Leonardo And His Contemporaries:The Fusion Of Science With Art
Leonardo da Vinci was known for his amazing mastery of spatial atmosphere, his control of color and emotion that was accomplished through vast numbers of physical studies and being an apprentice of the Florentine, Verrochio. He developed his own style but only after learning the ways of his earlier Florentine forefathers as well his contemporaries.
Florence in the early Fourteenth Century was a flourishing artisan center which bred numerous artists and even more advances in the field of science, art and architecture. A multitude of talented artists began to utilize science in art to aid in creating a, "systematic recording of visual phenomena. " One such artist was Filippo Brunelleschi who has been credited with the invention of the linear perspective1. this artistic development can be seen throughout scores of Florentine paintings from varying artists. His progression in the means in which spatial atmospheres are created in painting had started a new understanding amongst his peers as well as younger artists such as Donatello. In fact Leonardo da Vinci shared many of the same artistic ideals with both Brunelleschi and many others nevertheless remained in an experimental period not yet producing works reflecting the new found knowledge. However, many of these younger artists began to experiment with Brunelleschi's linear perspective and created an entire new way of creating art through using mathematics and science.
Donatello was one of the youngest to modify these new ideas of spatial creation in his marble relief of St. George and the Dragon in, 1417 . However, Martin Kemp does state that this only the very early stages of a more advanced form of art creation and also states that, "the techniques appear to be intuitive rather than geometrically precise.2" It was not too long after that that these exact techniques became much more developed showing signs of almost scientific accuracy.
A direct example of this improvement of...
View Full Essay