How can art be a mirror of the society?
During the Middle Ages, no artists has used a secular topic for their painting, or used techniques that the Renaissance painters have used, such as linear perspective, shade and light, foreshortening, focusing on backgrounds, using a secular topic, and many more. It can be seen that paintings depend on artist’s knowledge, and artist’s knowledge depend on the dynasty or the time they were living in, and how much that time of age is developed in certain techniques, knowledge, methods, etc. Additionally, art shows the current situation the artist was living in. Such as ingredients that were used in the painting, the mood, the focal point, and many more are hints of the art piece of what it is trying to show. Also, paintings such as the 'school of Athens,' by looking at the picture, the viewers can infer than during the time that Raphael painted this piece, many scientists, philosophers were born and how they tried to seek science and facts.
If I were an individual in the painting ‘The School of Athens’, I would be Heraclitus, which is the man that is leaning on a desk in the bottom middle side of the painting. Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher that criticized predecessors for their failure and to see the unity in their failure. He and I are similar in ways that we both criticize others for their failures to encourage them to see their failure as an experience and not to make the same mistakes again. Additionally, Heraclitus is known for being logical and sending out theories of his own, such as ‘opposites are identical,’ ‘everything is and is not at the same time,’ etc. Similar to Heraclitus, I also reveal my ideas and theories that I think are true to other and seek only logical and scientific facts rather than superstitions and beliefs.
