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:
“At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that’s their order of importance.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)