The most important thing I think I can add to the discussion is this: go see every one of these in person. The photos cannot and will not ever do them justice – they are meant to be viewed firsthand. Standing in front of Primavera or Michelangelo’s Prisoners will forever change you, for the better.

Realism in art was actually achieved by the ancient Greek and Egyptian civilisations when they worked together. However shortly after they produced these fine figures they both went separate ways away from the “perfect” representation of the human form, after all that’s what art of that kind is, a representation. The Renaissance was an effort to re-understand the world in the way that the Roman, Greek, Arabic and other classical cultures had, as well as the intellectual betterment of the people themselves.

Art has commentated on, and indeed aided the progression of social change (I wrote my dissertation on the subject! Guernica is an outstanding example), yet it has in fact been responsible for starting social change. A basic example is Warhols “15 minutes of fame”… Philosophically, if he hadn’t said so, would people now have their spots on talent shows, faces in the papers etc, etc? We will never know for certain, but it may well have been a self fulfilling prophecy, for better or for worse…

And on the subject of the Renaissance, I feel Giambologna was left out of the comments so far, as his technical expertise in sculpture was phenomenal and is oft times forgotten (even though in the square where Michelangelo’s David originally stood there are two of his sculptures including “The Rape of the Sabine”) Not to forget Cellini’s bronze Perseus, the one that turned all the other sculptures in that square into stone…

Anyway there are some good text that cover this kind of though. One is by Gelb, “How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci” Really good stuff. Covers a bit of history on the renaissance, and Leo the Vinch but goes into modern and old techniques on developing a total humanistic mind (which includes body work as well.)

As a second note, I think its strange that art and technology have become separated. Terms like “state if the art” came from the renaissance when artists and engineers and designers were one and the same. Even the word technology is derived from the Greek word “techne” which means aesthetic art. Its so bizzare that our thinking has become so polarized. We live in a STRANGE time!

Also, as a historian-in-training, I’d like to point out that there wasn’t a “Byzantine period” in Western Europe. In fact, the Byzantine Empire existed from the Classical period until into the Renaissance itself. Byzantine culture was, largely, distinct from the Western European tradition that we’re all familiar with, and was arguably regarded as quite alien, albeit Christian, by it’s Western (Catholic) neighbors.