68 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance

that contrast with the powerful, stirring sub­

jects of the tempestuous Michelangelo. Reflect­

ing neo-Platonist influence, Titian early in the

sixteenth century strove to bring the viewers of

his paintings closer to the idea of the eternal

form of female beauty that he sought to repre­

sent with his depictions of Venus.

The Greeks and Romans believed that the

painter and sculptor understood and portrayed

the soul when they reproduced the human face.

Leonardo’s famous Mona Lisa (1503—1507),

with its mysterious, confident half-smile, is a

compelling illustration of this undertaking.

“Movements of the soul,” wrote Alberti early in

the fifteenth century, “are recognized in move­

ments of the body.” The artist had to be able to

reveal the emotions and passions of the figures

he depicted.

Renaissance artists used a large repertoire of

stylized portrayals of emotion, the meanings of

which were immediately recognized by virtually

all viewers of their paintings. The Florentine

Masaccio intended his extraordinary fresco The

Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden (c. 1427)

to represent the tortured souls, as well as bodies,

of those biblical figures. Masaccios Adam covers

his eyes with his fingers in anguish in this truly

gripping depiction of Adam and Eve’s crushing

grief as they leave the Garden of Eden. Although Renaissance artists gener­

ally avoided many of the routine associations of the medieval period (gold for

piety, for example), certain colors were used for symbolic purposes. Violet was

often a color of reverence, white that of charity, red of fire, and gray of earth.

Clear colors, intense light, and ideal proportions were combined in represen­

tations of Christ. Deep coloring, more subtle and natural than the blues and

golds of medieval painting, enriched the canvas.

Medieval and Byzantine artists typically painted rigid images on a flat

space, thus their work often appeared two-dimensional and lifeless; linear

forms were arranged in order of importance, accompanied by symbols easily

identifiable to the viewer. The Renaissance development of perspective the­

ory, in which parallel lines recede from the surface and seem to converge on

the vanishing point, facilitated the realistic presentation of figures and move­

ment. Renaissance artists believed that naturalism could only be achieved

through the use of perspective. Masaccio first applied the mathematical laws

of perspective to painting in his revolutionary Trinity (1425), which makes a

two-dimensional surface seem to be three-dimensional. The mastery of light

Masaccio’s The Expulsion

of Adam and Eve from

Eden (c. 1427).