What was the effect of humanism on art and literature
Answers
Explanation:
Humanism And The Visual Arts
Humanistic themes and techniques were woven deeply into the development of Italian Renaissance art. Conversely, the general theme of “art” was prominent in humanistic discourse. The mutually enriching character of the two disciplines is evident in a variety of areas.
Realism
Humanists paid conscious tribute to realistic techniques in art that had developed independently of humanism. Giotto, the Florentine painter responsible for the movement away from the Byzantine style and toward ancient Roman technique, was praised by Giorgio Vasari as “the pupil of Nature.” Giotto’s own contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio said of him in the Decameron that
The Nativity, fresco by Giotto, c. 1305–06, depicting the birth of Jesus; in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy.
The Nativity, fresco by Giotto, c. 1305–06, depicting the birth of Jesus; in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy.
ART Collection/Alamy
there was nothing in Nature—the mother and ruling force of all created things with her constant revolution of the heavens—that he could not paint with his stylus, pen, or brush or make so similar to its original in Nature that it did not appear to be the original rather than a reproduction. Many times, in fact, in observing things painted by this man, the visual sense of men would err, taking what was painted to be the very thing itself.
Boccaccio, himself a naturalist and a realist, here subtly adopts the painter’s achievement as a justification for his own literary style. So Shakespeare, at the end of the Renaissance, praises Giulio Romano (and himself), “who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape” (The Winter’s Tale). It should be noted that neither Vasari nor Boccaccio nor Shakespeare endorses realistic style as a summum bonum. Rather, realism is the means for regaining touch with the sovereign creative principle of Nature.
Classicism
Like the humanists, Italian artists of the 15th century saw a profound correlation between Classical forms and realistic technique. Classical sculpture and Roman painting were emulated because of their ability to simulate perceived phenomena, while, more abstractly, Classical myth offered a unique model for the artistic idealization of human beauty. Leon Battista Alberti, himself a close friend of Donatello and Filippo Brunelleschi, codified this humanistic theory of art, using the fundamental principle of mathematics as a link between perceived reality and the ideal. He developed a Classically based theory of proportionality between architectural and human form, believing that the ancients sought “to discover the laws by which Nature produced her works so as to transfer them to the works of architecture.”