On Leonardo and Michelangelo

Apparently I've been publishing these readings out of order. Whoops. Well, anyways, Today we're gonna discuss The works and thoughts of Michelangelo and Leonardo, and differentiate a bit between their artistic trains of thought. Ready?
First, Leonardo. Our textbook renaissance man. He put a lot of value on scientific observation and experimentation, as documented in his journals.

Pictured: Not a ninja turtle.

 He was highly opposed to any train of scientific thought not rooted in experimentation; he despised speculation. This was also visible in his paintings; painting was science to him, because of how deeply rooted it was in mathematical perspectives and a focus on the study and observation of nature. To Leonardo, observation in art was something that had to occur in each stage of painting, and painting itself was, for Leo, an art to be exalted over sculpture. He considered sculpture limited in that it could not depict color, or arial perspective, or luminous forms. This is something we see echoed in his notes; nowhere in his journals is the exactness of his observations more apparent than when he looks at light, shade, and aerial perspective (things he claims raises painting on a pedestal above sculpture, remember. This'll apply to Michelangelo later). Leonardo is a complete innovator when it comes to aerial perspective; he was one of the first to notice that shadows cast on a white surface were blue, for example, or that hills in a background tend to get less distinct. We wouldn't see this kind of attention to aerial perspective until the 1900's, when the Impressionists started fiddling with it again.

So, we have Leonardo and his exact examinations of nature and how that applies to painting. SO what about Michelangelo?
Michelangelo had a great belief in the fundamental beauty of nature. We see him blend theology and Pagan philosophy pretty well in his depictions on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but the motivations behind his sculptural figures are not reason and experimentation, as they are for Leonardo. Instead, Michelangelo is driven ferociously by a love of religion and Neoplatonism (which is a school of philosophy heavily influenced by the teachings of Plato).

That's not to say that Michelangelo put no stock in scientific observation or experimentation at all; he knew quite a bit about perspective, and studied human anatomy very carefully. He and Leonard differ in that Michelangelo did not bother to reproduce nature exactly. He pursued the beautiful, not the exact, which is something that is readily obvious his depictions of the sibyls among the Sistine ceiling. We see him distorting poses of figures to make them appear more beautiful, and his stylized figures often gesticulate and bend a little more dramatically than they would in real life. It is by means of imagination that Michelangelo perceives beauty and perfection, not strictly through scientific observation.