New Styles in Art

The painters of the renaissance wanted to capture the real world in their works. To do this, they searched for new subjects to paint and new ways to paint them.
Renaissance humanism caused people to take a new interest in individuals. So, in looking for new subject matter, Renaissance painters naturally turned to the human face. They painted beautiful faces and ugly faces. Often, they painted their own faces, beginning a tradition of the artist’s self-portrait that would continue to the present.
Besides finding new subjects for their art, Renaissance painters looked for new artistic techniques. A painter’s flat surface has only two dimensions, length and width. To achieve greater realism, Renaissance painters needed to create the illusion of the third dimension, depth. So they used perspective. This is a technique of picturing objects on a flat surface to give the appearance of depth and distance. Renaissance artists did not invent perspective – painters in ancient Rome had used it. Since Renaissance painters admired ancient Roman civilization above all others, they rediscovered perspective and developed the technique even further.
Renaissance painters used two basic techniques to create the effect of depth – linear perspective and aerial perspective. Linear perspective makes a flat surface appear to have three dimensions. It is based on a familiar optical illusion. When we look down a road, for example, its parallel borders appear to come together and meet in the distance. Renaissance artists applied this type of optical illusion to painting. The Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli is an example of this technique. The parallel lines of the floor appear to draw together until they meet at a spot on the horizon, known as the vanishing point.

In aerial perspective, objects closer to the viewer are painted in brighter colors and greater detail than those farther away. Once again, in The Annunciation, the landscape in the background has cooler colors and softer outlines than the figures in the foreground. In this way, Botticelli creates the appearance that it is much farther away.
The use of perspective by Italian painters revolutionized European art. The painters of northern Europe introduced an even more important change. Before the Renaissance, artists had used egg-based paint. A northern European painter named Jan van Eyck began using colors mixed with different types of oil. Van Eyck did not invent oil-based paints, but his regular use of them prompted other artists to paint with oils.
Egg-based paints dry almost immediately when applied to a surface. Because oil paints dry more slowly, they allowed artists greater control in depicting shape and color. Artists could blend color areas to create more subtle, natural-looking shades and forms. Van Eyck and other Renaissance artists of northern Europe became famous for their skill in picturing the gleam of light on metal and glass and the textures and folds of cloth. They were able to achieve these vividly realistic effects through brilliant artistry and the use of oil paints.