Gothic art and the rise of Renaissance art

"Circle of life"

As with all things in life, a way of doing things takes precedence. This way continues for a while, possibly centuries, plateaus and then fades away amidst the beginnings of a new movement. Sometimes, most times, these movements are never really fully understood or named until after they have disappeared. Hindsight being 20/20.

Gothic art was a medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It thrived north of the Alps, never fully displacing the more classical styles in Italy. Gothic art was typological in nature, and fulfilled the need to tell stories to a mainly illiterate people in the forms of sculpture, and other related media such as stained glass, fresco and illuminated manuscript. Like most great movements in art it was filling a gap in people’s lives, it was giving the masses access to a world, the biblical world of saints and heroes, fighting temptations and persevering in the face of calamity. It was telling them a story and allowing them to take what they needed to complete the narrative of their own precarious existence.

Secular art came in to its own during this period with the rise of cities, foundation of universities, increase in trade, the establishment of a money-based economy and the creation of a bourgeois class who could afford to patronize the arts and commission works resulting in a proliferation of paintings and illuminated manuscripts. Increased literacy and a growing body of secular vernacular literature encouraged the representation of secular themes in art. With the growth of cities, trade guilds were formed and artists were often required to be members of a painters' guild—as a result, because of better record keeping, more artists are known to us by name in this period than any previous, some artists were even so bold as to sign their names.

Once again things change, peoples ideas change. Or perhaps more to the point, people with one set of ideas die, and younger people with their own ideas grow and perpetuate their world views, only to grow old and in turn pass away also. Renaissance art begins to take shape amidst the flying buttresses of the beautiful gothic cathedrals that were a means to understand the vast beauty of the heaven God was thought to inhabit.

The High Renaissance period was that of more familiar names, that of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Where in the Gothic period, images of the Virgin Mary changed from the Byzantine iconic form to a more human and affectionate mother, cuddling her infant, swaying from her hip, and showing the refined manners of a well-born aristocratic courtly lady. Now with the Renaissance we begin to see the very face of God interacting with human kind, touching Adam’s outstretched hand in the catalyst of creation.

The Renaissance could be roughly labeled the period from the early 15th to mid 16th centuries. It thrived, expanded and then eventually, once again faded away. Looking at these movements and developments leads one to wonder what is the underlying thing that never changes, through out history, when everything else seems to change and fade and die, only to be reborn anew. The only conclusion I can come to is humanity does not change fundamentally, but they way we view ourselves does change, and thus the we change the world around us. So the key question is always, as individuals and as a group, how do we view ourselves? We only have to look around us to see the answer.

If we don’t like what we see, we can always change it. We did it before.