Painted by Fra Filippo Lippi in the Renaissance, ca. 1406 CE, Madonna and Child with Two Angels was painted towards the end of his career. Comprised of tempera on a 36x 25 inch wood panel, the painting depicts the Virgin Mary with her hands in a prayer. The child Jesus is held up in front of her by two angels. The angel in the foreground gives the viewer a playful glance, seemingly on the verge of laughter. The delicate, lightweight fabric that surrounds Mary’s face is a decorative element that was new at the time. In the background you can see a distant city and mountains, with a bay to the left. Slightly closer, there are plains with scattered shrubbery. Some have theorized that the semblance of Madonna could be a portrait os Lippi’s wife, Lucrezia Buti. The …show more content…
1509 - 1511 CE. As one of his most famous frescoes, the work lies in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican. The painting depicts most, if not all of the greatest people of classical antiquity. In the center stand Aristotle and Plato, representing their differences in opinion and thought. Whilst Aristotle philosophizes that reality is purely physical, Plato believes in an infinite, eternal reality that merely casts a shadow over our ‘reality’. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who sits in the bottom left hand corner, believes that the cosmos behave according to mathematical laws. Across from him, on the bottom right, stands Ptolemy, grasping a model of the earth. To his slight left is the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, holding a celestial orb. The former suggested that the planets revolve around the earth, though that theory was disproved. Lastly, Raphael himself is included to the right of Ptolemy. He gazes out towards the viewer with a knowing look. Though the subjects of the painting all lived at different times, they are together under one roof, exchanging