Medieval and Renaissance Art

Comparisons between Medieval and Renaissance Art
Though medieval and Renaissance art both have unique features of their own, it is difficult to spot their differences unless we compare and contrast their colours as well as the objects or people that have been painted. Medieval art’s colours are mostly drab and dull because the pigments are mixed with egg yolk. They also have more religious aspects to them.  Renaissance art is more realistic and the colours are a lot richer. People are drawn in perspective instead of value of importance. To prove this further, we shall explore the chronological order of several paintings by examining their unique characteristics, starting with the oldest.

The last painting is the oldest one and from the early medieval period. Everybody has gold halos and the people are drawn bigger if they are more holy. The halos are extremely thick and the width is determined by whoever is holier. However, though gold is used in the painting, the rest of the colours are dull. Angels are in the background which shows that religion is definitely being used as a primary subject. The painting compared to the others is flatter and there are no dimensions. The child is bigger because he is supposed to be Jesus and thus very holy.
The fourth picture is still a painting from the medieval age. Lots of gold is used but the rest of the colours are still very simple and drab. The halo is still just as thick as the last picture. Both the child and the adult have halos. It is very easy to tell that the proportion is being ignored as the child is again, a lot bigger than he should be.
Picture number one is more recent then the fourth picture. The colours are brighter but the picture is still not drawn very realistically. The person in the white shroud’s eyes, are bulging out a bit more than necessary and there is no landscape whatsoever in the painting. None of the people have halos but it is still recognizably a painting from the early renaissance period and not one from the medieval era.
The third picture is one of the more modern ones. The woman it portrays is now wearing a royal blue robe, but its colours are not as vivid or as bright as the ones in the fifth picture. Her halo is also a bit more visible and you can see it curve across the curtain. Though there is some attempt at a foreground, it isn’t quite in perspective. Even the way the woman is holding the baby does not seem very in sync with the rest of the painting. However, that painting was still painted in the Renaissance period because there is less religious integration and it still is more three dimensional then two dimensional.

The fifth picture is the most recent. It was painted in the renaissance. Of all the pictures, not only is it the most realistic but the halo is the faintest. It features a woman in a red gown holding a baby. There is a landscape of green rolling hills which shows it is more modern than medieval paintings as they do not normally have landscape in them.

From all the examples above, we can definitely see that there were great differences between medieval and Renaissance art, as the latter gives an impression of being more colourful and rich, indicating that the painters living in that era most likely had a sudden surge of imagination and inspiration; thus the word "Renaissance!".