Download Renaissance Painting

Rebirth to the Modern World
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The Italian Renaissance was the earliest manifestation
of the general European Renaissance, a period of
great cultural change and achievement that began in
Italy during the 14th century and lasted until the 16th
century, marking the transition between Medieval and
Early Modern Europe. The term Renaissance is in
essence a modern one that came into currency in the
19th century, in the work of historians such as Jules
Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt. Although the origins
of a movement that was confined largely to the
literate culture of intellectual endeavor and patronage
can be traced to the earlier part of the 14th century,
many aspects of Italian culture and society remained
largely Medieval; the Renaissance did not come into
full swing until the end of the century
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The word renaissance (Rinascimento in
Italian) means "rebirth" in French, and the era
is best known for the renewed interest in the
culture of classical antiquity after the period
that Renaissance humanists labeled the Dark
Ages. These changes, while significant, were
concentrated in the elite, and for the vast
majority of the population life was little
changed from the Middle Ages.
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The European Renaissance began in Tuscany (Central
Italy), and centered in the cities of Florence and Siena.
It later spread to Venice, where the remains of
ancient Greek culture were brought together,
providing humanist scholars with new texts. The
Renaissance later had a significant effect on Rome,
which was ornamented with some structures in the
new all'antico mode, then was largely rebuilt by
humanist sixteenth-century popes. The Italian
Renaissance peaked in the mid-16th century as
foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil
of the Italian Wars. However, the ideas and ideals of
the Renaissance endured and even spread into the
rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance,
and the English Renaissance.
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Until the late 14th century, Florence's leading
family were the House of Albizzi. Their main
challengers were the Medicis, first under
Giovanni de' Medici, later under his son
Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici. The Medici
controlled the Medici bank—then Europe's
largest bank—and an array of other
enterprises in Florence and elsewhere. In
1433, the Albizzi managed to have Cosimo
exiled. The next year, however, saw a proMedici Signoria elected and Cosimo returned.
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The Medici became the town's leading family,
a position they would hold for the next three
centuries. Florence remained a republic until
1537, traditionally marking the end of the
High Renaissance in Florence, but the
instruments of republican government were
firmly under the control of the Medici and
their allies, save during the intervals after
1494 and 1527. Cosimo and Lorenzo rarely
held official posts, but were the unquestioned
leaders.
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Cosimo de' Medici was highly popular among
the citizenry, mainly for bringing an era of
stability and prosperity to the town. One of
his most important accomplishments was
negotiating the Peace of Lodi with Francesco
Sforza ending the decades of war with Milan
and bringing stability to much of Northern
Italy. Cosimo was also an important patron of
the arts, directly and indirectly, by the
influential example he set.
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Cosimo was succeeded by his sickly son Piero de'
Medici, who died after five years in charge of the
city. In 1469 the reins of power passed to
Cosimo's twenty-one-year-old grandson
Lorenzo, who would become known as "Lorenzo
the Magnificent." Lorenzo was the first of the
family to be educated from an early age in the
humanist tradition and is best known as one of
the Renaissance's most important patrons of the
arts. Under Lorenzo, the Medici rule was
formalized with the creation of a new Council of
Seventy, which Lorenzo headed.
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The republican institutions continued, but they
lost all power. Lorenzo was less successful than
his illustrious forebears in business, and the
Medici commercial empire was slowly eroded.
Lorenzo continued the alliance with Milan, but
relations with the papacy soured, and in 1478,
Papal agents allied with the Pazzi family in an
attempt to assassinate Lorenzo. Although the
plot failed, Lorenzo's young brother, Giuliano,
was killed, and the failed assassination led to a
war with the Papacy and was used as justification
to further centralize power in Lorenzo's hands.
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Italian Renaissance painting is the painting of the
period beginning in the late 13th century and
flourishing from the early 15th to late 16th
centuries, occurring in the Italian peninsula,
which was at that time divided into many political
areas. The painters of Renaissance Italy, although
often attached to particular courts and with
loyalties to particular towns, nonetheless
wandered the length and breadth of Italy, often
occupying a diplomatic status and disseminating
artistic and philosophical ideas.
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The city of Florence in Tuscany is renowned
as the birthplace of the Renaissance, and in
particular of Renaissance painting.
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Italian Renaissance painting can be divided
into four periods: the Proto-Renaissance
(1300–1400), the Early Renaissance (1400–
1475), the High Renaissance (1475–1525),
and Mannerism (1525–1600). These dates are
approximations rather than specific points
because the lives of individual artists and
their personal styles overlapped the different
periods
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The Proto-Renaissance begins with the
professional life of the painter Giotto and
includes Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna and
Altichiero. The Early Renaissance was marked
by the work of Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Paolo
Uccello, Piero della Francesca and Verrocchio.
The High Renaissance period was that of
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and
Titian. The Mannerist period included Andrea
del Sarto, Pontormo and Tintoretto.
Mannerism is dealt with in a separately.
 EARLY
RENAISSANCE
 HIGH
RENAISSANCE
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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, April 15, 1452 –
May 2, 1519 was an Italian Renaissance
polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician,
mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist,
geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His
genius, perhaps more than that of any other
figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist
ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the
archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of
"unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive
imagination".
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He is widely considered to be one of the greatest
painters of all time and perhaps the most
diversely talented person ever to have lived.
According to art historian Helen Gardner, the
scope and depth of his interests were without
precedent and "his mind and personality seem to
us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and
remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is
much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of
the world is essentially logical rather than
mysterious, and that the empirical methods he
employed were unusual for his time.
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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
(6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly
known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor,
painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High
Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled
influence on the development of Western art.
Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his
versatility in the disciplines he took up was of
such a high order that he is often considered a
contender for the title of the archetypal
Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian
Leonardo da Vinci.
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Michelangelo was considered the greatest living
artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has
been held to be one of the greatest artists of all
time. A number of his works in painting,
sculpture, and architecture rank among the most
famous in existence. His output in every field
during his long life was prodigious; when the
sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and
reminiscences that survive is also taken into
account, he is the best-documented artist of the
16th century. 48 sculptures are documented as
his.
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Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March
28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), better known
simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and
architect of the High Renaissance. His work is
admired for its clarity of form and ease of
composition and for its visual achievement of
the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.
Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da
Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great
masters of that period.
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Raphael was enormously productive, running an
unusually large workshop and, despite his death
at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his
works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the
frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and
the largest, work of his career. The best known
work is The School of Athens in the Vatican
Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in
Rome much of his work was executed by his
workshop from his drawings, with considerable
loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his
lifetime, though outside Rome his work was
mostly known from his collaborative
printmaking.
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Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio
(c. 1488/1490– 27 August 1576) known in
English as Titian was an Italian painter, the
most important member of the 16th-century
Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di
Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the
Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was
often called da Cadore, taken from the place
of his birth.
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Recognized by his contemporaries as "The
Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the famous
final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian was one
of the most versatile of Italian painters,
equally adept with portraits, landscape
backgrounds, and mythological and religious
subjects. His painting methods, particularly in
the application and use of color, would
exercise a profound influence not only on
painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on
future generations of Western art.
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During the course of his long life, Titian's
artistic manner changed drastically but he
retained a lifelong interest in color. Although
his mature works may not contain the vivid,
luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose
brushwork and subtlety of tone are without
precedent in the history of Western art.