Seminar 1 – The Art of the Early Renaissance

1. The relationship of art to nature → realism (naturalistic vs. stylized or hieratic (out of this world, detached)representations)

The artists of the Renaissance believed that art is the imitation of nature and it should be as faithful as possible to this principle of truthful imitation. Nevertheless, in the Renaissance, art was less a case of imitating nature (landscape) than of imitating perfect models, namely ancient ones (classical antiquity). If naturalism is taken to mean an interest in nature then it was not a feature of the Early Renaissance because artists were more interested in man than the nature surrounding him. Gradually, the artists of the Renaissance took more interest in rendering a faithful image of nature which becomes an intrinsic part of the narrative and even amplifies the dramatic intensity of the depicted scene.

Watch a video tutorial from Sessions Online Schools of Art & Design's "History of Art" course on youtube: Nature in Renaissance Painting (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyW_GZSiYH8). For a better view of the painting under discussion refer to: http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html

2. The re-discovery of perspective

Perspective = an optical phenomenon consisting in the fact that the image of a perceived object / person diminishes with distance and is deformed depending on its position in relation to the eye → perspective is a geometrical phenomenon (precisely calculated and rendered) depending on the position of the perceived object and its distance from the observer.

Renaissance painters laid great stress on creating proper perspective; for the artists of the Renaissance, perspective was an object of wonder for its mathematical regularity and precision. In their opinion, creating adequate perspective was the true and ultimate skopos (aim) of art which was raised to the rank of a science. [Plato once declared perspective a negative phenomenon, a sign of the imperfection of the human eye, which deforms things].

In the Renaissance, this obsession with creating the right perspective became more than an optical/scientific achievement in art; it was endowed with an aesthetic function too: only those things which are carefully arranged in a painting according to the laws of perspective are considered to be beautiful.

3. The re-discovery of proportions

In the art of sculpture, there was agreement that there was a perfect form for man, a perfect proportion which was quantifiable and calculable; this assumption relied on the mystical belief in the harmony of bodies. These ‘perfect’ proportions of the human body were called ‘natural’ and ‘true’ (that is faithful to reality) and hence regarded as beautiful (consequently, they became obligatory in both sculpture and painting – “since man derives his proportions from nature, every art which adheres to them, adheres to nature” = it is realistic and credible).

These aesthetic principles / views were typical of the humanists:

1. Beauty is the great good: “Beauty is the most perfect of gifts given to man by God.” = wisdom → Beauty is the main goal of art so it follows that art has other goals than religion and morality with which it had been long associated → other subjects than the religious

should be employed. The beauty that we see in the world is in large part the work of man (works of art make the work of God even more beautiful).

2. Beauty depends on arrangement (which may create a sense of perspective / depth) and proportion.

Fillipo Brunelleschi (1377 - 1466) – credited with the re-discovery of the laws of linear perspective which led to the achievement of greater realism in Renaissance art. Before that he concentrated fully on sculpture, he was an exceptional sculptor; travelled from Florence to Rome to study the remains of Roman architecture; he measured them, studied the construction techniques and proportions applied → originator of a new style of architecture (his most famous achievement is the completion of the Cathedral of Florence, commonly known as the Duomo*).

* Duomo is the Italian word for any cathedral, but the word is so strongly associated with the Florentine cathedral that they are practically synonymous in art history. Actually the word derives from Latin domus = house, here “the House of God”.

Masaccio - the founder of the Early Renaissance painting and an exemplar for the later generations. The first painter to use the laws of linear perspective and the first to paint figures as real human beings of flesh and blood and not ethereal hieratic creatures. He was deeply influenced by Brunelleschi.

Donatello (1386 - 1466) – the greatest Florentine sculptor and most influential visual artist in Italy in the fifteenth century. In contrast to the stylizations and generalizations of the late-medieval art (human characters are shown as flat figures having almost similar faces, a bit like masks, and stylised bodies) he conveys the individuality of the figures (sometimes impressively noble characters, some other times, pathetically vulnerable creatures).

Leon Battista Alberti – the one who wrote down the Laws of Perspective in 1435 in his work entitled “On Painting”. His work influenced other Renaissance artists: Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci who all went on to study and write about mathematics and perspective as well.

Raphael: The Fire in the Borgo, c.151