Leonardo And Chagall's Paintings The Time Period example essay topic

"You do as you experienced". Employing artistic and literary devices towards the equivalent goal to reproduce forms of imagination to which the mind will recur with pleasure, a binding link between art and literature is established. A proof to this link is that both art and literature reflect the social context in which they were produced. The social context in which an artist lives in heavily influences his or her painting. During the Renaissance, an age that spanned the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, Western art reached its pinnacle, and although Michelangelo's work embodies its grandest artistic achievements, no life embodies the Renaissance as grandly and completely than that of Leonardo da Vinci's. He more than any other individual then earned the title "Universal man".

It was not un-rare for Renaissance artists to engage themselves in various intellectual interests; Leonardo, however, was unparalleled in both the breadths of his interests and the thoroughness with which he studied them. Renaissance works of art existed largely for their own sake, as objects of ideal beauty and pertaining to the human soul, mind and body. Leonardo clearly displayed this belief in his many extant drawings, which reveal his brilliant draftsmanship and his mastery of the anatomy of humans, animals, and plant life. In addition, Marc Chagall was profoundly affected by his home, background, and religion. In one of his notorious painting, I and the Village, Chagall's childhood Russian Jewish community is evidently manifested. Clearly, because his Jewish background effected him greatly Chagall chose to create a replica of his very own Jewish village.

Both in Leonardo and Chagall's paintings the time- period they experienced is reflected in their paintings, whether through the theme, background, or their artistic devices. Furthermore, in literature the social context effects an authors method of writing just the same. The life of Edgar Allan Poe was, like so many of his tales, short, poignant, and strangely haunted. From a very young age he experienced many deaths and consequently began to drink alcohol.

Due to this fact, Poe's writings became very daunting, with a common theme of death. For example, in his short story "The Cask of Amontillado" not only is the whole plot surrounded with alcohol (a cask of amontillado) his theme of revenge and death is equally portrayed. Additionally, Mark Twain lived during the Reconstruction, the period directly after the civil war which failed because although federalists tried to change the mind-set of many to prejudice the outlook on racism never did change. In Twain's book Huck Finn, Jim a black slave constantly works to free himself but all the while he is truly free through the will of his owner. Mark twain shows this irony of trying to free an already free man similar to the irony taking place during the Reconstruction. The federalists tried to show that all blacks are equal when really any human should have equal rights.