MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE PERIOD

The Middle Ages and Renaissance Period: A Comparison and Analogy of their Reciprocal Influence

The Middle Ages and Renaissance Period: A Comparison and Analogy of their Reciprocal Influence

Earlier historical art period, characteristics of style, and social conditions

From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Europe underwent a great deal of changes in culture, most notably art and religion. In the Middle Ages, people were more focused on religion and spirituality, whereas during the Renaissance, the focus was more secular: right here and now as humans on Earth. The style and social conditions during those periods pushed the architecture to be shifted from reverent admiration to classic inspiration between the middle Ages and the Renaissance. (Fuller, 1988). In these two periods, art has really changes well. Three main changes, which have been observed in the medieval period of art to renaissance were the developing role of the artist, that is the artist turned from merely craftsman to the independent artist. In the renassiance period artists have incorporated more secular and mythical objects using unique techniques and styles. Inevitably, Avicenna sought to provide naturalistic explanations of Muslim miracle stories. Many Neoplatonistic ideas, such as the existence of higher ideas in the mind of God and the manifestation of those ideas in the real world were aspects of medieval philosophy. Some Neoplatonistic ideas and ideals remained during the Renaissance as well. Renaissance Neo-Platonism was more important for its spread into a diversity of philosophies and cultural activities such as painting, literature, and music. (Studies in Early Christianity, 1993)

Finally, philosophy changed significantly from the middle Ages to the Renaissance. Middle Age philosophy was very varied and was a mix of classical pagan philosophy (mainly Greek and Roman), Christian beliefs, and some Islamic and Jewish beliefs. Humanists of the Renaissance looked back in history to Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates (Tillich, 1956). The philosophical instinct was to combine thought systems, to find a common, widespread philosophy that encompasses an extensive range of thought. The greatest example of this was Pico Della Mirandola, who attempted to combine Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Hebrew thought, Jewish theology, Arabic philosophy, and many others into a single philosophical arrangement. The philosophy of Plato continued long after his time into the middle Ages and the Renaissance. The reception into Western philosophy and theology of Arabic Neoplatonized Aristotelianism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries provoked a major crisis in a thought world in which Augustine had long been the dominant authority. According to Avicenna (Ibn Sina [980-1037]), the material cosmos is an eternal system of substances, interacting according to necessary causal laws, produced necessarily by the "Agent Intellect," which is the lowest in a chain often "Intelligences" emanating necessarily one from another. Only the first emanates directly from God, who neither knows nor cares about the particular beings and events of this world and, therefore, would never intervene in it miraculously. The later historical art period, characteristics of the style

Following the period of time known as the Late Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance is conspicuously marked by ...