3 ms·
An important piece of context for the renaissance, which is often lost in modern discussions, is that it was not a movement which was attempting to be "innovati
by nkoren 6y ago
An important piece of context for the renaissance, which is often lost in modern discussions, is that it was not a movement which was attempting to be "innovative" or conceptualised itself as such. Rather, it was fundamentally backwards-looking: an attempt to recapture the glory of antiquity. People were digging up the ruins of a conspicuously more advanced civilisation -- which could do mind-bending things like draw in perspective, pour stone like liquid, and build vast spanning domes that lasted for millennia -- and wanted to reverse-engineer how those things were done. That was the genesis of the renaissance: reverse-engineering. Part of the reason Italy was the centre of this was because it had more tech to dig out of the ground.
Even the Enlightenment saw itself as largely backwards-loooking, again inspired by antiquity, this time in more philosophical terms. It's only since the industrial revolution that the framing has started to be more about "innovation towards the future" than "reclamation of past glory".
- watwut 6y agoAfaik, the old civilizations were rather rudimentary in perspective? There are some traces of it, but no mind bending anything.
- kergonath 6y agoThey had stuff like theatres, temples, and aqueducts that still stood after being utterly neglected for a millenium, whilst their fancy new churches took centuries to get built and needed constant maintenance. It’s easy to see how this would seem wonderful, or how they would take ancient Rome’s engineers and architects as models. Also, we tend to take things we’re familiar with for granted, and overlook them when comparing different societies. So of course, ancient civilisations were terrible for other reasons, but still...
- nkoren 6y agoRoman artists used vanishing point perspective, which to medieval artists -- who had no grasp of perspective at all -- was pretty amazing. What the Romans didn't do was use vanishing points systematically -- they would have multiple contradictory vanishing points in a single image. Brunelleschi's invention of 3-point perspective was much more systematic than what the ancient world had done, but it was very much inspired by the desire to reverse-engineer Roman techniques.
- watwut 6y agoRoman artists use of perspective is not really level that would be "mind blowing". Once in a while you got there little bit of it. Medieval artists knew things far away are smaller, they did not knew all paralel lines have to go to one one point. But 3-point perspective is just another formal choice, simplification.
- ashwoods 6y agoWe have been trying to reverse engineer Roman cement for quite some time. There are quite a few things that past civilizations did that are impressive by today’s standards and then lost to time.