History of World Art II: Day 33

According to our text book, during the Renaissance artists came into their own and were revered as poets had been, in their own right - because of their poetic look at the world around them and their perceived divine inspiration. Plato wrote in Ion that poets did not compose because of art alone, but were inspired and possessed to create by a divine force. During the Renaissance the same virtues were said of visual artists. Driven to create and create whether or not there was an audience to see it. This can be seen time and again when an artist dies and years worth of creations are uncovered. The true artist does not seem to need any encouragement from the outside world, but the act of creating itself is their true reward. The true artists of our time can thank the leaps that were made by the artist of the Renaissance, which change the way the world valued them.

In 16th Century Italy drawing became more prominent than any other time before due to the fact that more artist could afford to buy paper with the advent of wood-pulp paper. During this time the act of drawing became dissected and artists were taught to emulate, design, and conceptualize which were considered important aspects to develop in conjunction with technical skill. The conceptualization, intention as well as talent became important aspects to measure art. In the literature of the time writers and critics often used the terms invenzione (invention), ingegno (innate talent), fantasia (imagination), and capriccio (originality) to praise artists with.

Disegno or design, is the intellectual component of art and an integral part of creating good art. Central figure of the Roman Mannerist school after Titian's death, painter Frederico Zuccaro (1542-1609), summed up the design-centric philosophy of the time in his 1598 treatise on art theory, in which he said drawing is the external physical manifestation (disegno esterno) of an internal intellectual idea or design (disegno interno).

You can see that the artists of the time spent much more time coming up with composition and working out details on paper, and this greatly improved the quality of the final paintings and sculptures that were being produced.