For the landscape views which lent depth to their interiors, they invented - long before Leonardo - aerial and color perspective. This approach, attached to observation and experience, showed the artists that shapes lose their contours the further away they are and that the intensity of the color decreases and assumes a bluish hue. They painted what they saw - and thus, as in the drawing of the tiled floor in the works of Rogier van der Weyden, they came very close to the effect of central perspective. The painters learned from direct observation and their knowledge of the consistency of things. Unlike the Italian Renaissance artists, who aimed for a scientific and rational understanding of the world, and constructed a picture from within, so to speak, the Northern artists tried to get to the bottom of the mysteries of the world with a precise observation of all things, capturing every single detail. While the Italian art of the 15th century was based on a mathematically calculated linear perspective, Northern art was determined by an empirical perspective. Portraits focused not on beauty, but an authentic portrayal of the subject, with precise detail, objectively observed, that included its darker psychological elements. Art that portrayed religious figures or scenes followed Protestant theology by depicting people and stories absent of idolization, in a more realistic vein. Developing the medium of oil paint, they created altarpieces and panel paintings for churches and chapels that reflected the more somber sensibility of the Protestant Reformation, that extolled the virtues of man's ability to maintain a direct connection with God without the medium of church bureaucracy or figurehead, but rather an independent relationship through prayer, divine literature, and artwork. In contrast, Northern European artists emphasized realism. The overall effect was one of classical harmony and idealized form. The Italian artists emphasized ultimate beauty in frescoes like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512), paintings like Leonardo's Mona Lisa (c.1503-1519) and Raphael's La Fornarina (1520), sculptures like Michelangelo's David (1501-1504), and architecture such as Bramante's Tempietto (c.1500). The artworks of the Italian Renaissance and the Northern European Renaissance were very different in style, subject matter, and visual sensibility. Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife Giovanna Cenami (The Arnolfini Marriage), 1434 - Jan van Eyck
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