Michelangelo Buonarroti Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Michelangelo Buonarroti - Research Paper Example v-vi). During this period, there was a renewed interest in the symbolism and skill represented in the achievements of the ancient world – the Greeks and early Romans whose ruins still dotted the local landscape. People who lived and worked around these ruins saw them as evidence of a lost golden age of shared culture, reason and creativity. They viewed the frescoes and mosaics as evidence of a society much better off than they were and began working to bring it about in their own world as trade centers began to grow and wealth became more widely available. By the late 1400s, a great deal of artistic practice had grown and the arts had begun to flourish. This was the time of the great masters - Giotto, Da Vinci, Michelangelo. A study of any of these artists reveals the energy and creativity of the age. Because of his position essentially at the height of the Renaissance period, Michelangelo Bounarroti is a logical choice for this type of investigation. His life and his times he lps to explain some of the great sensitivity he had in undertaking his many works of art, including painting, sculpture and architecture, reflecting in each the nature of the creative process that was sweeping through Italy at the time. One of the key characteristics of the Renaissance period was the greater number of educated people with money. Artists in towns like Florence quickly linked the mathematical knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans as expressed in their art and architecture to the proportional focus of their own world and realized how this could make their art more representational. These mathematics were a form of shared knowledge between the artists and the businessmen who paid them. â€Å"In an age of non-standard shipping units, one had to be able to calculate contents and quantities of shipments fairly rapidly† (Lemaitre & Lessing, 1993, p. 15). Painters used this foundational knowledge of geometry to depict everyday elements in their paintings that hel ped to convey their deeper intentions to the greatest possible audience. â€Å"In the same way that a painter could reduce the human form or settings to a play of geometrical figures, so could the merchant simplify all things to geometrical configurations† (Lemaitre & Lessing, 1993, p. 15). The melding of mathematics with artistic expression enabled artists to give their figures an impression of weight and volume that presented a more three dimensional appearance. This new ability to create realism within the flat surface of a painting and other forms of expression led artists to continue investigating other ways in which the world was revealed through the senses. This, in turn, contributed to an even greater explosion of thought, design and implementation that would eventually change the world. Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence was actually born closer to the coast in the town of Caprese in the year 1475. His father was the governor of the town when Michelangelo was born, but he lost this position soon afterward and the family had to move back to Florence. His mother was a frail woman so Michelangelo was given to a wet nurse to care for him. This wet nurse was the daughter and wife of nearby stonecutters, giving the infant child his first taste of stone cutting tools which would one day make him famous. â€Å"