Write a 1750 word essay on ONE of the following two topics. While the first paper was on style, this paper is on the function of art for the viewer, and how art was used to teach people religious stories.
- The newly-formed mendicant orders of the 1200s had a major impact on the visual arts, and we can now see a blending of Byzantine style with Dominican and Franciscan teachings to create a new style and format for art. Select three works of art in either painting, sculpture, or architecture, that best describe these religious developments in the 1200s and 1300s.
-OR-
- Giotto di Bondone is one of the best-known artists of the Early Renaissance in Italy, influential in developing what came to be the “Renaissance” style of painting. Please discuss the narrative tradition that Giotto helped to develop as a didactic tool for the congregation of a Church, and explain how the new naturalism found in his style helped his viewers to understand his work.
