e naturalistic portrayal to human life, but primarily with provoking a religious reaction in the viewer. Painters were not interested in making a picture realistic-they did not use perspective. The more important figures in the painting were frequently made larger than all the others, and often the element of landscape was omitted completely. Members of the Holy Family for example, would be painted against a background of shining gold, which signified the heavens.During the Renaissance, all that changed. The period was characterized by a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman design and included an emphasis on human beings and the environment.The secularism and humanism of the Renaissance were reflected in its scholarship and education. Its concern was with this world rather than the hereafter, and its focus was on pagan classics rather than Christian theology. The father Of Renaissance literature, Petrarch, stressed that the new boarding schools were not to train priests but the sons of merchants. The humanist movement was further stimulated by the influence of Byzantine scholars who came to Italy after the fall of Constantinople (present day Istanbul) to the Turks in 1453 and also by the establishment of the Platonic Academy in Florence. The academy, whose leading thinker was Marsillo Ficino, was founded by the 15th century Florentine statesman and patron of the arts Cosimo de’ Medici. The institution thought to revive Platonism and had paticular influence on the literature, painting, and architecture of the times.The feature of Italian Renaissance that distinguishes it from preceding eras is the extent and depth of its devotion to Classical Antiquity. Renaissance art demonstrates how the search for idealization of form itself can be a spiritual exercise, summoning up for the onlooker a sense of the perfection of G-d via the perfection of the idealized human figure or the proportions of a building. The rediscovery ...
