College of Arts AND Sciences?

How can one place teach two completely different subject? I thought wearing a lab coat and having inch thick glasses was disjoint with turtlenecks and French cigarettes.  It turns out they aren’t.  The influence of science can be seen in many areas such as the human form, mass, and gravity.  As the scientific understanding of the world evolved, so did the realism of art.  Scientific advances by people like Galileo and da Vinci created a new understanding of how people interact with their surroundings.  Gone were the floating objects and the figures that didn’t create shadows; in were the straight lines of perspective and the fluid style of motion.

A good example of depicting motion is Raphael’s Galatea, pictures above.  Based on the poem Stanzas for the Joust of Giuliano de’ Medici by Angelo Poliziano, this fresco depicts the beautiful Galatea fleeing her hideous lover, the Cyclops Polyphemus.  This piece is filled with movement and tension.  The centaur on the right strain to move and the trumpeters exuberantly blow their horns.  The cupids draw their arrows tightly while their small wings keep them aloft.  Raphael uses all these moving figures to draw the eye back to the radiating Galatea at the center.  This gives the effect of her being the source of their great energy.  The direction of the sunlight adds to the focus of the painting.  The sunlight comes in from the top left corner and lands right on Galatea.  The shadowing in the bottom right corner is proof that Raphael understood the properties of light.  Lastly, the foreshortening done on the cupids creates the effect that they are spiraling away, giving this piece even more 3-dimensionality.  Though many of the subjects in this piece are mythical, Raphael shows a deep understanding of the science behind motion and light and the effect it has on the observer.