Netherland's Style With the Florentine Essay

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In religious painting with a tilted perspective or a flat perspective "space seems to open out from the picture plane. It encompasses the viewer to make him part of the sacred events depicted, bringing him into the same sphere with the holy figures of Jesus, Mary, and the saints" ("The Early Renaissance," NGA, 2008). Also in Florence, both the actual architecture as well as the architecture seen in paintings makes use of classical proportions and styles.

While the Florentine style was less fascinated with the potential of symbolism in painting, in the Flemish style, the use of symbolism was not even confined to religious works of and was equally manifest in the domestic scenes that dominated a great many paintings, rather than the more mythic and nationalistic subjects typical of Florentine artists. For example, the Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini (c.1434), Jan van Eyck's most famous work shows the newly married couple's bed chamber. The bride is pregnant, "symbolic of the holy purpose of their matrimony of bringing children into the world. This also explains the choice of the color of her dress (green representing fertility), and the fact that she is pulling her dress up in the front (signifying that she is willing to bear children)" (Urton 2008).

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The dog that stands between the new husband and wife, representing fidelity, their shorn sandals show that the bedchamber is holy ground, and the single candle in the candelabra symbolizes the presence of Christ approving the union (Urton 2008).

In contrast, the personalized depictions of Florence more often focused on city politics, rather than the personal and domestic life of a patron, such as Andrea del Castagno's David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1450) which shows Florence's fascination with the figure of David: "Images of young David, who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to kill the giant, were popular in fifteenth-century Florence, the smallest major power in Italy. The city saw itself threatened by such Goliaths as the pope, the duke of Milan, the king of Naples, and the doge of Venice" (David with the Head of Goliath," NGA, 2008). In this painting, David looks like a Greek statue even in this painting that predates Michelangelo's famous sculpture, and the young warrior is proud and powerful. The work is absent of distracting symbolism, to channel focus on David's anatomy and strength alone.

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