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The Northern Renaissance, and the Italian Renaissance are different in many ways and you can tell by the differences in their paintings, literature, and even the way they lived their life style. For the most part you can say that the Northern Renaissance was based upon the human belief with Christianity. While the Italian Renaissance was more humanistic, with the rebirth of the belief in human ability. That was the main difference. The other difference was the attitude. The attitude of the Southern renaissance was laid back, and had more realistic paintings of everyday life.
While the Northern Renaissance, was more up tight, and trying to struggle against the Italians with their spiritual paintings, and their belief of God. The Italian Renaissance was an explosion of ideas. The North heard what was happening down in the south, and flocked to see what was going on. Only to come back with just as many ideas.
So the painters that were in the North were deeply moved by God, and painted many religious picture. The South though was moved by something else. It was called humanism, or the belief in human abilities. The Italians painted every day secular pictures. While the North painted everyday pictures with saints or other deeply religious people or items in them. Still the big difference was the people themselves, and how moved they were by God.
In the North, humanists are deeply affected by the church because of the significance it has with God. So of course they are going to analyze it with a critical eye. The way they criticized it was in written words. The Italians, looked at art, literature, life and classic lifestyles for their writing / artistically ideas. They each tried to recreate their past. The North tried to rebuild a stronger church, while the south tried to rebuild the society and greatness of the Romans and Greeks that they once had.
Proving each to want a better society. Another big difference was the fight between what they clung on to. The North still clung, or was transitioning from the middle ages. Which meant there were still gloomy paintings, and lifestyles. And of course the Church.
The church was probably the biggest thing in the Middle Ages, besides the reoccurrence of the varied plagues. But the north was desperately trying to hang on to the past by trying to make the church, like it was when first founded not corrupt at all. Still the Italians were very past that and were looking even further in the past for answers and solutions at the same time. The Italians to begin with had a varied cultural root. With the Greeks, and the Romans.
It was even a huge trading point for Europe, Asia, and the Middle Ages. So to begin with Italy was had different cultures right in at their fingertips. So instead of looking to the Muslims, or the Asians they decided to look at their predecessors. Which just happen to be the Greeks and the Romans.
The Greeks and Romans had many great ideas, involving ideas such as learning, teaching, thinking, and even keeping track of records. So the Italians decided to look back at their way of life to see how to do things better than the middle ages. So they learned about philosophy, thought sciences, they even tried to give everyone a well-rounded teaching experience so they could be a true Renaissance man. They even learned to paint better. They learned perspective, made new paints and colors, and learned how to paint in thee-d.
The Italian painters were also learning to paint secular ideas instead of church / religion related paintings. If you look at the painting "The Money Changer and His Wife" by Quentin Massy's, you can see the improvement, not only in the art itself, but that people are no longer thinking that religion is the number one thing now. Take Michalengo's painting known as the Mona Lisa. It is the closet picture to a person ever made. Even the sculpting was getting better. But this was not just happening in the South; the North was catching on slowly but surely.
For an example of the northern art and how it was catching up to the South's quality, look at the picture called "Saint Jerome in his Study" painted by Victory Carpaccio. It is three-d, in new colors and paints, and also has better-drawn faces and features. The only thing is that it is a secular idea, which the south did not have or want in any way. I guess if you look at it, the North and South renaissance really were different, they were both big on art though, but the ideas of humanism, and the subjects they painted (which were quite important) were different as well. Even the literature was different because the North wrote about the church and Jesus Christ, while the South wrote about politics.
If I had to chose a side, I probably would have picked the South renaissance. I think there was more culture there, while the north was still in the middle ages.
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