Art and representation: exploring and generating | Investigating art from the past

Classical ideas in art

You probably know that the Olympics originated at the time of the ancient Greeks, nearly 2 500 years ago.

Why were the Greeks so keen about excelling in sport? To them, physical perfection was the ideal because they were inspired by their many human-like gods. An athlete’s body was regarded as a ‘perfect’ body. Their art emphasised the ‘perfect’ human figure.


an ancient Greek sculpture /
Roman portraiture

The Roman Empire admired the Greek culture, so Roman art also idealised the human body. The Romans, however, were interested in the individual, so, while the figure might be idealised, the face was usually a careful portrait of the individual. It is from them that we have developed the custom of displaying photographic portraits of our family in our homes.

The Romans’ interest in realism was reflected in murals and mosaics of carefully observed scenes and creatures from real life. They even invented something we now call trompe l’oeil by painting everyday scenes so realistically that they appeared to be a window onto a scene rather than a flat wall. The realistic art of Greece and the Roman Empire is called Classicalart.

How did these ideas get lost?

As the Roman Empire declined,Europe was conquered bythe so-callednorthern barbarians. The next 1000 years are known as the Middle Ages–the earlier part of this period is often called the ‘Dark Ages’. This was a time of political upheaval and struggle – and in the turmoil the classical ideals of realism and the importance of the individual were lost.

Europe was now mostly Christian and art was focused on telling the story of Christ to the many people who could neither read nor write. Churches were decorated with pictures but the appearance of the figures was less important than the story. The artists wanted to make the images beautiful, so they focused on decoration, with touches of gold making them glint in the candlelit churches.

How the classical ideas of the past were revived

At the end of the Middle Ages, around the end of the fifteenth century, there was a renewed interest by Italian artists in the art of ancient Rome. Ruins of this past civilisation were rediscovered. What was found inspired artists and they became interested in portraying reality again. Most art was still religious (because Europe was dominated by the Christian religion) but the artists wanted to make their subjects and their stories seem real.

This revival and effort to mirror the world in art was called the Renaissance, which means ‘rebirth’ in French. The ideas of the past civilisation of the Roman Empire were returning. At first it was the city of Florence that led the way. The artists were interested in creating the illusion of spaceand depth on a flat surface. They developed a system called perspective to make a picture seem to have depth like an ‘open window’ on a scene. This is easiest to explain with pictures like those below.

Notice how all the lines meet at a ‘vanishing point’. In Florence, they had worked out a mathematical way of achieving foreshortening, whether they were drawing people or buildings.See The Dead Christ, c 1480–90, by Andrea Mantegna. You will find it by typing ‘andrea mantegna dead christ’ into a search engine.

New techniques of the Renaissance

In the art from Florence, one can see how individual artists explored ways to create the illusion of depth. This was developed over time, with each artist contributing their special skills to the invention and their understanding of their known world, how it was made and how it could be portrayed.

The achievementsof the Renaissance are shown clearlyin the achievements of the late Renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci, who has become very famous. For the purpose of this activity, view his portrait,Mona Lisa, and see what he has done to create a face that is still familiar even to us in the twenty-first century!

This painting was completed in 1505, so it is 500 years old. It is done with oil paint on wood and is 77×53 cm in size. It is hanging in the LouvreMuseum in Paris.

/ To find the image, use a search engine to do one of the following:
  • Type in the artist’s name and title of the work. When looking for images, it is helpful to search using the ‘images’ function.
  • Locate the Yorck Project. Use ‘PD-Art’ to open the images and the alphabet indicator to find the artist by name.

What is so special about the work? You can see da Vinci has made her seem more real than just a picture of a face. If you let your eyes pause on her face, she seems to look back at you, as if you had caught a person’s glance in a crowd. He has done this by using the following techniques.

  • The artist has used light and dark on the skin so that it blends seamlessly, as he said, ‘without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke’. This technique is called ‘sfumato’ and the soft shadows around the corners of her mouth and her eyes (which are where our expression changes for each emotion) make her expression ambiguous.
  • Chiaroscuro is usedto emphasise the face against the background (and the differing levels in the landscape affect our ‘reading’ of the face even though we focus on the face).
  • A wide variety of tone from very dark to very light is employed,creating contrast and leading our eye through the work. Notice how the highlights create a shiny texture for the fabric on the sleeve.
  • Foreshortening for the arms,as well as perspective through scale (getting smaller in the distance), overlapping shapes and atmospheric light, are used to create a sense of distance – it gets paler in the distance –making us believe she is a three-dimensional form in three-dimensional space.

/ Compare the images of the Middle Ages ‘Madonna and Child’and Leonardo da Vinci’s work,Virgin of the Rocks(1483–86,hanging at the Louvre in Paris). Identify the differences you notice between the works.

When you compare these works make sure that your answer shows that you have:

  • observed the paintings thoughtfully to identify what is different
  • understood how the artists used some elements differently.

(You will find Leonardo da Vinci’s work by using a search engine to locate the image. The ‘Madonna and Child’ is below.)

You could either:

  • print the images and paste them on a page in your visual diary, making dot point notes with arrows to each image showing the differences in the pictures;or
  • use a Venn diagram with two overlapping circles, as shown below.

The similarities of the works are written in the middle where the two circles overlap. The outer parts of the circles are each labelled with the name of one of the artworks. Write down any differences between them as dot points in these spaces.

If you are not sure that you have identified all the differences, you could use the elements of art as a checklist. Have the artists used lines, shape, form, space, tones, textures and/or colours differently?

The elements and what to look for / Is it important in the Middle Ages ‘Madonna and Child’? / Is it important in the Virgin of the Rocks?
Line: Are there real lines instead of a change of tone to show the edges?
Shape: Are there overlapping shapes to create the illusion of depth?
Form: Do some shapes appear three-dimensional due to the effect of light?
Space: Does the two–dimensional space represent depth through the use of perspective or a changing scale of shapes?
Tone: Are light and dark tones used to give the illusion of form and depth?
Texture: Do any textures look as if they would feel real?
Colour: Are there cool/pale colours that appear to be in the background?

The differences willshow how the Renaissance artist has created a picture with depth. You should be able to identify at least five factors, or techniques, that create this depth. Perhaps you can find more if you look very carefully.

/ This activity should be recorded in your visual diary as the art interpretation part of the task for this section.

More

If you are interested and would like to see more Renaissance artists’ works,search on the internet for the Yorck Project (where you click on ‘PD-Art’ to open the images and can move the alphabet indicator to find artists by name) or just type in artists’ names and follow the links.

Early Renaissance artists include:

  • Tommaso Masaccio (1401–28)
  • Andrea Mantegna(1431–1506)

Later Renaissance artists include:

  • Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475–1564)
  • Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

Northern European artists include:

  • Jan van Eyck (c1390–1441)
  • Albrecht Durer (1471–1528)
  • Hans Holbein (c1497–1543).

For further information about Renaissance art and the achievements of individual artists, ask your teacher or librarian for advice on other sources.

© Department of Education WA 2012ARTS1799Page 1 of 6