Video Review

I chose the Drawings of Michelangelo video because I find his finished work amazing. It is very interesting to see how his drawings turned into such amazing works as David and the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo da Vinci's works are also very interesting to me, which was why I chose that video as well. The Albrecht Durer video I chose because we read about him in the book and I thought it would be a good idea to see the ideas in the video versus the book. The Gothic Art and Architecture video I chose to learn more about the Gothic style.

The Michelangelo video goes into much detail about how the political situation of his country was reflected in his David sculpture and influenced Michelangelo's own life. He also enjoyed displaying the beauty of the human body. Every work of his goes into detail on the lines and curves of the human form. I feel this relates to the readings in the book because we read that the human form was popular during the Renaissance and that artists often used politics to influence their work.

Leonardo stressed the idea of spiritual thought in his works. He also uses the contrast of light and dark in his work. The light figure in the front compared to the dark background adds depth and volumn, which the book mentions as an important style of art that had evolved. A key concept of the video was the painting is done based on the 10 aspects of sight and these are displayed in the paintings that we see in the book and the sames ones in the video.

An important idea of the Durer video was that through Durer, Italian Renaissance forms and styles were brought into gothic Germany. Durer painted many religious scenes, which the book taught us was an large characteristic of the Renaissance, as well as the realistic view of the human form and face that we see in some of his works. A large part of the video was that Durer did many woodcuts and engraving.

We learn in the Gothic video that the styles and architecture used in the Gothic period were meant to always outdo others. This was explained in the book as well that the style of Gothic architecture was used by those building Chapals and such that wanted to make theirs bigger and better. One of the important concepts is that it was the look that was important in Gothic art and architecture along with the attention to detail.

I enjoyed the films. I thought they were very educational and an excellent supplement to the readings in the book. It helps when you can hear the readings reinforced in the video. The videos go much deeper into detail, however, and that adds to the knowledge and gives us a better understanding of the artists and the types of work they created.