Video Reviews - Week Seven

I choose Michelangelo because my grandfather told me about his vacation when he went to the Sistine Chapel.  I choose Leonardo da Vinci because he painted the Mona Lisa.  The last two I just choose for no reason.

The Drawings of Michelangelo: The British Museum – 90 drawing of Michelangelo.  Michelangelo the creator, drawings are sensual and bring us closer to the master.  Born in Florence, became a prentice at 12.  Analysis the Pieta, the colossal David, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, The Last Judgment, the Medici tomb, and St Peter’s Basilica.  He used both sides of his paper and took his papers with him.  The Pieta is the only signed sculpture.  Michelangelo died before the dome was built for the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  Drew little sketches then had to make it bigger (4 times bigger) to put it on the ceiling.  It’s showed the drawing and then the sculpture, it was pretty amazing to see how much alike they are.  

Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance - Leonardo da Vinci (1452) from birth to his final years in Cloux his life and works.  He was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and student of anatomy, physiology, botany, architecture, hydrodynamics, aeronautics, and other disciplines; he was the quintessential “Renaissance man”.  He was left handed.  The head from one the eyes from another and the ears from a third.  He caricatures the faces of the men involved in the slander against him.  He studies machine to create better machines.  Leonardo goes to the court of Milan as a musician.  When he arrives he presents himself as a military engineer armed with drawings of weapons and machinery.  Leonardo believes proportion and balance must flow from the artist’s knowledge of his subjects.  Beauty and harmony are of the divine nature.  In 1503 he returns to Florence with the Mona Lisa.  In 1516 he becomes the first painter, engineer and architect to the King.

Albrecht Durer: Image of a Master - The greatest artist of the northern Renaissance Albrecht Durer introduced the Italian Renaissance forms and ideas to Germany that was dominated by the Gothic tradition.  He was a painter, printmaker. He mother had 18 children and buried 15 of them.   Durer is considered the first true landscape artist.  Durer swayed from traditional woodcuts to the engraving on copper.  He last painting of 4 of the apostles.

Velazquez - Velazquez was a court painter to his friend King Phillip IV of Spain.  He was influenced by the Italian masters.  He was born in 1599 and died in 1660.  Captures the timeless moments in his paintings: light, air, moments those that disappear.  Some of his works are: Sybil, Prince Baltazar Carlos, Las Meninas, Phillip IV and Las Hilanderas.  He painted slowly and one at a time. 

All of the videos related to the chapters we read, some of the information was the same. 

I like all the videos somehow watching and seeing the sketches and the finish painting or sculpture pulls it all together.