<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Giorgione, Portrait of an elderly woman . </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> Giorgione, Portrait of an elderly woman . </Td> </Tr> <P> Among the preoccupations of artists commissioned to do large works with multiple figures were how to make the subject, usually narrative, easily read by the viewer, natural in appearance and well composed within the picture space . </P> <Ul> <Li> Giotto combines three separate narrative elements into this dramatic scene set against the dehumanising helmets of the guards . Judas betrays Jesus to the soldiers by kissing him . The High Priest signals to a guard to seize him . Peter slices the ear off the high priest's servant as he steps forward to lay hands on Jesus . Five figures dominate the foreground, surrounding Jesus so that only his head is visible . Yet by skillful arrangement of color and the gestures of the men, Giotto makes the face of Jesus the focal point of the painting . </Li> <Li> In The Death of Adam, Piero della Francesca has set the dying patriarch so that he is cast into relief against the black garment worn by one of his family . His importance to the story is further emphasised by the arch of figures formed around him and the diagonals of the arms which all lead to his head . p </Li> <Li> The Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus is a remarkably cohesive whole, considering that it was begun by Masaccio, left unfinished, vandalised, and eventually completed by Filippino Lippi . Masaccio painted the central section . </Li> <Li> Pollaiuolo, in this highly systemised painting, has taken the cross-bow used by the archers in the foreground, as the compositional structure . Within this large triangular shape, divided vertically, he has alternated the figures between front and back views . </Li> <Li> Botticelli's long, narrow painting of Mars and Venus is based on a W with the figures mirroring each other . The lovers, who shortly before were united, are now separated by sleep . The three small fawns who process across the painting hold the composition together . </Li> <Li> Michelangelos mastery of complex figure composition, as in his The Entombment was to inspire many artists for centuries . In this panel painting the figure of Christ, though vertical, is slumped and a dead weight at the centre of the picture, while those who try to carry the body lean outwards to support it . </Li> <Li> At first glance, Signorelli's Fall of the Damned is an appalling and violent jumble of bodies, but by the skilful placement of the figures so that the lines, rather than intersecting, flow in an undulating course through the picture, the composition is both unified and resolved into a large number of separate actions . The colours of the devils also serve to divide the picture into the tormentors and the tormented . </Li> <Li> The Battle of Ostia was executed by Raphael's assistants, probably to his design . The foreground of the painting is organised into two overlapping arched shapes, the larger showing captives being subdued, while to the left and slightly behind, they are forced to kneel before the Pope . While the Pope rises above the second group and dominates it, the first group is dominated by a soldier whose colour and splendid headdress acts like a visual stepping stone to the Pope . At the edges of this group two stooping figures mirror each other, creating a tension in which one pushes away from the edge of the painting and the other pulls upward at its centre . </Li> </Ul>

What were some of the characteristics of renaissance art