Michelangelo + da Vinci: parallel discovery.

I chose to study the video The Drawings of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci: the Mind of the Renaissance. 

     The early and high Renaissance, and its embedded history in Italy, have always fascinated artists, scholars, and ordinary citizens alike. Each of these artists developed their craft and independent sensibility in an internationally recognized nation of city-states, which had a unique profile. The two artists coindidentially both worked in Florence at the same time. Also, 
     
     I was astonished to learn that Michelangeo's original drawings are accessible to handle and touch by students at the British Museum. Michelangelo was technically inclined to cross-hatch in great detail, and in my opinion, his penmanship far surpassed his abilities with paint. 

  Their artistic style diverged in the various methods and techniques used to render figure, hue, and overall composition.  While da Vinci excelled with his grasp of sfumato, Michelangelo proliferated with large, multi-chromatic and opaque depiction of human and metaphysical events. Also, his works such as David and Dying Slave reveal his understanding of internal and external figure. Michelangelo's experience sculpting for the Roman Catholic Church led him to chose unique and convenient poses to improve the presentation quality of his sculpture. 

     Da Vinci excelled in his ability to, in frontal view, render proportion nearly exactly, but rarely deviated from symmetry with success. I can relate my own learning curve with abstract form and figure with this artist's quest to finish such paintings as Madonna and Child with St. Anne.     Each of these artists studied human anatomy, physiology, and proportion extensively and contributed to the modern, scientific study we agree upon today in the medical and artistic communities alike.

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