The early Renaissance period of painting represents the period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe. The most active areas for painting during this era were Flanders (northern Europe) and Italy. During the later Renaissance period, art, literature, philosophy and architecture would focus on the increasingly secular and humanistic aspects of society, politics, and philosophy. However, during the early Renaissance, there was still a focus on religious themes and religious symbolism in the artworks of some of the greatest painters of this period. Though such distinctions are evident between early and late Renaissance artworks, early Renaissance paintings often depict the distinction from Byzantine Art which preceded the early Renaissance. They do so in the manner that they demonstrate a growing focus on anatomy and perspective. This analysis will compare and contrast paintings from three of the most significant painters of the early Renaissance: Paolo Uccello, Sandro Botticelli, and Domenico Ghirlandaio.
One of the best painters of the early Renaissance was born in Florence, Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), (Early II, 9). Botticelli painted a number of works but one of his most famous is Portrait of a Young Man. The painting is tempera on panel, measuring 16 1/8” by 12 1/4” (Tansey 720). Painted during the late 1480s, Portrait of a Young Man demonstrates the increasing focus on perspective among early Renaissance painters. Profile poses were the most common type of pose used by artists until the 1470s, when artists began to paint portraits of individuals in three-quarter and full-face perspective. Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man is nearly a full-face portrait and, according to Tansey, Italian painters like Botticelli adopted such perspectives “perceiving that they increase the viewer’s information about the subject’s appearance and allow the artist to reveal the subject’s character” (719)...