Renaissance Art
...erstand the mechanics found within the human body. Nowhere else can a better example of muscle wrenching human forms be found than in Pollaiuolo’s sculpture, Hercules and Antaeus. This sculpture also shows how artists of the Renaissance, instead of using examples of Christian morality for subjects of action, chose there subjects from mythological classics. Hercules, to the Greeks the most popular god, is found lifting Antaeus, the son of Mother Earth, of the ground in a deadlock holding him from his source of energy and power. The detailed observations and appreciation of nature by these two men are examples of how the artists of the Renaissance forever accelerated artwork depicting human forms forever. The artists of the Renaissance period possessed a true appreciation for nature that has not been found in the artwork of any other proceeding culture. Human anatomy was observed and studied carefully to bring a new life to humanistic art. Donato Bardi was able to create an extraordinarily lifelike recreation of the Bible’s David, due to in part by his observations of Roman sculpture. While Greek and Roman sculpture evidently influenced correct proportioning and gentile stances the sculpture of the Renaissance encompassed a richness in surface detail which cannot be found in ancient Greek or Roman sculpture. Antonio Pollaiuolo went as far as to dissect the bodies of the deceased in order to better un...