Realistic Ingenuity

Vasari and the Renaissance artists care about realism and ingenuity. When Vasari is first introducing the three periods he admires the third one, the Renaissance period, the most because “art has achieved everything possible in the imitation of nature…” (85). The realism if a piece is obviously important, because Vasari mentions it a lot in the text, and when he gets to Leonardo da Vinci he says that he “displayed infinite grace in everything he did…” (255). This implies that da Vinci came as close to creating perfection than anyone else. With the slides of the art from this time period, most of them a very realistic looking, with proportions, coloring, and resemblance to actual people, which shows that realism is something that Vasari and the Renaissance artists care about.

Another thing they care about is ingenuity. In the slides, whatever is not realistic is very clever and original. Leonardo’s Giant Crossbow from Notebooks and his Human Anatomy from Notebooks are very cleverly done, showing great detail and care. When Vasari talks about da Vinci’s childhood he talks about the buckler that was made into a monster, and says that da Vinci’s father Piero was “loud in praise of Leonardo’s ingenuity,” (259). This quote makes it clear that his ingenuity was admired and valued.

While it may seem odd that Vasari and the Renaissance artists valued two such different qualities as realism and ingenuity, they are both part of art. Realism makes paintings and sculptures relatable and ingenuity allows for creativity so that the same things won’t be depicted time and time again. Ingenuity and realism are valued by Vasari and the Renaissance artists for without one the other cannot be appreciated nearly as well.