...now that you've seen renaissance painting from the north, here's a painting from the southern italians. as you can see, their style and effects are vastly different compared to the north's. no tortured people here. in fact, it's a very healthy mother and son couple. oh wait, not just a mother and son, but the Virgin Mary and Christ child. you see, the italians tended to use a more humanistic approach in their religious practices; hence, the Virgin and Christ are a mother and her son in addition to being holy Biblical figures. it's the whole they are people too! idea. the italians also longed to achieve the classical measure of perfection and this spilled into their art as very few of the figures they've painted during this period ever had warts or are missing one leg. our example shows a perfectly healthy and idealized image of the Virgin and her son.

...italians liked their people less angularly shaped compared to the northeners. whilst the guys up north used a lot of sharp differences between light and dark and thus created rather stiffly posed figures, italians swabbed plenty of chiaroscuro, or contrast between light and shadow, to create rounded forms. the italians were all about the curves and this is totally evident in the Virgin and Christ couple we have for our study. the Christ baby can definitely be described as cherubic. as far as devices and common elements go, the italians also tended to place their figures in a pastoral landscape setting and use warm colors to bring out the beauty of the figures they were painting. they used a lot of reds for clothing (this is a coloristic precuser to a group of painters called the venetian school) and plenty of greens in the oft-seen landscape backgrounds for added contrast.