The comparison of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

             Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Raphael were the three great masters of the Italian Renaissance. They are the summit of art in art history, which is hard for anybody to catch up, and their humanistic art, broadly speaking, influenced lots of artists in later generations.

Leonardo Da Vinci was not just an artist. Even now it is hard to imagine, there was an all-in-one artist who was good at art, science, literature, poetry, music, philosophy, engineering and as well as he was an inventor. With the scientific background Leonardo’s artworks were the combination of human body, space, atmosphere, and geological. But in a time of such spiritual crisis, it is hard for a humanist and scientist like him to balance humanistic and scientific spirit at the same time. We can tell that Da Vinci exposed his personal belief crisis in his painting.

When Leonardo had the idea to paint "last supper", he was 45 years old but he didn’t start until twenty years later. As soon as he started, he finished it within three years. Why is that? For Leonardo, the hardest part out of all was the facial expression of Saint Juda and Christ. He was trying so hard to find the inspiration to paint Juda, even once he was wandering around streets and observing dorks, rogues and tramps. At the end, Leonardo said that 12 disciples had run out of his inspiration and he didn’t know how to portray Jesus! Through this painting Leonardo wants to explain the most important theme in Renaissance----"life and human nature". In his painting, all characters doesn’t have holy light even above the head of Jesus there is no holy light and unlike other traditional painting Juda was put into the crowd of other disciples but close to Jesus, which seems telling people “betrayer is one of the people around all you who is close to me” 

As a sculptor, poet and artist, Michelangelo was the typical Renaissance humanists but compare to Da Vinci and Raphael, he had way harder life than any of them. On one hand, he was supported by Florence civil society and also an artist loves life and believes in freedom. On the one hand, his sponsor was the Pope who was the destroyer of the civil society and take freedom away from people. He always thinks someone is going to poison him and he was afraid of that he can’t live for a very long time. But in fact, he was the one who live the longest among all the three giants of the Renaissance. His most famous paintings are the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and “The Last Judgment” on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. He also designed the Roman basilica and built the tomb of Pope Julius ii. Michelangelo was always grumpy and aloof, so he was not really compatible with Leonardo Da Vinci and Rafael. Often he has conflict with his grace but he always seeking for forms of the perfection artistry and insists on his own art ideas.

We can see the spirit of humanism in his painting Genesis. Pope Julius ii was the person who asks Michelangelo to paint on the ceiling but since their personality was incompatible, Michelangelo was under attack by a lot of people. In the painting, when God create Adam, they were not hand in hand and when Adam and Eve were exiled, Eve seems she was shamed. As for Adam, he seems look so angry and motioning his hand to the angel who eject them and saying “if you don't want me, I don't want you either!” This to me seems like he was using that to complain that God has no mercy!