“Schema delle Proporzioni” by Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man as a standing relief

It was a time of new beginnings: After the religiously dominated Middle Ages, geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti forged unprecedented paths and opened the door to a new era. The return to classical Greek antiquity was only an apparent contradiction; for, much like their Hellenistic predecessors, the artists and scientists of the Renaissance rediscovered humanity, nature, and their interrelationships, striving for perfection and finding new forms of expression in art.