Visual Culture- Visual Language and Knowledge

This week for our visual culture lecture we were introduced to The Continental Renaissance and it's impact on art throughout history. The Continental Renaissance was a cultural movement from the mid 14th century to late 17th century and originated in Italy, it came around due to all the war and disease (Black Death) that happened in the 14th century and led to a decline of the medieval world in the 15th century that encouraged European discovery and prosperity. The survivors of all the war and disease believed they were saved by God which links to the name Renaissance meaning rebirth. Florence, Italy was the centre of trade banking and the centre of Christianity, this all helped to develop the city life in Italy and resulted in Europe looking to Italy for help and knowledge. The rebirth meant starting again but they used the past as inspiration for the future so there wasn't huge break of originality that kickstarted the Renaissance but it did lead to amazing works of art such as The Scrovegni Chapel (1305) and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.

During this time of art there was the discovery of perspective and foreshortening that changed the way art could be seen and viewed by everyone, this even has a huge impact on us today with how we design and view art. Also in this stage there was a switch from religion to mythology and we started to see more depictions of Roman and Greek Gods in pictures and been presented in the style of allegory, which was a device that used characters or events in literal or visual form and represented them as a symbol. There was also an increase in nudity in art where they would use the nakedness of a male to represent perfection and the nakedness of a female to represent beauty.

This was certainly an interesting time for art with the cultural movement been at it's peak and there is so much inspiration from this era that has impacted our society and culture in the present which I was uneducated on before this lecture. It's interesting to see how much of history is used and repeated throughout time to work towards something new.