contrasting the art of venice and rome in the sixteenth century
... Greek Lysippan athletes, and conveys the same emotionalism of Hellenistic statuary. This same influence of Greco-Roman antiquity goes for his Moses, and the classical figures that he painted on the Sistine Chapel – all possessing biblical themes, with the artistic reasoning of the Classical period. Da Vinci, the great Renaissance thinker, used the same scientific reasoning combined with Catholic themes is his famed Last Supper: This fresco contains the same symmetry and perspective common in Greco-Roman frescos, w/ Jesus in the middle and an equal number of disciples on either side, with the vanishing point just above Jesus’ head, foreshortening, individualism in faces & positioning. This focus on symmetry reinforces the importance of reasoning making a comeback in the Renaissance from its stagnancy since the end of classical antiquity. The Venetian school of art was much less focused on recreating the artistic achievements of the past and more dedicated to portraying the new influences of the modern word developing around it (as a port city, Venice served as the gateway between Europe and the Orient, and thus was influenced more by the style and technique of its foreign traders than it’s Roman counterpart). That which set Venice apart from Rome on a stylistic level was its emphasis on color rather than sculpturesque forms. Also, the major theme of Venetian art was the hedonistic lifestyle of its populous rather than biblical religious events. Major artists in Venice include Giovanni Da Castelfranco, Giovanni Bellini, and Titian. Bellini & Titian combined their artistic powers to create “The Feast of the Gods,” with bright colors and lavishly costumed characters, and a sensual, nonreligious topic – a picnic in the woods with mythical pagan characters such as the faun. There can be found through out the piece an inconsistent interplay of light & dark, a technique that would be shunned in Neo-Classical Rome. This painting portrays an ultimately decadent lifesty...