ART 384, HANDOUT 3: HIGH AND LATE RENAISSANCE ART
Leonardo da Vinci: Florentine painter and universal man (1452-1519). Leonardo's wide interests caused him to finish little. His notebooks show that he was interested primarily in nature and its manifold workings. This interest in Nature effected his paintings; Leonardo's developed style models his figures with light and shadow, providing an air of visual reality to religious and other scenes which masks an underlying symbolism of meaning. Works: Cecelia Gallerani (1483-85), The Last Supper (1495-98), Mona Lisa (1503-06), Madonna and St. Anne (1508-13). His ideas on central-plan architecture also influenced Bramante, who he met in Milan in the 1480s.
Michelangelo: Florentine sculptor, painter and architect (1475-1564), also an important poet. Deeply religious, Michelangelo saw man's soul as reflected in powerful anatomy, preferably expressively nude. By preference a sculptor of marble, he finished little in that medium, yet even his fragments are masterpieces: Pietà in St. Peter's (1499), Bruges Madonna (1504), David (1504), Moses (1515), the Medici Chapel Tombs (1524-34), Victory and Medici Madonna (1526-34). His painting style is sculptural also, with poses even more tense and expressive thant his sculpture, and luridly colored: Doni Tondo (1503), Sistine Chapel's ceiling (1508-1512), Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel (1535-41). In architecture Michelangelo moved away from Renaissance harmony and Classicism to a kind of monumental grandeur of expression: Medici Chapel (1519-24), Laurentian Library (1524-34, staircase 1558), Campidoglio in Rome (1538-64), St. Peter's (1546-64).
Raphael: Painter from Urbino (1483-1520) who most clearly embodies the High Renaissance ideal of a humanistic Christianity. His early work (Marriage of the Virgin, 1504) was indebted to the graceful style of his teacher Perugino, but the pupil soon out-distanced his master. In Florence from 1505-1508, Raphael painted numerous Madonnas and Child, sometimes in the company of the young John the Baptist (Madonna of the Meadow, ca. 1505), as well as portraits (Maddalena Strozzi Doni, ca. 1505) all showing the influence of Leonardo. In 1508 Raphael moved to Rome, where Pope Julius II commissioned him to paint the Papal Stanze or Apartments adjacent to the Sistine Chapel. A new grandious idealism appears in his work there, including signs of the influence of Michelangelo's dynamic figural style in 511. Raphael painted two rooms there, the Stanza della Segnatura (1509-12) and the Stanza d'Eliodoro (1512-1514); the final two rooms there are primarily the work of his extensive workshop (The Fire in the Borgo, 1514-15). Raphael's later panal paintings and canvases show a monumental idealism: Sistine Madonna (1513), Transfiguration (1518-10, with Giulio Romano). He was a notable portrait painter: Leo X and his Cardinals (ca. 1517). Raphael also helped to decorate the Villa Farnesina, notably with a fresco of Galatea (1513). He was also an architect of some ability (Villa Madama, 1515-21),.
Perugino: painter from Perugia (ca. 1445-1523) who taught Raphael. Perugino's figures are charming and graceful, and stand in deep vistas of open space, but he avoided emotion or any expressionism in his works such as: “The Delivery of the Keys of the Kingdom” (Sistine Chapel, Vatican, 1481).
Pope Julius II: Originally Giulio della Rovere, prelate from 1503-13. He was a great warrior who patronized Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael. A Humanist who was not very religious, on the surface.
Bramante: Architect from Urbino (1444-1514) who came under Leonardo's influence in Milan in the 1480s. Bramante built Santa Maria presso San Satiro in Milan (1485), which features a monumental barrel-vaulted choir which is in reality illustionistic stucco, and also a monumental Choir for the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (1492-99). In 1500 he moved to Rome, where he built the Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio (1502-12). In 1506 Bramante began the new church of Saint Peter in the Vatican as a central-plan church; little save part of the Crossing was finished at his death. Bramante also began the Belvedere Court of the Vatican (1503-14), and designed the influential Palazzo Caprini in Rome (ca. 1510).
Baldassare Peruzzi: Sienese painter and architect. His Villa Farnesina in Rome (1509-11) is a charming High Renaissance pleasure palace. The later Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne (1532) is Mannerist.
Correggio: Northern Italian painter who worked at Parma (1494-1534). Early influenced by Leonardo's chiaroscuro style, Correggio's developed style looks forward to Baroque art of the 17th century. The Madonna and Child with Ss. Jerome and Mary Magdalene (ca. 1524) is Leonardesque in style but more emotional than Leonardo. Correggio's dome paintings in Parma show a proto-Baroque drama: the Assumption of the Virgin in Parma Cathedral (1526-30). His late mythological paintings for the Duke of Mantua are amazingly erotic and highly dramatic: Jupiter and Io (ca. 1532).
Giorgione: painter (ca. 1475-1510) trained by Giovanni Bellini. Giorgione's work shows an interest in monumentality and color as modelled by light, coupled with a typically Venetian deep landscape (Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Liberalis, ca. 1505). His late secular paintings are allegorical “Poetries” (Fete Champetre or Pastoral Concert, ca. 1510-maybe by Titian), "mythological" (Sleeping Venus, ca. 1510), or teasingly without subject (Tempest, ca. 1505). His “Col Tempo” is a sensitive look at aging.
Titian: greatest of Venetian painters (ca. 1490-1576), known for his glowing color and expressive brushwork. He was a pupil of Giorgione, whose "Sleeping Venus" he finished after his master's death (1510). Titian's work spans religious, allegorical, and mythological subjects, and he was one of the great portrait painters of all time. His early style is gentle and quiet: Sacred and Profane Love (ca. 1515). After 1515 his work became more monumental and grand: Assumption of the Virgin (1516-19), Madonna of the Ca' Pesaro (1519-26), Bacchus and Ariadne (ca. 1522-23). In the later 1520s and 1530s Titian's style became quieter and more reflective: Man with a Glove (ca. 1527?), Venus of Urbino (1538). A new dramatic grandeur appears in his work of the 1540s: Pope Paul III (1543). This continued into the 1550s and 1560s, when his work shows ever more expressive brushstrokes: Danae (1554), Jacopo Strada (1568). Titian's last works were created in an attitude of expressive religious fervor and remain unfinished: Pietà (1575-76). He became rich from his work and was made a Count by Emperor Charles V.
Tintoretto: Painter of fervent religious drama (1518-1594), known for his swift working methods and daringly foreshortened figures set in deep perspectival recessions ("The composition of Michelangelo and the color of Titian," he boasted): The Last Supper (1592-94). Tintoretto's greatest achievement was the decoration of the Scuola of San Rocco with monumental canvases, notably The Crucifixion (1565) and The Last Supper (1577-81). His life and work illustrate the continuing Catholic piety of the Italian middle-class: Tintoretto’s paintings illustrated church stories for the devout layman who wanted to see entertaining and understandable scenes showing “what did Jesus do.”
Veronese: Painter from Verona who came to Venice in 1553 and died there in 1588. Veronese was interested in coloristic decoration and pattern, not in subject matter. His “Feast in the House of Levi” (1573), which originally depicted The Last Supper as a Renaissance banquet, was reviewed by the Inquisition, which forced him to change the title. This implies that religious iconography and symbolism was of little interest to him. Many of his works are enormous; the largest, “The Marriage at Cana” (1563) measures 21 feet 10 inches by 32 feet six inches! Other works such as Apotheosis of Venice (1585) show his considerable decorative prowess as a painter, and look forward to the Baroque..
Sofonisba Anguissola: Female painter from Cremona who painted mainly portraits between 1542 and 1558 (when she moved to Spain). She is best known for her genre group portraits but also created a notable Self Portrait (late 1550s) asserting her artistry.
Andrea Palladio: Architect from Vicenza (1508-80), whose Four Books on Architecture became a standard text into the nineteenth century. A Classicist who designed through harmonious ratios which are felt rather than perceived, Palladio never aped ancient Roman architecture, but strove to capture its decorative and spatial essence. Works: Villa Rotonda at Vicenza (begun 1550), San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice (1566-1610). Palladio also designed the only surviving Renaissance theater, the Teatro Olimpico (Olympian Theatre) at Vicenza (1580-84).
Jacopo Pontormo: Florentine painter whose work illustrates the Mannerist Crisis of the 1520s and 1530s. Paintings such as "The Entombment" (1525-28) show typical Mannerist strained poses, odd coloring and illogical space.
Rosso Fiorentino: “Red the Florentine,” a painter of the Mannerist Crisis best known for “The Descent from the Cross” (1521), featuring discordant poses and colors. He lived through the Sack of Rome in 1527, then moved to France in the 1530s to work for the King of France, and died there in 1540.
Parmigianino: Painter from Parma (1503-1540) whose work shows the strange qualities of the Mannerist Crisis, but whose elegance and occasional lascivious eroticism look forward to the court style of La Maniera : "Madonna with the Long Neck" (ca. 1535).
Giulio Romano: Pupil of Raphael who worked on the later Papal Apartments, the Villa Farnesina, and "The Transfiguration." In 1527 Giulio became the court artist at Mantua where he built the fantastic Palazzo del Te (1527-34) with its odd and expressive rustication, “slipping” triglyphs and other architectural “conceits.”. The frescoes Giulio painted there depict mainly mythological scenes, and include the elegant and courtly "Marriage of Cupid and Psyche," and "The Fall of the Giants." The latter shows an amazing illusionistic violence, and is typical of much Late Renaissance art and thought in its celebration of the virtues of absolutism.
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger: Nephew of two distinguished earlier architects, Junior is best known for the massive Palazzo Farnese in Rome (1517-1550), redesigned in part by Michelangelo in 1546. Antonio's peculiar and Manneristic redesign of St. Peter's (1539-46) was lampooned and superceded by Michelangelo.
Agnolo Bronzino: Leading painter of Duke Cosimo I's court at Florence, Bronzino's work exemplifies the cold virtuosity of La Maniera . Early works such as the "Pietà" of ca. 1530 look like polished versions of Andrea del Sarto's High Renaissance style, and Bronzino's work never shows the peculiarities of his teacher Pontormo's work. Bronzino's later work is less expressive than his early work, and shows an icy detachment. His best-known painting, "The Exposure of Luxery" of ca. 1546, depicts an allegorical "conceit" in a lascivious style for the amusement of the idle rich of the court. His altarpieces (“Holy Family,” c. 1540) combine Mannerisitic momentary poses with Counter-Reformation emphasis on the church hierarchy.
Benvenuto Cellini: sculptor and goldsmith, author of a racy autobiography, Cellini’s sculpture was Manneristic, often based on Michelangelo’s precedent (“Cosimo I,” 1547), but at times with erotic playfulness and arcane symbolism (Saltcellar of King Francis I, 1543). His most monumental work is the kinky “Perseus” of c. 1550, made for Duke Cosimo as an allegory of Medicean rule of Florence.
Giorgio Vasari: Painter, architect and follower of Michelangelo whose main achievement was the publication of the Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Architects and Sculptors in 1550 (expanded 2nd ed. 1568) . His architecture translates Michelangelo's motifs into mere decoration, while his paintings depict graceful figures in interesting poses doing uninteresting things, generally replete with some arcane learned symbolism. Started the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts, which codified art into standard practice.
Lavinia Fontana:Bolognese woman who painted Counter-Reformation images, but in a coloristic style that borrows from Venice. Her poses show a knowledge of Florentine Mannerism, but the implicit pomp and drama and dynamic coloring of .her paintings (Noli Me Tangere, c. 1581) look to Baroque.
Il Gesù, Rome: church for the Jesuit Order designed (interior) by Giacomo Vignola) and begun in 1568. Its facade was designed by Giacomo della Porta and built 1575-1584; it features a stepping out towards the entrance, and the use of a lunette over a pediment in the center to unify the two stories. Its influence can be seen in the facade of St. Peter's, completed in 1615.