Early Renaissance Painting

A few words before we begin

• Fresco: mural painting on wet plaster• Trompe l’oeil: “trickery of the eye,” illusion.

Painters covered

• Masaccio – short career >decade• Fra Angelico – Dominican monk meets painter• Andrea del Castagno: from Venice to Florence• Andrea Mantegna: influenced by Donatello• Perugino: from Umbria to Florence• Botticelli: commissioned by Medici family

Masaccio

• Painter’s guild in 1422• Rome in 1427• Understood Brunelleschi’s theory of ______?

Masaccio

• Painter’s guild in 1422• Rome in 1427• Understood Brunelleschi’s theory of

Perspective.

http://www.artbabble.org/video/ngadc/empire-eye-magic-illusion-trinity-masaccio-part-2

Trinity by Masaccio

Painted fresco in Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence Italy, 1428

Donors red garb suggests member of Florentine council.

Trompe l’oeil with barrel vault in linear perspective

Demonstrates Masaccio’s knowledge of Brunelleschi’s perspective

What different columns do you recognize?

Interior of Brancacci Chapel in the Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy,fresco

Private Family Chapel

Differs from Flemish Painters, how?

Created a new realism with focus on mass of bodies.

Cast Shadows

Expulsion from Paradise

Fresco from Brancacci Chapel, 1425

Instead of focusing on anatomy, focused energy to depicting the sheer mourning and emotion.

Tribute Money – Masaccio, Brancacci Chapel in the Santa Maria del Carmine, 1427

Continuous Narrative

Jesus and Peter in middle, Peter on left with coin and fish (shown here), and Peter paying on right.

Tribute Money (detail) - Masaccio

• CONTINUOUS NARRATIVE!!

• Tribute Money is known for it’s integration of figures, landscape, and architecture

• Linear perspective + intuitive perspective

• Look again at Tribute Money, and can you tell what parts show linear perspective and what parts show intuitive?

Tribute Money

Fra AngelicoAnnunciation, 1438-45

• Annunciation, 1440-45• Fresco in Monastery of San Marco• Building style used by Brunelleschi during that exact

time of painting.• Inspire meditation for monks• Monk – Friar, Pragmatic and Austere (no life of

embellishment)• Located at top of stairs in Monastery, where monks

pause before heading to their individual cells.• PRISTINE CLARITY (HUMBLE CHARACTER’S – SIMPLE)

Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico Jan van Eyck

Linear perspective opens the room

Slender figures assume modest poses

Natural light

Fra Angelico finished last few painting years painting the Pope’s private chapel in Vatican.

Andrea del Castagno

• Last Supper • Fresco, 1447, refectory (dining hall) of Convent of Sant’ Apollonia• The convent for nuns

Andrea Mantegna Mantegna, Frescoes in the Camera Picta (“Painted Room”)

Located inside the Ducale Palace in Mantua, Italy

Entered painters’ guild at 15, highly influenced by Donatello

Painted mostly entirely for Ludovico Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua

Excelled in perspective, integrating the figures into the setting, and naturalistic detail.

influenced by Donatello

• Putti, or winged baby angels, play around the balustrade. This is a dome in the chapel.

• Tromp l’oeil (“deceives the eye”)

• For-shortened perspective

• 1st di sotto in su (“from below upwards”)

Dead Christ

Perugino

• Resolution of Great Schism 1417• Rome was chosen for Papal residency• Pope Sixtus IV summoned a group of artists to

come paint the new Sistine Chapel• Perugino came to Rome to paint in Sistine Chapel• Painted Christ Delivering Keys to St. Peter

– CHIAROSCURO – contrasting light and shadow….also seen in the Tribute Money painting by Masaccio

• Teacher of Raphael

Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter

Fresco right wall of Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Fresco, 1481-1483• Grid-like composition: vertical and horizontal, Perspectival recession, Atmospheric

perspective, Triangular form with Architecture• Scene supports authority of the Popes over Roman Catholic Church• Figures in foreground (“stage”) vs. Figures in middle ground• The architecture in the background of this painting references ancient Rome. WHO?

Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter

Botticelli

• Studied in studio of Verrocchio (Equestrian Statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni)

• Painted for Sistine Chapel• Also painted for Medici family (bankers)• Used tempera, not oil

Botticelli, La Primavera (Spring), 1478

FloraThree Graces

Cupid

Mercury

Zephyr

Chloris

Medici Wedding

SANDRO BOTTICELLI, Birth of Venus, ca. 1482. Tempera on canvas, approx. 5' 8" x 9' 1". Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

• PAINTING KNOWN FOR IT’S GRACEFUL LINEARITY!• COMMISSIONED BY THE MEDICI FAMILY

Aphrodite of Knidos, Praxiteles, Late Classical

• F____ A_______ painted The A_________ where St. G______ tells Mary she will be pregnant. This painting is a f______.

• B_______ painted B____ of V_____ for the M______ family (think banking). This painting, known for it’s graceful linearity, depicts V_____ in a c__________ stance from classical antiquity.

• Teacher of Raphael, P______ painted C_____ D________ the K_____ to St. P______. The architecture in the background of this painting references ancient R______. This f______ is located in the S______ C_____, which is in the V________ (where the pope lives)

Fra Angelico Annunciation

Gabrielfresco

Botticelli Birth VenusMedici

Venuscontrapposto

Perugino ChristDelivering Keys Peter

Rome fresco

Sistine Chapel Vatican