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Renaissance Art
Characteristics of Renaissance Art
• Vivid bright colours.
• Perspective (Depth/realism)
• Balance
• Classical themes (Greek, Roman and biblical
themes dominate)
Renaissance Art
• Artists expressed their feelings about the place of
humanity in the world
• Revived classic ideas of proportion, order, harmony,
symmetry, and ideal themes
• Growing middle-class meant that more people
could afford to hire painters – led to increase in
true-life portraits
Art and Patronage
• Italians were willing to spend a lot of money on art.
• Art communicated social, political, and spiritual values.
• Italian banking & international trade interests had the
money.
• Public art in Florence was organized and supported
by guilds.
Therefore, the consumption of art was used as a
form of competition for social & political status!
Classical art showed the importance of people and
leaders, as well as gods and goddesses
Medieval art and literature focused on the Church
and salvation
Renaissance art and literature focused on the
importance of people and nature, along with
religion
RENAISSANCE / REALISM: OVERVIEW
• High Renaissance (1495-1525) short-lived (Da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Raphael)
• Renaissance art is more lifelike than in art of Middle Ages
• Work drew heavily from art of ancient Greece and Rome
• Contrasts of light and dark (chiaroscuro) and smokey atmosphere
(sfumato)
• Perspective, study of human anatomy and proportion, refinement in
techniques
• Flemish, Dutch, and German (Dürer, Cranach, Grünewald,
Bosch, Brueghel)
• More realistic and less idealized
• New verisimilitude in depicting reality
• Stylistic residue of sculpture and illuminated manuscripts of Middle
Ages
• Renaissance painting reflects
•
•
•
•
Revolution of ideas and science (astronomy, geography)
Reformation
Painters are not mere artisans but thinkers as well (Dürer)
Not dominated religious imagery, secular subject matter returned
(imagination)
6
Medival Art: Inspired by religious belief and authority.
Reflect Christian values.
Medieval Art – One dimensional and
always focused on religious themes
Sample section of the “Bayeux
Tapestry”
Medieval backdrop, to Renaissance
Artistic innovations…
• Exclusive function of
the Catholic Church
• Communicated familiar
themes
• Chain of Being
• ‘Passion’ of Christ
• Biblical tales
• Preparation for the
world to come...
Medieval backdrop, to Renaissance
Artistic innovations…
• Medieval ‘art’ served a
devotional role…
• For the largely illiterate
masses…
• Dependent on the
Catholic Church for
salvation
MIDDLE AGES → RENAISSANCE
Byzantine: Eastern Roman Empire The Mourning of Christ (1305)
Giotto di Bondone
from ~ 5th century until
(1st Renaissance painter (?))
fall of Constantinople in 1453
11
Mother Mary and Child
• Similarly, Medieval
gothic architecture
was meant to
inspire:
• Awe
• Our place on the
chain
• Ascension…
Cologne Cathedral,
Germany 
•Architectural
Medieval
Examples:
Art
- Notre Dame de Paris
- Duomo di
Milano/Milan
Cathedral
Artist Ego
• The Renaissance
elevated the artist.
• During the Medieval
period, we did not
know the names of
artists.
• During the Renaissance
in Italy, good artists
could gain elevated
status so it was
important to be known.
Renaissance Art: Key themes
• “Art….owes its origin to
Nature itself”- Giorgio Vasari
• Realism
• Mimicking and reflecting
Nature
• depicting the range of human
emotion and experience
• Classicism
• Proportion; Order; Symmetry
• Humanism in Art
• Revision of Humanity’s place
on the Chain…
• Celebrating human
achievement; heroism;
dignity’ strength; “this
worldliness”
Early Renaissance Pioneers =
Masaccio
Masaccio introduced the
idea of chiaroscuro or
directional light.
Also known for linear
perspective and shading.
Classical Art
• Figures were lifelike but often idealized (more
perfect than in real life)
• Figures were nude or draped in togas (robes)
• Bodies looked active, and motion was believable
• Faces were calm and without emotion
• Scenes showed either heroic figures or real people
doing tasks from daily life
Renaissance Art
• Artists showed religious and nonreligious scenes
• Art reflected a great interest in nature
• Figures were lifelike and three-dimensional, reflecting an
increasing knowledge of anatomy
• Bodies looked active and were shown moving
• Figures were either nude or clothed
• Scenes showed real people doing everyday tasks
• Faces expressed what people were thinking
• Paintings were often symmetrical (balanced, with the right
and left sides having similar or identical elements)
Piero della Francesca, “Flagellation of Christ” 1469
Realism
• Fillipo Lippi
• “Madonna San
Trivulzio” ~1431
• Innocence
• Children staring
back at viewer
• Some critics argue
one child has
downs syndrome
Realism
• Massaccio
• “Expulsion of Adam and
Eve”
• ~1424-25
• Unabashed grief
• First nudes since
classical times.
Realism
Mantegna “Lamentation over the dead christ” ~1490
Realism
• Giorgione
• “Portrait of an old
Woman”
• ~1508
Light & Shadowing/Softening Edges
Sfumato:
Chiaroscuro:
use of light
and shade
Ginevra de' Benci, a
young Florentine
noblewoman who, at
the age of sixteen,
married Luigi
Niccolini in 1474.
gradual
blending of
one area of
color into
another
without a sharp
outline
 Vitruvian Man
 Leonardo da
Vinci
 1492
The Individual
Da Vinci: The Inventor
Leonardo, the Scientist (Biology):
Pages from his Notebook
An example of
the humanist
desire to unlock
the secrets of
nature.
Realism
Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical
study of the human arm in
motion
Alberti: Linear perspective
Perspective
The Trinity
Perspective!
Perspective!
Perspective!
Perspective!
Perspective!
Perspective!
Masaccio
1427
Perspective!
First use
of linear
perspective!
What you are,
I once was;
what I am,
you will
become.
The School of Athens
The School of Athens
Raphael, 1509-1510
Stanze di Raffaello, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Plato
(portrait of Leonardo
da Vinci holding
Timaeus)
Plato points to heaven
Hypatia of
Alexandria
Francesco Maria I
della Rovere
Magherite
Pythagoras
Aristotle
(holding a copy of
Nichomachean Ethics)
Aristotle point to Earth
Diogenes
Raphael
Michelangelo
33
Geometrical Arrangement of Figures
Leonardo da Vinci
1469
The figure as
architecture!
The Dreyfus Madonna
with the
Pomegranate
Classicism
• Symmetry, order,
proportion
• Perfected through
Alberti’s use of “linear
perspective”
• a mathematical system
for creating the illusion
of space and distance on
a flat surface.
Sketch of Leonardo’s “Adoration of
the Magi”. Can you see the lines da
Vinci has prepared?
Classicism
• Da Vinci: Annunication
Duccio di Buoninsegna: Last Supper
(late Medieval)
• Note
awkward use
of linear
perspective
• Compare with
Da Vinci’s
rendition
Classicism
A Da Vinci “Code”:
St. John or Mary Magdalene?
Domenico Ghirlandaio “The Visitation” ~1490
Note use of linear perspective to see 3 different depths
(front, shore, and other side of shore)
Raphael
Painter
1483-1520
The School of Athens
Perspective
Subjects are mainly
secular, but can be
religious
Figures look idealized,
but can also look like
everyday ordinary people
Bodies are active
Clothed or unclothed
1510 Fresco
Vatican City
Faces are expressive
Detail
An imaginary gathering of great thinkers and
scientists
Pythagoras
Plato and Aristotle
Socrates
Raphael (back)
Euclid
Zoroaster & Ptolemy
‘Classicism’ in Renaissance Architecture
Florence Cathedral (Arnolfo di Cambio)
• Idea for Dome: Brunelleschi
• Reintroduced classical use of spheres, proportion
•
http://www.greatbuildings.com/types/styles/renaissance.html
Classicism in Architecture
• Leon Battista Alberti
• Mario d’Amadio, Venice,
Ca’ d’Oro, 1434CE
• Where do you see
evidence of the use of
planes, proportion,
curves, symmetry?
•
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dic/colls/arh102/screen/sixW18.jpg
Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1550CE
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dic/colls/arh102/screen/sixW17.jpg
Humanism:
Revisiting the Chain, celebrating humanity, this
worldliness
Michelangelo
“Adam”
Sistine
Chapel
~1508
Leonardo Da Vinci: The Mona Lisa
The Human
Condition
•Renaissance began the notion
of art representing the world
around us, depicting the
human condition
• da Vinci’s Last Supper has a
very human Jesus, seeing the
divine in the ordinary
• da Vinci’s Mona Lisa remains
the most mysterious and
thoroughly human portrait of
his time
Examples:
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last
Supper (1498)
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa
(1503-1505/1507)
Humanism: the Portrait
Who was the Mona Lisa?
Mona Lisa OR da Vinci??
The Mona Lisa in the 21st Century
Would the real Mona Lisa please
stand up?
WHERE IS LISA?
Gallery of the Louvre
Samuel F. B. Morse, 1831-1833
Musee americain, Giverny
The Salon Carre and the Grand Galerie of the Lourve
Le Salon Carré
John Scarlett Davis, 1831, British Embasy, Paris
Giuseppe Castiglione, 1865
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Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine)
Leonardo da Vinci (1483-90)
Czartorychi Muzeum, Cracow, Poland
La belle Ferronière
Leonardo da Vinci (1490)
Musée du Louvre, Paris
57
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel
Religious Belief’s
• Renaissance artists
introduced their civic and
humanist values in buildings,
sculptures, and paintings
• In his work for the Sistine
Chapel, Michelangelo’s God
reaches out to Adam, to signify
the special place of humans in
the world
Examples:
Michelangelo’s ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel:
-Michelangelo’s
Creation of Adam
-Michelangelo’s The
Last Judgment
• Why aren’t their fingers
touching?
NO PICTURES PLEASE
Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one
can form no appreciable idea of what one
man is capable of achieving – Goethe
… before Michelangelo no one had ever
articulated and depicted human pathos as he
did in those paintings. Since then all of us
have understood ourselves just that little bit
deeper, and for this reason I truly feel his
achievements are as great as the invention
of agriculture – Werner Herzog
60
THE ENTOMBMENT
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1602-03
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City
• Diagonal cascade of mourners
sliding downward to dead, limp
Christ and bare stone
• Where do arms point?
• Theory: cryptic depiction of
resurrection
• Westerner's eye typically
reads artwork from top left
to bottom right much same
way it reads printed text
• If painting were reversed it
would show an obvious
descending line from left to
right. But as painting is it
shows a prominent
ascending line from left to
right. Thus showing
resurrection.
61
MADONNA WITH THE LONG NECK
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (1534-40)
Uffizi, Florence
• Mannerism: late Renaissance art
(1530-1580), whose proponents
sought to create dramatic and
dynamic effects by depicting figures
with elongated forms and in
exaggerated, out-of-balance poses in
manipulated irrational space, lit with
unrealistic lighting
• Mannerism appealed to
knowledgeable coterie audiences
with its arcane iconographic
programs and exaggerated new
sense of an artistic "personality", an
exciting new development at a time
when primary purpose of art was to
inspire awe and devotion, to
entertain and to educate
• Michelangelo displayed tendencies
towards Mannerism
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Painting
Classical myths
became a legitimate
source of inspiration
Examples:
Sandro Botticelli’s The
Birth of Venus (14851486)
Sandro Botticelli’s
Primavera (1482)
Humanism in Sculpture
• Donatello’s nude David
• 1425-1430CE
• •Donato Donatello’s David was
the first free-standing, life-size
statue since ancient times
• Like Renaissance portraits,
sculpture celebrated the
‘realistic’ human image
• Nude body not pornographic,
rather ‘veil to the soul’
•
http://www.artist-biography.info/gallery/donatello/12
/
David
Michelangelo
created his
masterpiece
David in 1504.
The Biblical
shepherd,
David (who
killed Goliath)
recalls the
harmony and
grace of
ancient Greek
tradition
 15c
What
a
difference
a
century
makes!
16c 
Humanism in Sculpture
• Michelangelo Buonarroti’s,
nude David
• First ‘fully nude’ David
• (Donatello’s wore boots and
a hat!)
• 1501-1504
• Beauty, strength, heroism &
humility of the nude human
form
 David
 Michelangelo
Buonarotti
 1504
 Marble
Petrarch
Poet, Humanist
scholar
Francesco Petrarch
1304-1374
Assembled Greek and
Roman writings
Wrote:
Sonnets to Laura
(Love poems in the
Vernacular)
Influenced William Shakespeare
Petrarch
• He wrote with a
Humanistic
approach
• Considered the
“Father of
Humanism”
William Shakespeare
1564-1616
• English poet and playwright
• Well-known plays include:
Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet
• Influence and Impact on the Renaissance:
He expanded the dramatic potential of characterization (his
characters were very complex), plot, language (creative), and genre
Niccolo Machiavelli
• Wrote The Prince
• guidelines for the how
to get power by
absolute rule.
• Believed the ends
justified the means
• One should do good if
possible, but do evil
when necessary.
• Amoral Realism
Political Ideas of the Renaissance
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
An Italian Philosopher and Writer based in Florence during
the Renaissance
The Prince (Published in 1532)
Machiavelli believed:
“One can make this generalization
about men: they are ungrateful, fickle,
liars, and deceivers, they shun danger
and are greedy for profit”
Machiavelli observed city-state rulers of
his day and produced guidelines for how
to gain and maintain power.
Absolute Rule
He felt that a ruler should be willing to
do anything to maintain control without
worrying about conscience.
• Better for a ruler to be feared than to be loved
• Ruler should be quick and decisive in decision making
• Ruler keeps power by any means necessary
• The end justifies the means
• Be good when possible, and evil when necessary
Today, the term “Machiavellian”
refers to the use of deceit in politics
• 5. Pico della Mirandola
• A. Oration on the Dignity of Man
• 1. Most famous Ren. work on
nature of humankind
• 2. Humans created by God and
given tremendous potential for
greatness, and even union with
God if they desired it
• 3. Humans could also choose
negative course. Thus, humans
had FREE WILL to be great or
fail.
• 6. Baldassare Castiglione
• A. The Book of the Courtier
• 1. Most important work on
Ren. Education
• 2. Outlined qualities of a
gentleman
• 3. Described ideal
“Renaissance Man”
• 4. Medieval view = master in
one area
• 5. Virtú (Embrace VIRTÚ - “the
quality of being a man” idea of
excelling in all pursuits)
Northern Renaissance Writers
• Erasmus—The
Praise of Folly
(1511)
• Critical of corrupt
church practices
• Catalyst for
Protestant
Reformation
Erasmus
Dutch humanist
(1466-1536)
Pushed for a Vernacular form of the
Bible
“I disagree very much with those who
are unwilling that Holy Scripture,
translated into the vernacular, be
read by the uneducated . . . As if the
strength of the Christian religion
consisted in the ignorance of it”
Wanted to reform the Catholic Church
Wrote: The Praise of Folly
Used humor to show the immoral and
ignorant behavior of people, including
the clergy. He felt people would be
open minded and be kind to others.
Sir Thomas More
(1478-1535)
English Humanist
Wrote: Utopia
A book about a perfect society in
which men and women live in
harmony, there is no private property,
no one is lazy, all people are
educated and the justice system is
used to end crime instead of
executing criminals
Northern Renaissance Writers
• Sir Thomas More —
Utopia (1516)
• Depicts world with
perfect social, legal
and political system
• Leading humanist
scholar