Week 7 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Week 7 - Essay Example Thus, artists through their works concentrated on individualism themes and reason in order to reform the society from reliance on traditional and faith-based ideologies. The anamorphic image in Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors is in the skull. It represents Jean de Dinteville and his friend who acted as French ambassadors’ to England and the Republic of Venice respectively. The hierarchy of genres in order importance is history painting, portrait painting, genre painting, landscape painting, animal painting, and still life painting. History painting involved uplifting or inspirational messages on religious, historical, mythological, classical, or literary context. History painting marked the demonstration and conclusion of skills acquired within the academy system. Portrait painting is the second in the genre and is represented by large portraits of heroic figures for public viewing, and in some cases for private portraiture. This came after rigorous course by academy students to master the skill, which first started with drawing from plaster casts, copying the established portraits, and finally creating live models. Genre paintings involved scenes of ordinary life containing animals, landscapes, people, portraits, or touches of still life. The academy artists employed skills with occasional humor that put this genre in number three in the hierarchy. Landscape painting involved painting of art pieces whose focus was the portrayal of lovely sceneries of rivers, mountains, seascape, townscape, or countryside. This type of painting required less technical ability from the academy artists as compared to the first three genres. Animal painting in the fifth category dealt with painting of animals originating from the popularization of horse painting from 1724-1806. Finally, still life painting consisted of a representation of flowers, kitchen implements, fruits among other foodstuffs in a painting. Because