativity after the Dark Age.
It was a cultural movement that profoundly
affected European intellectual life in the early
modern period.
文藝復興,是一場大致發生在 15 世紀至 17 世紀的
文化運動,在中世紀晚期發源於義大利中部的佛羅倫
斯,後擴展至歐洲各國。
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
The Renaissance is often considered one of the
great “turning points” in the history of Western
civilization.
It featured a renewed interest in learning about
the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome.
Renaissance scholars employed the humanist
method in study, and searched for realism and
human emotion in art.
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
The Key Questions:
What was the Renaissance and why did it
happen?
What were some of the new ways of thinking
during the Renaissance?
Who were some of the key people and
contributions of the Renaissance?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Location – began in Italy
Supported artists, writers, and scholars
Powerful leaders (because no single ruler
had united the Italian peninsula)
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Cities and towns were centers of wealth production
and of creativity.
There were two particularly dense areas of
urbanization, North Italy and the Low Countries,
which acted as the main hubs ( 樞 紐 ) for
international trade in commodities such as wool, silk,
tapestries 掛毯 , spices, silver and fine armour.
With the invention of printing Venice came also to be
the center of the European book trade, ideas
travelling rapidly via the wellestablished commercial
network.
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Art before the Renaissance was greatly
influenced by Byzantine 拜占庭式 styles
Highly decorative
Flat and not lifelike
Figures floated in space without shadows
Sized of figures were based on importance, not where
it was placed in the picture
Renaissance art, however, featured new depth,
dimension, and perspective.
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Byzantine style and
medieval art
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
The Renaissance is best known throughout our culture
for its contribution to the arts.
Instead of focusing on traditional depictions of religious
figures and iconography, artists like Michelangelo and
Leonardo da Vinci painted studies of the human body in
detail.
Influenced by the humanists, Renaissance painters drew
inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome.
Thanks to newly improved knowledge of anatomy 解 剖
學 , Renaissance painters studied to create perfect
proportions, detail and emotions.
Nudes grew in popularity, and to advance their realist
寫 實 主 義 perspective, Renaissance painters
experimented heavily with texture and depth.
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
The invention of visual perspective 透 視 creates
basis for individualism 個人主義 of Western societies.
i.e. the creation of the subjective point of view
The Renaissance precedes Enlightenment and it
concerned with aesthetic perfection.
With the human eye, shadows cannot exist without
light and viceversa.
More accurate term for shadow is “lightinshadow” or
chiaroscuro 明暗法 .
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Chiaroscuro (Italian for lightdark) in art is the
use of strong contrasts between light and dark,
usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.
It is also a technical term used by artists and art
historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve
a sense of volume in modeling threedimensional
objects and figures.
Probing questions:
Why is the “shadow” so important in the
Renaissance art?
What effect does a shadowless world give?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Early Renaissance Artists
Giotto (12671337) – used scenes with figures
in lifelike space, realistic shading, showed
emotion and gestures, and figures receding in
space grew smaller
Massacio (14011428) – used perspective
(guidelines to calculate how things recede in
the distance) and other realistic effects
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Four Masters of the ‘High Renaissance’
Leonardo Da Vinci 達 ∙ 芬奇
Michaelangelo 米開朗基羅
Rafael 拉斐爾
Donatello 多納泰羅
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Leonardo Da Vinci (14521519)
Painter, architect, sculptor, inventor, scientist
Dissected human bodies
Kept a notebook of designs (machine gun, helicopter,
etc.)
The Last Supper 最後的晚餐 , Mona Lisa 蒙娜麗莎
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
WHAT IS RENAISSANCE?
Michaelangelo (14751564)
Sculptor and painter
Paintings and statues were startlingly realistic
David 大 衛 像 , Pieta 聖 母 憐 子 圖 , ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel 西斯廷教堂