Renaissance Creativity Facts

Facts about Renaissance Creativity:

The Renaissance began around the 14th century, bringing Europe out of the Dark Ages.

Beginning in Italy and spreading throughout Europe over its timespan, the Renaissance started a new era of art, literature, and engineering.

Though art is the most remembered part of the Renaissance, many inventions were originally founded during this time period.

Some of these inventions were even used to help the artisans of the time.

Examples of these inventions are the printing press and wallpaper.

A man named Johannes Vermeer was a dutch painter at the end of the Renaissance era.

His paintings are renowned for their photo-like details.

In fact, Vermeer’s art was so realistic that they looked almost too real for

The theory shows how the painter may have used a camera obscura to give his works their realistic details. A camera obscura is created using a small dark room, a small pinhole, and a concave lense.

The object on the outside of the room would be projected upside down on the opposite wall.

The painter is believed to have put a canvas on the wall and traced the upside down image so his paintings had photo-like detail. The theory also states that Vermeer looked through the lens after the majority was traced to make the highlights and foreground on the painting. Later in the century, portable versions of the camera obscura were created, possibly making traced works even easier to create.

Eventually, the camera obscura would be used in the invention of the photographic camera.

Along with Johannes Vermeer, another dutch painter, Rembrandt Van Rijn, is thought to have used a similar method.

Rembrandt may have used mirrors to help him create his famous self portraits. It is believed that he put a concave lens across from him and a mirror across from the lens.

The mirror would be positioned so that it reflected Rembrandt’s face onto the painting, where he could trace