Christian Art before the Renaissance (Proto-Renaissance)
Prior the Renaissance, Christian art was heavily practiced. Christian Art had a consistent style which consisted of figures with elongated body parts, a lack of depth or perspective, cross hatching, abstraction, and exclusively heavily depicted imagery and symbolism of heaven. The symbolism and imagery often seen was a divinity crown, golden backgrounds, and of saints or angels. This period in art history is also known as the Proto-Renaissance.
Title: Madonna Enthroned with Angels and Prophets
Date: ca. 1280-90.
Christian artists had several reasons they chose to work in this particular style. One reason being that they were coming off of the medieval and byzantine period where art depicted of icons were required to have realism and naturalism because of the iconoclasts. Another being that they did not yet have the mediums necessary for achieving realism in Christian art. They had to work around limitations by using methods such as, cross hatching instead of blending. Heavenly images were also exclusively depicted in heaven because people did not yet associate anything earthly with anything divine.
During the proto-renaissance, art changed by becoming more naturalistic and humanistic. Giotto was a pioneer in this shift. He controversially painted divine icons into earthly landscapes and began to blur their more divine attributes. Their divine crown being less prominent, no longer being a yellow circle on their head, but instead a few yellow lines of glowing radiance. People being placed behind each other instead of on top. This gave the art depth and perspective. Proportions beginning to achieve accuracy by no longer appearing elongated. More expressive faces and gestures that helps the subject matter evolve and become more evident. Shading of clothing, landscapes, and people became more prominent because of a few new mediums discovered. One main medium used that many who pioneered the shift from proto-renaissance and renaissance was oil paint.
Title: Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ)
Medium: Fresco
Date: c. 1305 – 1306
Eugenia Santos 