loyalty or affection of his subjects. ‘A Prince’ says Machiavelli, ‘must know how to play at once man and beast, lion and fox. He neither should nor can keep his word when to do so will turn against him…. I venture to maintain that it is very disadvantageous always to be honest; useful on the other hand, to appear pious and faithful, humane and devout.
Nothing is more useful than the appearance of virtue.’ Renaissance in Art Leonardo da Vinci ( – ) In Florence there was an artist who wanted to have a perfect understanding of all the things he painted and how they related to each other. This was Leonardo da Vinci, the son of a farm servant-girl. So he was a self-taught man in Latin and Mathematics. He was also a sculptor, a great thinker and scientist.
He got corpses from graveyards to dissect and understand human anatomy so that he could depict human bodies realistically. He was the first to discover that blood circulated through the body. Given his multifaceted talents da Vinci is considered to be a great example of the Renaissance Man. Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpieces include Virgin of the Rocks, Last Supper and Mona Lisa .
In Virgin of the Rocks , the Virgin Mary, emerging from darkness, presents the young John the Leonardo da Vinci Machiavelli Modern World: The Age of Reason Baptist to the Christ Child. He painted Last Supper (Jesus’s final meal with the apostles before his crucifixon) for the Dominican monastery in Milan. Mona Lisa , his most famous portrait, is believed to be the image of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a wealthy merchant from Florence, Francesco del Giocondo, who commissioned it. Michelangelo ( – ) Donatello was one of earlier artists to create a very realistic and majestic painting of David, the Biblical hero in the 1460s.
He influenced Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni who is considered to be the greatest Renaissance sculptor. The Cathedral of St. Peters in Rome, built by the Popes, was fashioned by Michelangelo. His dome of