Carsten 11 History

10-12-

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Works of art often express the political, social and economic conditions of the time period in which they are created. One example is the Triumph of Death painting drawn by Pieter Brueghel. This painting displays a ghastly seen that shows death and destruction. Another example is Leonardo DA Vinci and his masterpiece the MonaLisa. This painting contained one thing a woman with a ever so slight smile. These paintings express how the times affected people and the artist. The Triumph of Death depicts the chaos, fear as well as religious views of the people of the time. One part of this masterpiece that depicts how people looked upon their future is the boat with skeletons holding crosses or crucifixes. This shows how people started to loose faith in their god. This is shown by the artists disregard for the clergy's protection by the lord. Another portion of this painting that showed peoples bleak out look for the time is the piles of dead people with swords, spears and other unpleasant pointy or sharp objects protruding from the bodies of the dead. Now if you look a little upward you see an army of skeletons carrying swords, spears, and bludgeon weapons of many shapes and

sizes. These skeletons were charging towards the settlement and killing everyone including woman and children. This symbolizes how people viewed the plague, deadly in-discriminatory and merciless. With this view of the present the art displayed destructive, dark, and deadly images and this is understandable given the despair of the people of the time. The Mona-Lisa was created years after the death and destruction the plague brought to the people of Europe. The Mona-Lisa was created by the great man known as Leonardo Da Vinci and showed many different things in its own subtle way. One thing that the Mona-Lisa displayed was how people started becoming more interested in people than beings of myth and legend. This is shown by the drawing of a simple woman sitting and smiling ever so slightly. If people where not interested in people at all then this masterpiece would never have been created. But this painting does show the new interest in the tangible, the living, and our surroundings. Another point the Mona-Lisa gives us is how artists were starting to draw more than one thing in a painting. For example the Mona-Lisa not only contains a woman but also a exquisite background. This gives the painting more then just a person or an angel or the main figure in the painting. This creates a seen instead of just a character.