Duality In Italian Renaissance Art

From the beginning of time, art has been a major component of life and culture. Art portrays major beliefs, values, and assumptions of the society that it is created in. Utilizing differing artistic techniques, emphasizing secularism and humanism by focusing on the essence of a Renaissance Man, using duality to portray essences of Christianity with humanistic values, and focusing on the aspects of anatomy are several ways that art mirrored the Renaissance. Several of the major beliefs revolve around the development of the Italian Renaissance, such as man breaking away from God. As a result of the alteration of people’s focus from religion to secular ideas, the art produced during the Italian Renaissance reflected more values of humanism and less religious concerns over time. However, Christian values were still reflected in art, signifying that religion and humanism was a duality of Renaissance culture. Henceforth, art may be described as a mirror of a society, and a vehicle in which an artist expresses their inner

There was a centralized focus on humanity in art, as the study of anatomy (the science involving the bodily structures of humans) became increasingly popular during the Renaissance. This was reflected in Titian’s Venus of Urbino, because Venus’ body was shown in ideal proportions. The desire to study the human body was sparked by the secularism of society, as well as the growing independence from God.2 This led to advancements of anatomical studies, reflected in The Vitruvian Man, a drawing by da Vinci in 1490. This secular and humanistic work exhibited the essence of Italian Renaissance proportions, as well as the “symmetry of the human body and, by extension, of the universe as a whole.”3 Not only did The Vitruvian Man accentuate the emphasis of proportions and symmetry in the Italian Renaissance, but it showed the anatomy of an ideal Renaissance