Blunt's Artistic Theory

Born 23 years apart and having been the most revered artistic masters of their time, Leonardo and Michelangelo approached their artistic theories (influenced by High Renaissance Humanism and NeoPlatonism and, perhaps, Mannerism) with different aesthetics.

Leonardo was born in 1452 and studied under Verrocchio.  He strongly felt that painting was a science which produced material works of art by imitating nature.  He relied on experimentation and observation and was opposed to speculation that was not based on experiment.  This involved mathematical perspective and the study of nature.  Leonardo felt that experiment was the "common mother of all the Sciences and the Arts."  (Blunt)  Realism had proportions that produced an academic uniformity in the human figure.  Leonardo felt that it was necessary to have a variety in proportion to best mimic nature. 

 Born in 1475, Michaelangelo had a allegiance to beauty rather than to scientific truth.  He did not like exactness in art but beauty in art.  Michelangelo felt that an artist inspired by nature must transform what he sees to an ideal standard in his mind.  He felt that beauty was the light which eminates from the face of God.  Therefore, he focused on more spiritual qualities than physical qualities.  Following the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Michelangelo developed more of a mysticism in his work as a way of escaping from the crumbling world around him.  His images of the human form became more exaggerated and distorted.

Leonardo felt that the highest form of art was painting.  He thought of painting as knowledge with a certainty of methods and a completeness of knowledge represented by the end result.  Leonardo felt painting had more artistic truth than that of poetry or sculpture.  Which better reflects the essence of God, a word or a painting?


                                                                             GOD

 Sculpture, Leonardo felt, was limiting in that it didn't produce color or aerial perspective.  Michelangelo, as we know, was a master of marble sculpture.  In sculpting, he thought of himself as cutting away until he "reveals or discovers that statue within" a piece of marble.  Michelangelo was opposed to the mathematical methods and approaches evidenced in Leonardo's theories.

Both artists studied the human form.  Both artists felt that a painter must be a great and skillful master.  Michelangelo felt that they should also have piety.