Pierce 1

Kaitlyn Pierce
Mrs. Lucarelli
Honors Comparative Civilizations
13 January 2016
Museum Visit Analysis
On December 15, 2015, I visited The Morgan Library and Museum during my trip to
New York City. All of my photos were taken in The West Room, which primarily contained
Renaissance art, due to the fact that the owner, Pierpont Morgan, decided to fill his study with
pieces from the Renaissance art period.
A common theme in all of the pieces in the West Room, displayed in my pictures, was an
earthly background. Behind the characters in each painting, was a blue sky and a green grassy
ground, opposite to the golden, religious backgrounds used in previous time periods. This change
is a result of the spread of secularism and humanism.
Relating to the spread of secularism and humanism, another frequent theme is that every
person illustrated in the art pieces are around the same size. In the medieval time period, some
characters would be greatly larger than others to represent their holy status as a saint. However,
due to the spread of new ideas, people grew to be the same size in paintings.
Finally, a mutual theme depicted in my photos of the works is perspective. This artistic
technique created an appearance of three dimensions on a flat surface. This assisted in creating
the look that some objects in the piece were closer or farther away from others. Classical artists
once used this method, but medieval artists discarded it. It was not until the 1400s that Italian
artists rediscovered this technique.
As shown in the three pieces of Renaissance art, art techniques have greatly changed
since The Middle Ages, mainly due to the spread of secularism and humanism.

Pierce 2