A Brief Desciption of Medieval through Rococo (Examples of Each)

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Art changed dramatically between the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo periods. Each period has many different characteristics that distinguish it from the others. Many significant discoveries were made in art and architecture during this time, and these advances have had a major impact on art and architecture today.

Medieval

The Chartres Cathedral is located in the town of Chartres, France. Construction began in 1134 and continued on and off for the next eighty-six years. All of the characteristics of Gothic architecture are visible when observing this cathedral. Gothic cathedrals were built vertical instead of horizontal, in order to awe and inspire onlookers from far away. Flying buttresses and ribbed groin vaults made it possible to build these Gothic cathedrals, allowing for the skeletal walls with massive stained glass windows to flood the interior with light. The stained glass windows consist of illustrative stories which were used to educate the illiterate majority people during that time.

The arches found in Gothic architecture are pointed rather than rounded , which would be found in Romanesque architecture. The tympanum above the center portal at the west facade of the Chartres Cathedral depicts the Last Judgment. Huge rose windows are located above the portals of all four sides of the Chartres Cathedral.

Renaissance

During this time, the body corrupt way of thinking from the Middle Ages had shifted back to the body beautiful way of thinking from Greece. Vecellio di Gregorio Tiziano's (Titian) The Bacchanal of the Andrians depicts a Greek myth, common in Italian Renaissance art. Titian painted these figures nude or barely clothed, which shows the appreciation he had for anatomy. Titian covered his canvases with several coats of red paint to create warm undertones before he painted the actual scene. He established oil on canvas as the typical medium...