By: Anna Tsai

Art is a way of expressing our feelings. Art can be formed in many kinds of ways, such as by using colors, paint, physical actions, space, and other kinds of methods. As we all know, there was a period of time in Europe when art was revived–The Renaissance.

The Renaissance is a period in which people started to explore new things, such as inventing things, communicating with other countries, and exploring the world. At that time, Europe’s art was all related to religion, such as “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci and “Genesis” by Michelangelo. These masterpieces are all related to Christianity; “Genesis” is about Adam and Eve’s creation and adventures, and “The Last Supper” is an image depicting the Apostles’ reactions after Jesus mentioned that someone will betray him.

In the southern part of Europe, Renaissance artists were good at highlighting the main character in their art piece, just like an image taken with a professional camera. The background is always foggy, which helps the artist to highlight the main character The most famous artwork is Mona Lisa by da Vinci. It is the first portrait with an imaginary landscape in the background.

In this portrait, you can see that Mona Lisa is in the middle of the portrait, smiling, and has hands on her lap. To artist Da Vinci, Mona Lisa was the paragon of beauty. As you can see, he made the background a little blurry, and limned the flowing clothes which encourages people to keep their eyes on the main character. Also, the artwork is still unfinished, and this presents a mutable definition of beauty,

Now you’ve learned the background history of art in Europe, and also the specialty of artists in the southern Renaissance. Now I’m going to tell you about the northern Renaissance. So the northern Renaissance began a few years after the southern one started. The northern one started in the Netherlands. The artists from the north liked to include everything they saw in their images, rather than simply focusing on the main character, and everything that they included had its own symbolism, such as “Arnolfini Portrait”, an artwork by Jan van Eyck from the Netherlands.

In this artwork, there is a man in a black suit and a woman in green dress, holding hands. Firstly, between them, there is a dog. This dog represents loyalty, meaning that their relationship is loyal and they won’t leave each other. Second, there are two shoes: one is a girl’s shoe, facing inside, and one is a man’s shoe, facing outside. This means that the man will work outside, and the woman will stay inside and take care of their baby. Third, there is a mirror at the back of the room, shaped like a gear, and in the middle of the mirror, there is the third person helping them to take a photo, and each teeth of the gear has a small picture that forms 10 stories about Jesus. Compared to the northern renaissance, the artworks from the south have less symbolism, as the main character’s appearance represents all the messages that the artist want to send.

All in all, although the two regions differed in the messages expressed in their art, they were still united by a fundamental similarity: the artists in the north and south both used colors and symbols to represent the main theme that they wanted to express. With such a rich repertoire of art, the Renaissance has made art in Europe bloom quickly.