Subjects
Devotional images of the Madonna and Child were produced in very large numbers, often for private clients. Scenes of the Life of Christ, the Life of the Virgin, or Lives of the Saints were also made in large numbers for churches, particularly scenes associated with the Nativity and the Passion of Christ. The Last Supper was commonly depicted in religious refectories.
During the Renaissance an increasing number of patrons had their likeness committed to posterity in paint. For this reason there exists a great number of Renaissance portraits for whom the name of the sitter is unknown. Wealthy private patrons commissioned artworks as decoration for their homes, of increasingly secular subject matter.
Read more about this topic: Thematic Development Of Italian Renaissance Painting
Famous quotes containing the word subjects:
“Last night, party at Lansdowne-House. Tonight, party at Lady Charlotte Greville’s—deplorable waste of time, and something of temper. Nothing imparted—nothing acquired—talking without ideas—if any thing like thought in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho!—and in this way half London pass what is called life.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls
Are their males’ subjects and at their controls:
Man, more divine, the master of all these,
Lord of the wide world and wild watery seas,
Indued with intellectual sense and souls,
Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,
Are masters to their females, and their lords:
Then let your will attend on their accords.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)