What is the difference between Northern renaissance art and Italian renaissance art?

What was the difference between renaissance art and medieval art?

• Answer:

  The primary difference would be the development of Perspective geometry for rendering scenes in a lifelike manner. An outgrowth of the science of Optics, Perspective illustration technique affected everything from architecture to map making to military ballistics, and revolutionized man's view of reality. Once you realize that you can measurably and accurately represent the world around you in perspective, on paper, it also gives you the ability to accurately plan on how you would change that world. Renaissance cathedrals are excellent examples of how finely the design and construction of even the largest buildings can be controlled and foreseen thru application of perspective, to meet a very specific and precise artistic goal. The development of perspective technique also spurred innovation in tools and methods of measurement and observation that significantly impacted the growth and methodology of science. Medieval art, on the other hand, was far more symbolic than purely representational. For example, human subjects in medieval paintings and frescos were often sized as to importance, rather than their position in a scene... Such that Priests and saints would be painted as larger than common folks, and Jesus painted larger than everybody else. These were their 'theological' sizes, as opposed to the sizes in relation to their surroundings.