The Renaissance, meaning ‘Rebirth’ in French was a period often referred to as the Quattrocento period of disciplinary revelation that started at the beginning of the 15th century with scientific, artistic, and cultural inventions in Europe, most importantly encouraging people to identify themselves as individuals and finding their sense of self, being their parting of seas, their miracle which started blooming in the city of Florence.
The creation of the European Middle Class gave rise to those who were no longer burdened by the shackles of debt, allowing for newer generations to focus on self-expression they so longed for via philosophy, painting, sculpting, glasswork, poetry, architecture, and the natural sciences.
Artistry was a prominent way of self-expression. The most captivating example would be Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Doors of the Florence Baptistry with its quatrefoils depicting the “Sacrifice of Issac”. Ghiberti didn’t just perfect his sculpting techniques, but effortlessly embodied and portrayed human emotion of panic, regret, agony and fear in real-time, alongside the emphasis on humanly features in the scene showing human vulnerability and its fragility which further added to the story the piece was telling.
His work radiated a sense of unity among people after years of hatred and separation, and each element had an emotionally binding meaning, contrasting perspectives from the Byzantine era’s sharp angularity and prosaic mindset involving natural forms to human anatomy and finding beauty in our own flaws as a part of Humanism, a more people-centric concept which emphasized individuals and their existence as sentient beings, which is exactly what the fundamental concept behind Renaissance art was.
Several other Renaissance artists thereafter created masterpieces we savor till date, like Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa showing an enigmatic Florentine woman whose features he expressed in a fragile mannerism using the Sfumato technique in the High Renaissance, or his Vitruvian man, the Canon of Proportions effectively communicating the Universe’s design, equilibrium, connection of man with nature and our purpose on this Earth to explore.
How can we forget Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel works? A thought-striking depiction of the creation of Adam as God breathes life into him, a painting which leaves us with room for creative interpretation behind the subordinate elements.
Many proposed the angels surrounding God form the structure of the human brain, empowering the message of the Renaissance of human intelligence, creativity and discovery joined with faith, while others proposed they formed a womb portraying the importance of women in the creation of society and how pioneering was our way to a full life. God’s arm reaching out was the umbilical cord joining him to his children.
The beauty of the Renaissance is found in asking questions, why things are the way they are, suggesting theories, possibilities and what our purpose is embedded in the bush of thorns and roses of this world. It encouraged people to embrace their true selves, appreciating their humanity and what makes them human after all, building our world today. Indeed, that’s where the real journey begins; with a question, and so I ask you this--
Who are you?
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