Download Art History 361

[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
P A G E |1
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
•
•
•
•
E.
F.
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
Individualism
1.
What is the reward for heroic achievement?
•
•
Fame
Wealth
2.
Artists have names from now on
3.
Portraits
•
•
•
G.
Human form
Human emotions and personalities
Human potential
Human achievements – especially heroic deeds
Of patrons
Of themselves – self-portraits
Autobiographies
A Historically Self-Conscious Age
1.
2.
3.
Classical Civilization
Middle Ages sometimes called the “Dark Ages”
The Renaissance or “rebirth”
[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
H.
Three Stages of the Renaissance
1.
Precursors of the Renaissance (1300-1350)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
2.
3.
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
The Early Renaissance (1400s)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A.k.a. – The Quattrocento
Masaccio
Donatello
Botticelli
Ghiberti
Brunelleschi
Alberti
The High Renaissance (Late 1400s – early 1500s)
•
•
•
•
II.
P A G E |2
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Raphael
Titian
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: Renaissance A self-conscious revival of interests in ancient Greek 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 are characteristics of the following styles:
•
•
Gothic (Columns and Trilobite arches)
Roman (round arches)
Cimabue:
This is the Madonna Enthroned, made of tempera on wood. It has or resembles many characteristics of the Byzantine style including a gold
background, the drapery on Mary's robes, the figures are long and thin, and the image of Christ appears as that of a young man.
Fourteenth-Century Italy
Boccaccio: "Giotto... brought the art of painting out of medieval darkness into the daylight"..."master of clarity and illusionism."
Madonna Enthroned
Giotto created illusions of 3D space, the draperies correspond to the body’s movement and are more naturalistic. The use of shadows (not gold
lines like Cimabue) allow for a more believable image and the reality of the infant Christ (he is portrayed in better proportion).
The Arena Chapel
Crucifixion
[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
•
P A G E |3
The sky is filled with two symmetrical groups of angles which act as a foil to restrained emotions of the figures that are located on
the lower half of the image. The image also shows Christ’s arms very elongated with drawn out muscles and an elongated torso.
His body is also visible even through the cloth that is used to cloth him.
Giotto's Saint Francis
•
This is a fresco on the outer wall of the Bardi Chaple. It depicts Saint Francis, who is presured poverty as a way to gain 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).
[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
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 Stanze are
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
P A G E |4
[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
in painting.
The Counter-Reformation ushered in the new period, the Baroque.
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 manifestation of God, the One Supreme Being) could only illumi-nate, never undermine,
theology.
P A G E |5
[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
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 with
Christian 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.
P A G E |6
[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
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
Discipline
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
P A G E |7
[PART 4- INTRO TO THE RENAISSANCEI]
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.
P A G E |8