The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in western Europe were a period of political turmoil, geographic exploration, and enormous artistic production. The discovery of the Americas and trade with Byzantium and the Far East enriched the cultural base of the West. In fifteenth-century Italy, artists pursued humanism, cultivated fame, and wrote treatises on art theory. Biographies and autobiographies of artists and social and moral satires were written, and science became increasingly empirical, all of which reflected an interest in human nature and human behavior. Linear perspective, in contrast to Far Eastern perspective systems and to previous Western systems, was designed to make a painting or a relief resemble the illusion of an alternate space seen through a window. Through this fictive "window," viewers could observe space represented according to a geometric structure.
In Rome, popes financed the arts, especially the New Saint Peter's, and largely determined the course of High Renaissance patronage. In northern Europe, objections to Church corruption launched the Reformation, which led to the establishment of the Protestant Church. Within the Catholic Church, calls for reform led to the Counter-Reformation (also called the Catholic Reform), which demanded a new emphasis on spirituality and mysticism in all the arts. The development of printmaking and the perfection of movable type made images and texts more widely available than ever before.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in western Europe were a period of political turmoil, geographic exploration, and enormous artistic production. The discovery of the Americas and trade with Byzantium and the Far East enriched the cultural base of the West. In fifteenth-century Italy, artists pursued humanism, cultivated fame, and wrote treatises on art theory. Biographies and autobiographies of artists and social and moral satires were written, and science became increasingly empirical, all of which reflected an interest in human nature and human behavior. Linear perspective, in contrast to Far Eastern perspective systems and to previous Western systems, was designed to make a painting or a relief resemble the illusion of an alternate space seen through a window. Through this fictive "window," viewers could observe space represented according to a geometric structure.
In Rome, popes financed the arts, especially the New Saint Peter's, and largely determined the course of High Renaissance patronage. In northern Europe, objections to Church corruption launched the Reformation, which led to the establishment of the Protestant Church. Within the Catholic Church, calls for reform led to the Counter-Reformation (also called the Catholic Reform), which demanded a new emphasis on spirituality and mysticism in all the arts. The development of printmaking and the perfection of movable type made images and texts more widely available than ever before.
I.INTRODUCTION
When you hear the word “RENAISSANCE” what comes to mind?
Italy as a nation-state does NOT exist Instead the area was divided into a number of AUTONOMOUS (self-governing) regions. By 1350, northern Italy was a highly urban region. Three cities (Genoa, Venice, Florence) had populations of about 100,000 people, a huge cities for the time. These were COSMOPOLITAN (worldly, sophisticated, urbane) centers of trade and commerce. Fertile places for new ideas.
3.Rise of Wealthy Merchant Families: As trade grew, a new class of merchants and bankers rapidly arose and had a powerful impact upon the Renaissance providing, For the first time in centuries, new patrons of the arts. The Church is still very important
4.Important Point - The Renaissance was noticed in Italy first. However, major artistic developments began to occur simultaneously in Northern Europe. We will study the Northern Renaissance after our investigation of the Italian Renaissance.
C.Humanism
1.Humanism means the rediscovery of the art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome
2.Humanists were scholars, writers, and artists who rediscovered and then studied the cultural heritage of Greece and Rome.
D.“Man is the Measure of all Things”
1.This rediscovery of the Greco-Roman heritage sparked a renewed interest in HUMANS including
•Human form
•Human emotions and personalities
•Human potential
•Human achievements – especially heroic deeds
E.Natural world
1.Curiosity about the natural world
2.Detailed observation of nature
3.Accurate representation of nature – will lead to important breakthroughs in art
F.Individualism
1.What is the reward for heroic achievement?
•Fame
•Wealth
2.Artists have names from now on
3.Portraits
•Of patrons
•Of themselves – self-portraits
•Autobiographies
G.A Historically Self-Conscious Age
- Classical Civilization
- Middle Ages sometimes called the “Dark Ages”
- The Renaissance or “rebirth”
H.Three Stages of the Renaissance
1.Precursors of the Renaissance (1300-1350)
•Also known as Proto-Renaissance artists because their work preceded the Early Renaissance by more than 50 years.
•These artists demonstrated qualities that would also be seen during the Early and High Renaissance. In other words, the Proto-Renaissance artists foreshadow the Renaissance.
•Their seminal work influenced the Renaissance artists
•Cimabue
•Giotto
•Duccio
•Nicola Pisano
•Lorenzetti
2.The Early Renaissance (1400s)
•A.k.a. – The Quattrocento
•Masaccio
•Donatello
•Botticelli
•Ghiberti
•Brunelleschi
•Alberti
3.The High Renaissance (Late 1400s – early 1500s)
•Leonardo da Vinci
•Michelangelo
•Raphael
•Titian
II.THE BYZANTINE STYLE
1.It is important to remember that the Byzantine style dominated Italian art during the Middle Ages. The style featured:
•Stiff, linear, and flat figures
•A lack of human emotion
•Gold background – emphasizes the “other world” and thus lacks naturalism
•Figures don’t occupy real space. They seem to float above the ground
Thirteenth-Century Italy
Major Shift in Western European Art: RenaissanceA self-conscious revival of interests in ancientGreek and Roman texts and culture.
Nicola Pisano:
This is a Baptistry that is carved out of marble.It is located in Pisa. On the pulpit there arecharacteristics of the following styles:
•Gothic (Columns and Trilobite arches)
•Roman (round arches)
Cimabue:
This is the Madonna Enthroned, made of tempera on wood. Ithas or resembles many characteristics of the Byzantine styleincluding a gold background, the drapery on Mary's robes, thefigures are long and thin, and the image of Christ appears asthat of a young man.
Fourteenth-Century Italy
Boccaccio: "Giotto... brought the art of painting out ofmedieval darkness into the daylight"..."master of clarityand illusionism."
Madonna Enthroned
Giotto created illusions of 3D space, the draperies correspondto the body’s movement and are more naturalistic. The use ofshadows (not gold lines like Cimabue) allow for a morebelievable image and the reality of the infant Christ (he isportrayed in better proportion).
The Arena Chapel
Crucifixion
•The sky is filled with two symmetrical groups of angles whichact as a foil to restrained emotions of the figures that arelocated on the lower half of the image. The image also showsChrist’s arms very elongated with drawn out muscles and anelongated torso. His body is also visible even through thecloth that is used to cloth him.
Giotto's Saint Francis
•This is a fresco on the outer wall of the BardiChaple. Itdepicts Saint Francis, who is presured poverty as a way togain more knowledge of religion and spirituality.
Art History 361
Summary of the Renaissance
The word "Renaissance" comes from the French and means rebirth, the rebirth of ancient learning. In Italian, the word is Rinascenza.
The Italian Renaissance period is usually divided into Early Renaissance (1420-1500) and High Renaissance (1500-20).
Major Time Periods in Renaissance Art:
13th Century
Christian painting and sculpture were just beginning to break away from the restraints of the dogma and conventions of the earlier medieval period.- Breaking away in order to give greater human emotional content to religious subject matter.
- The life and teachings of St. Francis of Assisi had been largely responsible for this.
- Also responsible were the contacts with French Gothic art.
14th Century
Once attention had been drawn to human emotion, it was only natural that interest in the human being himself and in his physical surroundings should follow.- The resulting secularization of religious subject matter is apparent in the paintings of the 14th century.
15th Century
More detailed observation of man himself and of nature followed in the 15th century with the growth of interest in anatomy, perspective, details of nature, landscape backgrounds, and form and color in light.Paintings of the 15th century also reflect the growing curiosity about man's achievement in Italy's past--that is, the Classic past.
- It is this preoccupation with and study of Classic culture and art that gave the Renaissance in Italy its particular character.
- Classic culture also brought with it mythology and the ideal of beauty.
16th Century
Christianity was added to Platonic ideal: Neo-platonism.Michelangelo in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Raphael in the Vatican Stanzeare representative of this movement at the beginning of the 16th century; they brought the Renaissance to the highest achievement in painting in Rome.
But the attempt to reconcile paganism and Christianity foundered.
- The Reformation intervened and the works of the Mannerists show what resulted in painting.
Ideas and Concepts: Humanism, Neoplatonism, and Aristotelianism
The art of a period is a reflection of the psychological, religious, and political forces at work during that period. /
Humanism
Humanism was the basic concept of the Italian Renaissance. It is the term used to define that philosophical movement in Italy at the end of the 14th century and during the 15th and 16th centuries which asserted the right of the individual to the use of his own reason and belief, and stressed the importance and potential of man as an individual.
This concept can be identified with a belief in the power of learning and science to produce "the complete man". This rational and scientific conception of the world is the basis of our modern civilization. Modern Humanism originated in the Renaissance when scholars, writers, poets, artists, philosophers and scientists sought regeneration in the freer intellectual spirit of Classical times.
The Humanists saw no conflict between the New Learning--the newly rediscovered wisdom of the ancient world--and the authority of the Church. They felt that the study of the ancient great writers of Greece and Rome was a tool for the understanding of true Christian doctrine, and that Platonic philosophy (the belief in the ideal of physical beauty as the mani-festation of God, the One Supreme Being) could only illumi-nate, never undermine, theology.
Ideas and Concepts:
- Humanism
- Neoplatonism
- Aristotelianism
Neo-Platonism
Neo-Platonism in the Renaissance was the philosophy based on the teachings and doctrines of a group of thinkers of the early Christian era who endeavored to reconcile the teachings of Plato withChristian concepts.
The Neo-Platonists, being at the same time both lovers of the pagan past with its Platonic ideals of physical beauty, and being Christians, wanted to fuse this pagan idealism with Christian doctrine. The art and taste during the Renaissance for complicated mythological fantasies intermingled with allegories and symbolisms tried to achieve this fusion of the Platonic idealism with Christian doctrine. The allegorical value of the art lies in this union of the Classical antique and the Christian.The Neo-Platonists conceived of the Christian religion as an eternal doctrine existing even before the advent of historical Christianity. The main object of the Neo-Platonic Academy in Florence in the 15th century was the reconciliation of the spirit of antiquity with that of Christianity.
The meaning of God to the Neo-Platonists was thus:
God was Beauty and the source of Beauty.God's image is Man.
Therefore, the ideally beautiful Man is the closest approximation of
God on this earth.
Michelangelo was the greatest Neo-Platonic artist who believed that the spirit of Classical art inspired and guided the formation of the concetto (concept) of beauty in the mind.
Aristotelianism
- In the Renaissance, another school of classical learning was coterminous and was finally reconciled with Neo-Platonism, called
- Aristotelianism. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) first formulated this concept of art based on the writings of Aristotle via Vitruvius (early 1st century A.D. classical author). It is the Aristotelian conception of the visible world as ultimate reality.
- Alberti's concept of beauty in a work of art is the harmony between all the parts so that nothing can be added to it or taken from it without impairing the whole. The work of art is synthesized by adding together the most beautiful observable examples of the component parts. Leonardo da Vinci, always the scientist, even when a painter, was the chief exponent of the Aristotelian concept.
The Classical in the Renaissance
In the broadest artistic sense, Classical art is that art which is based on the study of classical models, and art which emphasizes qualities considered to be characteristically Greek and Roman in style and spirit:- Reason
- Objectivity
- Discipline
- Restraint
- Order
- Balance
Restraint /
These characteristics can be summed up in one term: Harmony.
The essential conditions that encourage Classical art are:
- Pride in the past
- Peace in the present
- Confidence in the future
The Renaissance's Five Great Achievements
There are five fundamental elements in the great achievements of the Italian Renaissance in the world of Art:- Naturalism
- Organization of space
- Invention of parallel perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi: the scientific use of a perspective based on lines that come together at a single vanishing point on the horizon
- The use of classical motifs
- The new dignity of the individual
Characteristics of Renaissance Painting
- Harmonious proportions among all elements of a painting
- Reintroduction of chiaroscuro: the gradations of light and dark within a picture, especially one in which the forms are largely determined, not by sharp outlines but by the meeting of lighter and darker areas The perfection of geometric or parallel perspective
Characteristics of Renaissance Sculpture
- The reintroduction of contrapposto: the pose of the human form in which the head and shoulders face in a different direction from the hips and legs -- a spiral twist
- The systematic study of anatomy and of the
- organic functions of the body
- Free-standing monumental statues
Characteristics of Renaissance Architecture
- A harmony of all parts with symmetry and order of geometric proportions and designs using Classical architectural elements.