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Religious Symbolism In Renaissance Art
Renaissance Art are rich in philosophical and Christian symbolism. Narrative Biblical themed paintings, contain layer upon layer of vivid symbolism, provided instruction to the uneducated church goers hungry for scriptural guidance. Paintings throughout Western history have been used as guides in illuminating the Biblical stories. William H. Hunt once wrote "When language was not transcendental enough to complete the meaning of a revelation, symbols were relied upon for heavenly teaching, and familiar images, chosen from the known, were made to mirror the unknown spiritual truth." Narrative paintings, with their layer upon layers of readily understood symbolic meaning, provided instruction to the uneducated commoners that yearned for scriptural understanding. Paintings were used as guides that helped illuminate the divine mysteries of Church doctrine. Most prominently featured symbols and their meaning:
The Renaissance marks the ascendancy of individualism and the uncompromising prominence of the individual. Artists of the Renaissance were raised up in social standing and their artworks was no longer looked upon as simple handicrafts, but as divinely inspired creations. Distinguished art historian and author, John C. Van Dyke, observed "The word "Renaissance" has a broader meaning than its strict etymology would imply. It was a "new birth," but something more than the revival of Greek learning and the study of nature entered into it. It was the grand consummation of Italian intelligence in many departments—the arrival at maturity of the Christian trained mind tempered by the philosophy of Greece, and the knowledge of the actual world. Fully aroused at last, the Italian intellect became inquisitive, inventive, scientific, skeptical—yes, treacherous, immoral, polluted. It questioned all things, doubted where it pleased, saturated itself with crime, corruption, and sensuality, yet bowed at the shrine of the beautiful and knelt at the altar of Christianity. It is an illustration of the contradictions that may exist when the intellectual, the religious, and the moral are brought together, with the intellectual in predominance.
Key Descriptive Words and Phrases associated with the Renaissance Movement - rebirth, rediscovery of the classical world, City-state, Humanism, Humanist, Francesco Petrarch, Reform, The Prince, Theocracy, The Inquisition, Human Reasoning, publication of Della Pittura, a book about the laws of mathematical perspective for artists, sfumato, chiaroscuro, linear perspective, Heliocentric Theory, vanishing point, Savonarola, spiritually significant, illuminated manuscript, idealized biblical themes, scriptorium, emotion, illuminator, Age of Discovery, axonometric drawing, curiosity about the natural world, mythology, realistic use of colours and light, Bonfire of the Vanities, Old Testament stories, ethereal and foggy backgrounds, Gospel parables, The Blackdeath, romanticized landscapes, Christian symbolism.
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