Renaissance Man II

Who does the trophy go to? Leonardo or Michelangelo? I can only tell you this, white people have the trophy of 'skank' so wrapped up it would take years of interbreading for any other culture to wrest it from our skanky hands.
I saw the Uffizi today, and I have to say that something collapses inside of me every time I see another cornerstone of Renaissance art. Collapse in a good way, like the Berlin Wall kind of collapsed with a little help, not a bad way like the French's defence in world war two or say a lung inside my chest.
I think it occured to me when I was in a bookstore looking for road maps and also checking out what was on offer in the english book section, I picked up a book and behind it was a penguin classic copy of 'Machievalli's The Prince' and it occured to me, he wrote it here. Well not here in Florence he was exiled but he sent it to Lorenzo here, in this town, this is where all these people live.
And two days too late it occurs to me I am in Florence, the location of the Renaissance.
But inside the Uffizi gallery was different, sure seeing an actual piece of work by Michelangelo or Leonardo is pretty amazing, Botticelli's pieces 'Birth of Venice' and 'Spring' though do actually put all photos of them to shame, because they are shiny mosaics of paintings, the texture is what makes them.
But on the flipside another thing unfolded regarding the Renaissance that builds upon my suggestion that the Vatican employed these artists in greedy self promotion, to conjure up a really convincing impression that they were really divine.
But when you wander past 70 masterpieces all titled 'adoration of the magi' and 'adoration of the virgin and child' or 'anunciation' and I mean these are the titles and subject matter shared by all renaissance artists that you have a feeling that when Botticelli and Da Vinci where having hotwash sessions trying to come up with ideas for subject matter the conversation went something like this:
LD - what up Botticelli what are you painting?
B - I was thinking of doing a painting where the magi are adoring Christ, I was thinking of having like the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ and then like some angels and shit gathered round, I think it'll turn out pretty good.
LD - no way I was thinking of doing something similar though instead of being angels I was going to have John the Baptist also as a child with a halo looking on.
B - woah, that's trippy man.

My point being that had TAC been the major power at the time, renaissance art would consist of masterpiece 'Stop' signs being commissioned and people would go to see Michelangelo's masterpiece 'The Sistine Traffic School' complete with his phenominal renditions of crossing guards.
And furthermore, these masterpieces for me also demonstrate what a crock of shit Catholicism and western Christianity really is.
As in looking at the fantastical depictions of Jesus coronating Mary in Heaven, or The archangel Gabriel informing Mary she is pregnant, or Christ walking out of a glowing golden Vagina in the sky to the amazement of his apostles who thought him dead, one has to think 'how could anyone believe this shit'
And the real damage is that these paintings in such pieces as 'Christians battling the Turks' where everyone looks the same, one realisis that whilst Da Vinci and Michelangelo are undoubtedly geniuses, they also didn't know shit, namely they didn't know that people from the middle east look different from them and the models available in Florence and Rome. Hence the most popular image of Jesus, Michael, St Peter and all things Christian is of white poeple.
And this misconception promoted by their art which at the end of the day is just pure fantasy (such as St Micheal and the miracle of the dragons) back when the church blocked Galleleo from exercising reason and observing the passage of Venus proving that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way round.
So on one hand, it is like nothing else to see the work of the Florentine masters, to stand in this place where painting really took off, but on the other hand, permit me my resenment that such genius was reduced to the same tired compisitions and subject matter ad nauseum.
It may, I would go so far as to suggest, not have been art. It may have been more accurately described as a rapidly developing trade. Where whilst artists changed and evolved techniques and swapped mediums (not all as effortlessly as Mic and Leo) but essentially, not the exploration, the quest to push boundaries it is today.
It may just be that for the bulk of the work produced by the renaissance, very little of it was art in the sense we know it today, but that lowly scum of all scum, advertising.