Renaissance Art. Characteristics of Renaissance Art Vivid bright colours. Perspective...

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!

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)• Painting gained independence from architecture• Not dominated religious imagery, secular subject matter returned (imagination)

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Medival Art: Inspired by religious belief and authority. Reflect Christian values.

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

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The Mourning of Christ (1305)Giotto di Bondone

(1st Renaissance painter (?))

Byzantine: Eastern Roman Empirefrom ~ 5th century until

fall of Constantinople in 1453

Mother Mary and Child

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA RECEIVING THE STIGMATADomenico Beccafumi , 1513-1515Getty Museum, Los Angles

• Minimum of detail• Striking pose to demonstrate ecstasy, she bends forward as if to meet tilting crucifix 12

• Similarly, Medieval gothic architecture was meant to inspire:• Awe• Our place on the

chain• Ascension…

Cologne Cathedral, Germany

Medieval Art•Architectural Examples:- 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”

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

Mantegna “Lamentation over the dead christ” ~1490

Realism

Realism

•Giorgione• “Portrait of an old

Woman”•~1508

Vitruvian Vitruvian Man Man

Leonardo daLeonardo daVinciVinci

14921492

The The IndividuIndividu

alal

Da Vinci: The Inventor

Leonardo, the Scientist Leonardo, the Scientist (Biology):(Biology):Pages from his Pages from his NotebookNotebook

An example of An example of the humanist the humanist desire to desire to unlock the unlock the secrets of secrets of nature.nature.

Realism

Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical study of the human arm in motion

Alberti: Linear perspective

PerspectivePerspective

Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!

Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!

First use First use of linear of linear

perspective!perspective!

Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!Perspective!

The The TrinityTrinity

MasaccioMasaccio

14271427

What you What you are, I once are, I once was; what I was; what I am, you will am, you will

become.become.

The School of Athens

The School of AthensRaphael, 1509-1510Stanze di Raffaello, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City

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Plato(portrait of

Leonardo da Vinci holding Timaeus)

Plato points to heaven

Aristotle(holding a copy of

Nichomachean Ethics)

Aristotle point to EarthDiogenes

Michelangelo

Hypatia of Alexandria

Francesco Maria I della RovereMagherite

Raphael

Pythagoras

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”:A Da Vinci “Code”:St. John St. John oror Mary Magdalene? Mary Magdalene?

Domenico Ghirlandaio “The Visitation” ~1490

Note use of linear perspective to see 3 different depths (front, shore, and other side of shore)

‘Classicism’ in Renaissance ArchitectureFlorence 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 LisaMona Lisa OROR da da Vinci??Vinci??

The Mona Lisa in the 21st Century

Would the real Mona Lisa please stand up?

WHERE IS LISA?

46The Salon Carre and the Grand Galerie of the LourveJohn Scarlett Davis, 1831, British Embasy, Paris

Le Salon CarréGiuseppe Castiglione, 1865

Gallery of the LouvreSamuel F. B. Morse, 1831-1833Musee americain, Giverny

Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine) Leonardo da Vinci (1483-90)Czartorychi Muzeum, Cracow, Poland

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La belle Ferronière Leonardo da Vinci (1490)Musée du Louvre, Paris

HONEST APPROACH TO ART

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‘Ginevra is beautiful but austere; she has no hint of a smile and her gaze,

though forward, seems indifferent to the viewer’

‘There are three things I have always loved but never understood; art, music, and women.’ - Bernard de Fontenelle

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel

Religious Belief’s

•Why aren’t their fingers touching?

• 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

NO PICTURES PLEASE

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Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one canform no appreciable idea of what one manis 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

THE ENTOMBMENTMichelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1602-03Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City

• Diagonal cascade of mourners sliding downward to dead, limp Christ and bare stone

• Italian Christs die generally bloodlessly

• Where do arms point?• Dead God → stone• Mary → heaven• Message of Christ: God come

to earth, and mankind reconciled with the heavens

• 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.

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MADONNA WITH THE LONG NECKGirolamo 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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Botticelli: The Birth of Venus

PaintingClassical myths became a legitimate source of inspiration Examples:Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1485-1486) Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (1482)

Humanism in Sculpture

• Donatello’s nude David• 1425-1430CE• 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/

Sculpture

• He’s nude!

•Donato Donatello’s David (1440s) was the first free-standing, life-size statue since ancient times Examples:- Michelangelo’s David - Michelangelo’s Pietà In St. Peter’s Basilica

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

Michelangelo’s David

DavidDavid

MichelangelMichelangelooBuonarottiBuonarotti

15041504

MarbleMarble