Blog 9: Video Reviews

The Drawings of Michelangelo

1. I chose this video after reading the summary on the video page. It mentions that the video has preparatory drawings of some of Michelangelo's famous works. I thought this would be interesting to see one of the world's most famous artist's drafts and how his paintings developed from their original sketches.

2. In the British Museum has 90 of Michelangelo's drawings for students to study. The first sketch the video shows is a 500 year old drawing of the body of Adam, which eventually became the center painting in the vault of the Sistine Chapel. These drawings allow us to see the way Michelangelo created a drawing and how he developed his skill of reproducing images of people on to paper. It is interesting that they even have this many of his draft sketches because Michelangelo was said to be a perfectionist and although he was drawing all of the time, he destroyed many of his sketches that were not good enough in his eyes. I thought one of the most interesting things from the video was learning that Michelangelo served an apprenticeship for Domenico Ghirlandaio. The video was able to show draft sketches of an idea Ghirlandaio was working on when Michelangelo was just 12 or 13 years old. They then compared Ghirlandaio's sketch to a sketch Michelangelo had done for The Three Crosses. They were so similar and almost exactly the same kind of sketching. But, the video explains that Michelangelo was known to deny his debt to Ghirlandaio and would not want these comparisons to be made. Michelangelo also began sculpting and was able to develop this skill on his own. One of his most famous sculptures is in Florence and is of David. It was immediately known as a masterpiece and he became an inspirational symbol for the city. 

3. This video related to the readings in chapter 16. The text pictures Michelangelo's works David and Dying Slave while it explains how deeply Michelangleo studied anatomy and had even dissected corpses. He had to gain all of the knowledge he could about every element of the human body so that he could transfer that into marble but still create a look of flesh and muscle. While the video explains that Michelango learned to draw and paint from from Ghirlandaio, he taught himself to sculpt. Chapter 16 also shows the interior of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome. While the text explains the four years Michelangelo put into painting the ceiling from a scaffold 68 feet about the floor, the video was able to show the beginning sketches of the ideas Michelangelo was gathering before he actually started work in the Vatican. The video also really added depth to the portion of the Sistine Chapel shown on page 370, the Creation of Adam. The video explains this painting as "Michelangelo creating God, creating Adam." It was really interesting to learn the details of how Michelangelo worked to create a lifeless man reaching out to receive life and how differently the body would lie with all of the details and expressions.

4. I was happy I chose to watch this film because it was really interesting to see another side of such a well known artist. This video really connect to the section on Michelangelo in chapter 16 and I really connected to both because when I was 15 I had gone to Spain, France, and Italy. So it really brought back a lot of memories of being in the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel and seeing the statue of David. I really would like to go back now that I have gained so much more knowledge about art and art history and architecture because as much as I enjoyed my trip, being only 15, I didn't have as deep of an appreciation as I think I would have now after learning so much more about the artists and history.

Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance

1. I chose this video after watch the Michelangelo video because in my mind they are two of the most famous artists I can think of and am interested in finding some of the similarities and differences between them. I know they were both Italian and lived at the same time so now that I have learned so much more about about Michelangelo I am curious about Leonardo da Vinci.

2. Leonardo da Vinci was said to have extraordinary gifts from infancy with a true passion for drawing and an unstable temperament. When he is older, Leonardo moves to Florence and his father puts in him a studio of the renowned sculptor, painter, and goldsmith Andrea del Verrocchio. Leonardo began to develop a strong perspective and gain a great understanding of proportion of man and other animals. He is the first to use landscape as the main center of a drawing. While he is working under Verrocchio, he is one day tasked to paint an angel within one of Verrocchio's works and the video explains that Verrocchio is humiliated by his apprentice's skill and decides he is unworthy to touch a brush ever again. Leonardo's genius does not just come through his skill of painting but his way of philosophical thinking. The video goes through many of Leonardo's works including The Virgin on the Rocks, The Last Supper, Study of Human Proportions, Virgin and St. Anne, and Mona Lisa. He also experiments with mechanical inventions to explore machinery. He becomes an artist of machines and an artist of science. He is determined to understand the essence of man and takes part in secret dissections to study the human body. It is interesting in the explanation of Leonardo creating The Last Supper in that although he worked nonstop and for days at a time, there were times he did not even pick up a brush. He strongly believed in reflection and that an artist needed to think. 

3. This video related to chapter 16 in the text where we learn about the High Renaissance in that Leonardo da Vinci is named as the "Renaissance Man." Leonardo competed with Michelangelo during this time but da Vinci was an all around genius who had mastered not only painting and sculpting, but he was also an inventor, architect, mathematician, scientist, engineer, and musician. His brilliance is evident in his careful rendering of perspective. While Leonardo is quite the perfectionist, both the video and text explain his failure to complete works and many projects were left unfinished which leaves an aura of mystery left in his work. 

4. This video deepened my understanding for Leonardo da Vinci and who he was as a person and an artist. I was curious in the comparison of da Vinci and Michelangelo but it is clear that Leonardo da Vinci had a long list of skills and was that of a genius. The video explains the story of the city of Florence commissioning a Fresco for the Lord's palace to commemorate the battle of Anghiari. Leonardo wishes to create a glorious work to show the brute stupidity of war. He then learns that his rival, Micheangelo is to paint a fresco on the opposite wall in the chamber. The day Leonard begins to paint, rain and other problems ruin his work that he planned to leave as a legacy for himself and he decides to abandon the work. It is too bad that this project did not go as planned because that would have been really interesting to have the opposite sides of the chamber painted by the two artists.