A Comparison of Renaissance Beauty to Contemporary Beauty

We in the modern world have come to accept beauty as something subjective. The question of something being beautiful is decided mainly by the viewer. This has caused our perception of good art, good architecture and how beautiful a person is to change, but is our view of beauty totally subjective?

I want to explore if the Renaissance concept of objective beauty has really changed or if the standard to which something is held beautiful has simply shifted.

During the Renaissance, perfection was stressed by artists. Art and architecture were only considered beautiful if the works met certain specifications. The layout of buildings in the Renaissance changed dramatically; architects began to stress proportionality, evenness and simplicity in all their works, a direct contradiction to the elaborate Gothic style that preceded the Renaissance.

Renaissance paintings began to explore the natural world, instead of making their subjects that of the spiritual world. During the Renaissance, painters began exploring the natural world. Thus, we see works with non-religious nude subjects. We also begin seeing the development of perspective (making a scene appear three dimensional on a two dimensional surface). This was thanks to Brunelleschi who discovered the precise mathematical proportions for perspective.

Sculptors also took to representing the human experience, the natural world in their works. The human body became a subject of great interest to many sculptors and they began to explore how one part of the body would move in relation to another and how muscles would look and shape and the body moved in different ways. Some artists, to explore this further would act as grave robbers and dissect the corpses in order to gain a better understanding of how the body moves. By doing these things, sculptors were able to better sculpt bodies in motion and make their artwork look much more realistic.

The fashion was also regulated at this time by strict rules as to what was beautiful. Women were not required to be stick thin as they are nowadays but they could not be fat. Pale skinned women were viewed as most beautiful and blondes were preferred over brunettes and redheads. Women would often wear hats and long sleeved dresses to protect their skin from the sun. The types of clothing worn and the material that the dresses were made of not only helped to protect the skin but also to distinguish one’s social standing.


While Renaissance art and architecture leans toward the perfection and the human experience,Contemporary art and architecture leans more toward the abstract. There are not the strict rules that apply to Renaissance art when it comes to constructing works. The way that the artist wants the viewer to move through the piece is much more organic or less geometric than in the Renaissance.

Contemporary architecture has moved away from the traditional rectangular and square buildings of the previous centuries and has adopted more eclectic shapes and features. These buildings are usually inspired by things in nature; waves, rocks, trees etc. There is not a mathematical construct into which these must fit. Also, because the shapes are so different and varied, what is considered appealing to one person may not be to another, lending to the subjective nature of the beauty of contemporary architecture.

Contemporary sculpture and painting can be defined as highly subjective. The question "What is art?" can often be heard hinting to the extensively subjective nature of contemporary art. In these paintings and sculptures, there are often not clear cut subjects or stories. There is a story that the artist wants to be told, but many times it cannot be clearly seen by anyone but the artist. This leads to the misunderstanding of contemporary art as not real art. Because there aren't clear cut standards by which the art is evaluated, some viewers may see a piece as beautiful and others as horrific.

The final thing that I will discuss is contemporary fashion and female beauty. Contemporary fashion is definitely subjective. When certain things "come into fashion," they are loved by many but hated by many as well. That is why things go in and out of fashion so very quickly. When most people see fashion on the runway, they cannot picture themselves actually wearing half of the outfits. This is so much so that the high-fashion industry has become the butt of many-a-joke in movies. Contemporary female beauty on the other hand I do not believe to be as subjective. While people may say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this is not necessarily so as we can clearly see a certain look that is striven for. 


So, is there really that much of a difference between Renaissance beauty and Contemporary beauty?

The answer is quite complex. While I do believe that there is much more subjectivity when it comes to Contemporary art, architecture and fashion than in the Renaissance, there are still beauty standards to which artists strive. Whereas the beauty of the human body is much more objective. I believe than rather than becoming purely subjective, our standards of beauty have shifted and maybe in years to come, our predecessors will look back and find that we were actually quite objective.