Historical Determinants
Q1: Review the historical determinants of the modern world and browse the galleries and images of Renaissance art on websites. What role did the invention of linear perspective in art play in helping to create the modern world? What aesthetic components, forms and themes do you observe in the Renaissance paintings and sculptures? Q2: Another historical marker of modernity is the emergence of capitalism and global commerce. As we can see in the images, the invention of linear perspective placed the individual at the center. This helped to create a relationship between the individual viewer and the outside world which became an object to be observed and ultimately controlled. This distinction also reinforces difference and distinction between self and other. How do the art works presented this week reveal relationships of power and inequality, e.g., between male and female, Europeans and colonized peoples? Global trade expanded during the Renaissance. What evidence do we find of trade, commodities and the celebration of moneymaking in Renaissance art? Q3: In the Middle Ages, the Christian religious view of human beings as sinful, fallen creatures who needed the Church to achieve redemption was dominant in European culture. In the Renaissance, how did humanists like Pico della Mirandola reorient the idea of humankind? How does Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel ceiling reflect this view? As printing developed, what role did books, e.g., the Bible, play in giving ordinary people a greater sense of power over their own destinies?
