The Four Videos

1. Explain why you selected each of the FOUR videos you choose from the selection listed above. I choose The Drawings of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance, Cataclym: The Black Death Visits Tuscany, and Albrecht Durer: Image of a Master. My first to videos were just out of tremendous curiosity. I wanted to visualize their minds and see the difference. I liked Albert Durer and the Italian Renaissance.
2. For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.
1. The Drawings of Michelangelo: Michelangelo was a true perfectionist. He taught himself to sculpt and his drawings reveal emphasis on the solar plexus of human figures. Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel was his greatest, but most difficult. The church of San Lorenzo became a funerary chapel and family tomb. Michelangelo had a strong Christian faith and this is what drove his passion for creating faith based paintings and drawings. His crucifixion drawings were contemplation of his own death.
2. Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance. Always demonstrated exceptional gifts from infantancy. Leonardo was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and student of anatomy, physiology, botany, architecture, hydrodynamics, aeronautics, and he was the Renaissance Man. Leonardo has a tremendous perspective of man, animals and nature. Leonardo loved to tour the truth. His mind worked technically and philosophically. Leonardo faced tremendous slander and caricatures the faces of the men involved in the slander. Leonardo loved to study machines and reinvent more complex ones. When sent to the court of Milan as a musician he came armed with intricate drawings of weapons and machinery. Leonardo organized entertainment and shows. He developed grand urban projects. “Beauty and harmony are the divine nature.” Leonardo designed and excavator large enough to build canals.
3. Albrecht Durer: Image of a Master. Greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance. Intrigued by aging, Durer delivered Italian Renaissance to Germany. Durer is the first true landscape artist. Durer left traditional woodcuts and started engraving on copper. Durer gave visual expression to the Protestant Reformation in Germany by mass printing his work in support of Martin Luther.
4. Cataclysm: the Black Death Visits Tuscany. From a tragedy a new spiritual inquiry would spring the way for the High Renaissance. Sienna and Florence competed with each other in their architectural achievements. Business and multinational banking failed. The plague lasted seven months and killed up to one-half of Europe’s population. The Sienese built a small cathedral in thanks to the Virgin Mary when the plague was over. Christian mosaics depict heaven, hell and other Christian motifs such as the second coming of Christ. A good death in Medieval times was a focus of a good life. Suspicions about the Plague fell upon the Jews who were thought to be poisoning Christians. Cities no longer welcomed travelers or outsiders for fear of the Plague. Painting changed after the Plague, figures emerge flatter and they would paint gruesome images of hell. Giotto treats art as a service to mankind. Depicting figures with human emotions that tell stories. Many Renaissance crafts are alive and well in Florence today. The Renaissance period left many legacies, rise of the modern city, modern banking, literature, arts, Arabic numerals, eyeglasses, charities, paved streets, and underground water systems. The greatest innovation after the plague is the new way of thinking about our selves. Naturalism changes the way we see the world.

2. How do the videos relate to the readings in the text? I find that the videos personalize the artists. The videos take us as viewers in the minds and souls of the artist and reveals when, why and how they create their works of arts. It was interesting to compare the different artists.
3. What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts? The videos gave more of a perspective on time and place. In the videos I could actual witness the cultures. I enjoyed the video’s, but I did find them a little harder at the end to stay focused.