Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Art - History of Art, Seattle Pacific University, language: English, abstract: Paulo Uccello composed "Episodes from the Aeneid" circa 1470, during the Renaissance, in Florence. The painting, intended originally to adorn a storage chest made in honor of a wedding that united two powerful Florentine families, renders scenes from Virgil's "The Aeneid", which chronicles the mythical founding of Rome. Paolo Uccello presents in this painting a bloody battle in which armored soldiers defeat female warriors. The French artist Paul Gauguin composed "Faiara" (Landscape from Tahiti with Nine Figures) in 1898, in the modern style of Synthetism while he was in Tahiti. Gauguin fills his painting with wildly colored figures representing the native peoples of Polynesia. These two paintings, painted 400 years apart in differing cultural centers, embody the ideals of their respective artistic movements, and illustrate the evolving ideas of the nature and purpose of visual art.