The document discusses artistic techniques and styles that emerged during the Renaissance period in Italy from 1300 to 1650. It explains that Renaissance art introduced new realistic techniques like perspective, which made paintings appear three-dimensional by depicting distant objects as smaller and closer objects as larger. Renaissance art also featured lifelike nude or clothed figures with active poses and facial expressions, moving away from the stiff, otherworldly depictions of figures in earlier Medieval art. Classical art from antiquity depicted heroic or real figures in calm, emotionless poses.