User:Sebenbach/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
High Renaissance.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose "High Renaissance" because I am interested in art history and I hoped the article could provide further context for artwork produced during the Italian Renaissance. In general, this topic matters in terms of understanding the historical context for the art that was produced during the period. Furthermore, the analysis of a larger body of work reveals patterns about the techniques and interests of the artistic community. My first impression of "High Renaissance" was that while there is a good overview of the meaning of the term and its origin, some of the sections in the article lack explanations, a neutral tone, and citations.

Evaluate the article
Lead

The lead section succinctly defines the term "High Renaissance", however it does not provide a brief description of all of the article's major sections, specifically the different art forms during the period. It does not contain any extra information that is not present in the article.

Content

The article contains content that is relevant to the topic. However, it appears that the most recent citation in the article is from 2015 and the last time it was updated was 2018. Since the Renaissance is a highly studied time period, it is likely that there is more current information available to update the article. There also appears to be a lot of content missing in some sections. The "Architecture" section consists of a short paragraph whereas the "Painting" section is much longer. Likewise, the "Sculpture" section is also much shorter than the other sections. The article does not deal with the equity gap or address topics related to historically underrepresented populations.

Tone and Balance

"High Renaissance" is not from a completely neutral point of view. The first sentence says that the time period produced the "most exceptional artistic production" in that geographic region. This statement is largely subjective and reveals a bias towards the artwork produced during the period. Furthermore, in the confusing analysis of the beginning and end dates of the High Renaissance, despite providing contradictory accounts from outside sources, the paragraph concludes with a date not listed in any of the preceding references. In the same section, there is only a brief description of an opposing opinion to the mainstream discussion around the beginning of the time period. The author does not fully represent all opinions about the time period.

Sources and References

This article does not contain enough outside sources to back up some broader generalizations and specific details about this period of art. There is no citation for the claim in the last sentence of the "Time Period" section to show that the High Renaissance ended in 1532. In the paragraph about "Sculpture", there are no citations included at all. The paragraph does contain wikilinks to other articles, but there are no reliable sources for claims about the popularity of sculpture as an art form, its usage within society, and the subject matters of sculptural works. Although personally I am far from being an expert on art during the Renaissance, I doubt that the 28 references (some are repeated) cover the vast spectrum of thought and research about the topic. Furthermore, as I mentioned in the Content evaluation, the most recent source is from 2015 and there are likely to be more current outside sources available. Since some of the references that are included are repetitions, they are not likely to represent a large spectrum of authors. There are only two links in the references section, only one of which seems to work. A quick search in the UChicago Library's online catalog of "High Renaissance" revealed three books about Michelangelo, Pucci , and Il Bresciano's artwork during the High Renaissance and a book about artwork in Florence during the time period. All of these were published in the last three years. While this isn't a conclusive search, it suggests that there is likely to be more updated information that should be added to this article. Despite drawbacks of the sources, most appear to be published within academic contexts, and likely to be reliable.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article itself is well-organized and broken down into sections that make sense. The writing is fairly clear and concise, however it is hard to draw a conclusion from the "Time Period" section about an exact beginning or end of the High Renaissance. I think the article would benefit from a "Criticisms" or "Controversy" section. It references a lot of disagreement between historians, with some even critiquing the existence of the classification of High Renaissance. This section would more clearly organize this information rather than dispersing it throughout the article.

Images and Media

The article includes some images, which is important since it is about visual art. While there are captions for all of the images, they are not consistent throughout the article. Some of the captions contain information such as who commissioned the piece, its current location, and the date when it was created whereas others only contain the title and artist name. These captions should be updated to reflect the same information for all of the artworks. The images of paintings all appear to be public domain whereas the photographs of sculpture have been uploaded by article editors and contain information about the photographer. The images are laid out in an appealing way since they appear next to the section that pertains to them. The article could be visually improved by included larger images within the article itself.

Talk Page Discussion

The article belongs to two projects, WikiProject Visual Arts and WikiProject History. It has been rated as a C-class article by both projects. There are two discussions on the Talk page relating to the time period and the title. There are disagreements about the beginning date of the High Renaissance and Da Vinci's involvement in the period. There is also an objection to not specifically labelling the time period as the "Italian High Renaissance". The brief factual disagreements happening in the Talk section suggest to me that there should be more updates to the article that address the questions.

Overall Impressions

While the article offers a good introduction to the High Renaissance, it could seriously benefit from updates, edits, and additional sources of information. The article's strengths are that it is fairly well organized, it contains great images, and the "Painting" section is well-developed. The article could be improved by addressing the tone issues and taking a more neutral approach to the artwork of the time period and scholarly disagreements. There should also be an update to the sources used in the article to reflect more recent studies. Citations should be added to the paragraphs which contain claims that are not backed up by a source. Additionally, some of the content about criticisms of the classification of "High Renaissance" should be moved into its own section. Lastly, the images could be scaled up in size slightly to make the article more visually appealing. Overall, the article is not great and underdeveloped.