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Renaissance Art
Renaissance…literally renaissance means “rebirth”. In fact it means much more. The
Renaissance began in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries.
It reached its climax in the 15th and 16th centuries but continued to be a significant
influence in many countries up to the 20th century.
The Renaissance was complex and its affects vast. But out of its complexity at least two
general ideas emerged…
…the discovery and enjoyment of the individual and his world--man and nature, art and
science.
The revival of classical culture was the second general idea. Classical architecture,
literature, philosophy and art were studied with great passion.
The Renaissance meant a new attitude toward life which led to greater individual
freedom of thought and greater curiosity about man and his world. And, this was the subject of
renaissance art.
The Renaissance began here in Florence in the first half of the 15th century. A succession
of powerful and wealthy noble families arose who were exceptional patrons of the arts. Art was
considered a civic duty. Both architecture and sculpture were the dominant arts.
The Cathedral of Florence best represents this early period and is truly transitional.
Many of its design elements are clearly Gothic. Some, like the rounded arches, refer back to the
Romanesque architecture and, at the same time, look ahead to the high style of the late
Renaissance.
The dome, designed with daring by Filippo Brunelleschi, struck a new note in its scale
and simple grandeur. Its effect is powerful, not mystical, and it became the model for other
architects of Renaissance. The bell tower, designed by Giotto, is radically different from the
Gothic spire.
During the design competition for new doors of the Baptistery, Lorenzo Ghiberti
submitted this first work to contain a specific reference to classical sculpture in the torso of the
figure on the right.
The classical influence is even more apparent in this panel done by Ghiberti thirty years
later. Here. Also, you can see the use of perspective to create a sense of architectural space.
Throughout the Gothic era, sculpture was treated as an integral part of architecture. Here,
high up in Gothic niches, stand figures by Donatello. They are renaissance figures. For the first
time sculpture is treated as an independent unit, free of architecture.
Donatello treated the human body with accurate representation as observed in nature.
This bronze sculpture of David was the first life-size nude statue since antiquity that is wholly
freestanding. When created, it was revolutionary.
Donatello also reintroduced another classical idea, contra pesto: a figure standing with
the weight on one leg, giving a twist to the body. These ideas he discovered when he studied the
classical sculpture and ruins in Rome with his friend Brunelleschi.
Brunelleschi actually created the architectural style of the Early Renaissance. The design
for the Church of San Lorenzo, commissioned by the Medici, was the first full statement of his
architectural aims.
In his Pazzi Chapel design, you see all the elements that would appear again and again
throughout the Renaissance—rounded Roman arches supported by classical columns with a
variety of classical moldings all combined to create a stable feeling of power and strength. Other
architects would use these themes over and over again.
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Secular architecture represented another departure from Gothic practices. The MediciRiccardi Palace, for example, built for Cosimo de Medici by Michelozzo, is a simple massive
structure. But the division of the stories, the window designs and the roof molding are all
classical.
In the Rucellai Palace, Alberti used ideas developed by Brunelleschi. The arches and
columns suggest the colosseum. Thus, in secular building, the fifteenth century was a century of
transition in which medieval forms were giving way to a new style.
In painting the earliest renaissance works were done by Masaccio in the 1420s. He used
elements of architecture and, of course, perspective. Perspective was the dominant technique to
be used in almost all renaissance painting.
The principles of scientific perspective had been worked out by the architect
Brunelleschi as an aid to planning his buildings. As a drawing technique, it dominated the
Renaissance and was eagerly used by most artists, such as Masaccio.
Masaccio, however, died at the age of 27 and there was a break in the development of the
new renaissance style of painting until Fra Filippo Lippi began to paint ten years later.
This painting by Fra Filippo Lippi has been influenced by both Masaccio and the
sculptor, Donatello. None of this is unusual; you must realize, since all of these artists lived in
Florence and either knew each other or saw each other’s works.
Fra Angelica was painting in Florence at about the same time but he was more influenced
by the work of the sculptor Ghiberti. Between 1437 and 1452, the monastery of San Marco,
where Fra Angelico held a responsible position, was rebuilt, and he embellished it with
numerous frescoes.
As you can see, the work of Fra Angelico preserves much of the feeling of Masaccio, but
his figures never quite achieve the physical self assurance that is so typical of the early
Renaissance image of man.
Piero della Francesca was not a Florentine and only lived there for a short time. But it
was long enough for him to absorb and study the works of Masaccio and to develop a strong,
clearly renaissance style.
Piero believed in the use of scientific perspective as the basis of painting and wrote a
thesis showing how its principles were applied to architectural shapes and to the human form.
Paolo Uccello was one of the few Florentine painters who shared Piero’s devotion to
perspective, and in his painting, “The Battle of San Romano”; you see one of the most
elaborate applications of perspective to figure and landscape in the Renaissance.
As men like Ghiberti and the founding fathers of early renaissance art died and
disappeared from the scene in the middle years of the century, a younger generation of artists
began to assert themselves.
Luca della Robbia was among the new generation of sculptors. He devoted his long
career almost exclusively to sculpture in terra-cotta which he covered with enamel-like glazes.
At the end of the century, della Robbia had turned his studio into a factory producing small
Madonna panels for village churches.
The popularity of portrait busts after 1450 created a large demand for works to be
displayed in the homes of individual patrons. One side effect of the demand was the more
apprentices were needed in the artist’s shop, so that it became a training center for future artists.
Collecting sculpture also became popular at this time. At first, ancient sculptures were
collected. But gradually, artists began to create small bronzes “in the style of the ancients”.
Sculptors like Antonio Del Pollaiuolo took their themes from classical models as well as
classical literature and mythology.
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In painting, Andrea Mantegna, although a Venetian, was the artistic heir of Masaccio
and Uccello. He was, at the age of seventeen, fully capable of executing commissions of his own.
By the time of his death at the age of seventy-five he had broadened the range of his art.
Among his greatest achievements is this exquisite painting called “The Adoration of the Magi”.
The clarity of form and color is exceptional.
In the work of Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna’s brother-in-law, we can trace the further
growth of Venetian painting and its preference for lyrical, light-filled landscapes.
In Florence, Sandro Botticelli, who was trained by Fra Filippo Lippi in his craft, soon
became the favorite painter of the Medici family for whom he did his most famous paintings.
In “The Birth of Venus”, the shallow modeling and the emphasis on outline produce an
effect of low relief rather than of solid, three dimensional shapes. A highly decorative treatment
of background was typical Botticelli’s style.
“The Birth of Venus” does contain the first image, since Roman times, of the nude
goddess in a pose taken directly from classical statues of Venus. Such pagan themes however led
to a temporary reaction.
By the late 15th century, the Papacy became an important political power and Rome
became the center of art patronage. The popes were determined that the monuments of Christian
Rome would outshine those of the pagan past.
This papal patronage led to an explosion of creativity, produced the High Renaissance.
At any rate, within a short twenty-five-year period from 1495 to 1520, all the key artistic
monuments were produced.
The power and wealth of the popes was lavished on rebuilding St. Peter’s Basilica and
the decorations of the papal palaces in Rome. A highly intellectual period ensued that has given
us an ideal: The Renaissance man.
The Renaissance man is a phrase we still use today to describe a person who had many
interests and a great curiosity that includes art and science, literature and politics, and more.
Leonardo da Vinci was such a man and was perhaps the ideal.
A painter of great talent, his curious mind also led him into the natural sciences, botany
and biology.
Some of his drawings of anatomy and plant and animal life were the first serious
attempts to understand the inner workings of nature, its patterns of growth and development.
Da Vinci’s mechanical aptitude is legendary, and he never hesitated to attack great
engineering problems. He even discovered the principles of flying machines shown in this
model.
But most of all da Vinci is remembered for his art: his ability to trace the serene inner
feelings of his subjects and, at the same time, to document the man-made and natural
environment.
The idea of a genius working with divine inspiration with superhuman powers given to a
few rare individuals is nowhere more fully stated that in the life and work of Michelangelo.
Throughout his life, he, himself steeped in the Neoplatonic tradition, seems to have
accepted the idea of his genius as a living reality. He threw aside conventions and took all the
risks necessary to fulfill his genius.
Michelangelo embraced every visible aspect of the world. He was a sculptor to the
core—more specifically, a carver of marble. Art for him was not a science but an expression of
the total man.
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His statue of “David”, commissioned when he was 26 years old, clearly demonstrates
Michelangelo’s unique qualities and was the earliest monumental statue of the High
Renaissance.
The heroic, superhuman power of his figures was inspired by classical Greek and
Hellenistic works. In his hands they were transformed into an entirely new statement of action in
repose.
This idea can clearly be seen in the “Moses” carved as the central figure in the tomb of
Pope Julius II. It was the most ambitious project that Michelangelo had started.
But the tomb remained unfinished when the pope interrupted Michelangelo’s labors and
half forced him to begin work on frescoes for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Driven by his
desire to finish work on the tomb, Michelangelo completed the ceiling in four years.
This monumental work was done between 1508 and 1512. A huge painting with hundreds
of figures distributed within a painted architectural framework, it dwarfed all other 15th century
murals by its sheer size and unity.
In Florence, Michelangelo took charge of a projected tomb for Lorenzo the
Magnificent: a project that, in all, took fourteen years involving the architectural design as well
as several sculptural groups.
During the last thirty years of his life, architecture became Michelangelo’s main
preoccupation. One of his first projects was to design the Campidoglio, the main government
buildings in the civic center of Rome.
One of Michelangelo’s most significant architectural achievements involved reworking
Bramante’s designs for the Basilica of St. Peter’s and for its incomparable dome.
Michelangelo’s magnificent assurance in handling such building projects set him apart
from most of his contemporaries for few, even da Vinci, ever actually carried out so many
diverse projects in so many major artistic mediums. But, his was solitary genius.
Raphael, by contrast, represents the artist as a man of the world. A younger man, his
work is full of a seemingly effortless grace that shows his debt to Michelangelo. But he too was
unique.
The genius of Raphael was his power of synthesis that enabled him to merge the qualities
of Leonardo and Michelangelo, creating an art at once lyric and dramatic.
His works are pictorially rich and sculpturally solid. While Michelangelo was decorating
the Sistine Chapel, Raphael was decorating a series of rooms in the Vatican Palace. Each of the
paintings is given an architectural setting that is clearly related to the works of Bramante and
marks a high point of fresco painting.
Raphael’s most famous fresco “The School of Athens”, is considered by many as the
epitome of the Renaissance. The classical setting, with its lofty dome, barrel vault and colossal
statuary, is a perfect renaissance view of the ancient past.
Many of the poses of the figures were borrowed from Michelangelo. The symmetrical
composition even suggests da Vinci’s “Last Supper”. In the faces of the philosophers, Raphael
demonstrated his own special talent for portraiture.
It is perhaps Raphael’s portraits that had the strongest influence on painters who
followed after the Renaissance. Portraiture became a highly developed art during the
Renaissance.
Perhaps it typifies this era when the individual artist emerged as a real person, no longer
the anonymous craftsman of the Gothic period, but a person reborn with a new and inquisitive
view of life.
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