Leonardo's Mona Lisa vs. Michelangelo's David Essay

After returning to Rome, Michelangelo heard about a sculpture that two other artists could not complete because of its difficulty. Because of his success with ‘‘La Pieta,’’ Michelangelo decides to take over the job. He created ‘‘David’’ in 1501 and four years later the sculpture was placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Michelangelo’s intention was to portray ‘‘David’’as the perfect and ideal man. Michelangelo took three years to sculpt this 17 feet sculpture, and ‘‘David’’ quickly became the pride of Florence.

The Renaissance contributed to human society and the modern world in a multitude of ways. Because of the Renaissance, inventions like the printing press and artistic techniques were introduced. Today, we have very complex reinventions like the printer. Advances today in literature, the arts, and science are due to literature, the arts, and science in the time of the Renaissance. Examples of literature in the Renaissance are Shakespeare, Milton, Machiavelli, and Petrarch.

Man has been creating art for over 30,000 years. There are cave drawings, sculptures, Egyptian art, Greek Art, Modern Art and plenty more but to many, the Renaissance Art period is considered to be most important. Never had so many geniuses in art lived at one time and never had so many pieces of cherished art been produced. Two examples of Renaissance paintings are Cigoli’s Adoration of the Shepherds and Moretto da Brescia’s Entombment. Both paintings posses the attributes that were popular during the Renaissance period which I will now contrast and compare.

One of the most famous painter and sculptors of the Italian Renaissance, the age of renewal and cultural achievement circa 1500, was the artistic genius Michelangelo Buonarroti. The man that desired nothing but perfection often reached it in his work. He captured the motion of the human figure and the anatomy of muscles in a way that was increasingly beautiful and startlingly realistic. Whether because of one of the most famous sculptures in history, “the David” or the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, that became the textbook examples for the art period of High Renaissance, Michelango’s art changed the world and he will continue to be studied with awe throughout history.

When thinking of sculptures, one of the first that comes to mind is David. This statue was created of marble between 1501 and 1504 and stands over 14 feet high. David is a symbol that represents strength and anger. The statue had intended political connotations for the ruling of the Medici family. Michelangelo used David as model of "heroic courage" to demonstrate that "spiritual strength can be more effective than arms". Michelangelo insisted that David should stand as a symbol of the republic and act as a warning that Florence shall be governed justly and bravely". This was the first time since antiquity that a large nude statue be exhibited in a public place.

The rectangular pattern of the tiles in back of the Italian Renaissance painting underlines the geometric arrangement of the figures in the foreground and the background. All of the images of the people look carefully 'placed' by the artist. Not only was interest in classical era sculpture and architecture revived during the Renaissance in Italy, but also interest in math and science, and the near-mathematical precision of the painting reflects this fact.

The character of David has been the inspiration for many works of art throughout history. The young David, armed with only a sling, defeated the gigantic warrior, Goliath, and became the hero of the human people. This story became very popular during the Italian Renaissance, the period of 14th-16th centuries. During the Italian Renaissance, Florence was under constant change and turmoil however David remained the people with faith for the people. Many other artists have expressed their own depictions of the young boy but two stand out among all. Donatello and Michelangelo both created masterpieces on the biblical subject although the approaches of each artist were completely different in some ways this caused unique reactions.

Perspective plays an important role in understanding Masaccio’s frescos. Masaccio was born in 1401 and died unfortunately young in 1428. His full birth name is Tommasio di Ser Giovanni de Simone. He made a great contribution to Italian and Florentine art during the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. He worked alongside Filippo Brunelleschi an Italian architect and engineer. Together they created the idea of linear perspective with the influence of earlier artists such as Lorenzetti, Duccio and Giotto brothers. Linear perspective helps to form the impression of a three-dimensional space on a completely flat surface. This essay will compare ‘The Holy Trinity’ (fig. 1) by Masaccio and Raphael’s ‘The School of Athens’ (fig. 2). Both Masaccio and Raphael use linear perspective in their paintings to create a sense of depth and realism.

This both sculpture is of a man, one is looking at a direction, while one is in the middle of a swinging motion. Both sculptures is are made of marble. Marble is “metamorphic rock derived from limestone, composed mostly of calcite”. Back then marble was commonly used in a lot of the sculptures that were made. In the Michelangelo sculpture of David, he is holding something in the lower shoulder, looking at a certain direction. In the Gianlorenzo sculpture, David is holding a weapon, while having a different kind of emotion than Michelangelo’s David. Both sculptures would have taken a long time to do, each one is very detailed, and has their own personal meaning behind why they are the way they are.

Every painting is a unique experience for each individual person, therefore two of the artists that offered some of the most unique experiences where Leonardo da vinci and Michelangelo. While both of these painters are today well regarded and remembered, during their time they both had achieved such status in vastly different ways. Therefore even though these two artists lived during the same time these two are nothing alike. With their unique take on the world and events around them they were able to shape how the average person thought about the world around them.

Citation 1: Garcia-Salgado, Tomas. "The Reverse Outlining Perspective of Leonardo's Last Supper and Its Image Formation." Leonardo 41, no. 2 (April 2008): 138-144. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 14, 2017).

A winter known as Giorgio Vasari, stated that Michelangelo’s e works excelled “all ancient and modern statues, whether Greek or Latin, that have ever existed.” Michelangelo’s work, David, was very atypical in that the statue was unusually large and slender. By the 20th century, Michelangelo’s David had become iconic shorthand for culture with endless reproductions.

Michelangelo and Donatello were the most respected and inspiring artists of their time. Michelangelo of the High Renaissance and Donatello of the Early Renaissance both hailed from Italy. Both tell the biblical story of David versus Goliath, as told in I Samuel 17:28-51, in their sculptures "David." David was a Shepherd boy who killed the giant Goliath with nothing but a slingshot in his hands. Michelangelo displays David before the battle while Donatello shows David after the battle with Goliath. Michelangelo and Donatello were two of four famous artists who have created a statue depicting their image of David; Bernini and Andrea del Verrocchio were the others,

Painting had many idolized from the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations with works of vibrant, bright colors projected onto various canvases demonstrating natural beauty, architecture, and depictions of great cultural icons, such as the many figures of Greek mythology. New artists, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and many others had viewed classical pieces and set out to honor their ancient counterparts and to create their own style. Ideologically, artists became more centralized on the topic of the church, which is seen in many works, regardless of the patronage received from the actual papacy. New and past canvases and tools were introduced and reintroduced such as oil paintings, a prime example of Renaissance painting, fresco, involving pigments being mixed with water and applied to plaster, murals becoming more popular, etc. Techniques were also engineered to design and create the likes of astounding art which had never been seen before, such as perspective painting to create more detailed and dimensioned works as in Raphael’s “School of Athens.” Sfumato was another renowned technique made famous by Da Vinci which involved moving away from set, geometric borders and instead involved the use of mixing tones to create hazy outlines, exhibited in probably

The Mona Lisa is respectively one of the most famous paintings in the history, and was painted by one of the most infamous artist of all time Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo has his own mysteries, because no one knows much about the man at all, aside from the basics. He was born on April 25, 1452 in Vinci, Italy. His father was a notary and his mother was a maiden, they were never married, Leonardo was their only child. However, his parents together had 17 other children. He was extremely intelligent and was a master at many skills, science, math, architecture, art and was among the first to dissect a human body. He began painting at the age of 14 as an apprentice for Andrea del Verrocchio. By the age of 20 Leonardo had outshined his teacher and Verrocchio knew that he could never be as good as da Vinci and he never painted again. Throughout da Vinci’s life he painted many, many