The Renaissance

Major Artists And

Their Works

The Top Four Breakthroughs of Renaissance Art

• Oil on Stretched Canvas• Perspective – illusion of depth on a

flat surface• Use of Light and Shadow• Pyramid configuration – the focal

point is at the center of the picture.

Masaccio• First since Giotto to

paint human form not as a linear column but as a real human being.

• “Masaccio made his figures stand upon their feet.” – Vasari

• Mastery of perspective and the use of a single constant source of light casting accurate shadows.

Adam and Eve Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

Jesus and the 12 Apostles

Donatello

• His work recaptured the central discovery of Classical sculpture: contrapposto, or weight concentrated on one leg with the rest of the body relaxed, often turned.

• Focused on skeletal structure.

David

• First life size, freestanding nude sculpture since classical period.

• Heroic nudity• Bronze sculpture

Mary Magdalene

• Carved as gaunt, shriveled hag, with stringy hair and hollowed eyes.

• So life like Donatello was said to have shouted at it,”Speak, speak, or the plague take you!”

St. John

Botticelli

• Linear style• Tiptoed golden-

haired maidens, throw back to Byzantine art.

• Nudes epitomized the Renaissance

Birth Of Venus

• Marks Rebirth of Classical Mythology

• Undulating lines and figures with long necks, sloping shoulders, and pale soft bodies.

The Annunciation

Dante’s Hell

Mystical Nativity

Leonardo Da Vinci

• True Renaissance Man• Mathematician, scientist,

artist• Stressed the Intellectual

aspect of art and creativity• Transformed artist’s public

status into, “Lord and God.”• On his deathbed he

confessed, “I have offended God and mankind by not working at my art as I should have.”

“I wish to work miracles.”

The Last SupperFresco pre-repair

NotebooksEvidence of Leonardo’s fertile

imagination lies in the thousands of pages of sketches and ideas in his notebooks. Although his notes were unknown to later scientists, he anticipated many of the discoveries and inventions of succeeding centuries. His sketches of the growth of the fetus in the womb were so accurate they could teach embyrology to medical students today.

Leda and the Swan Sketch

Mona Lisa

• The portrait set the standard for High Renaissance paintings.

• The use of the pyramid perspective.

• Triangular composition.• Displays subject as

relaxed and natural, three quarters pose.

• Use of smile.• Most reproduced image

in art.

Michelangelo• Grew up absorbed with

carving and drawing.• At age 15, taken by Medici

family to live in Florence and live like a son.

• Alone in solitude, effected attitude. Emotional, rough, and uncouth, would not let anyone watch him work.

• Architect, sculptor, painter, poet, and engineer.

• “I regret that I am dying just as I am beginning to learn the alphabet of my profession.

La Pieta• First Masterpiece• Groups Mary and Jesus in

Traditional Triangle/Pyramid composition.

• Classic composure of the Virgin’s face reflects the calm idealized expression of Greek sculpture.

• When first unveiled, a viewer attributed the work to a more experienced sculptor, unable to believe a young 22 year old unknown could accomplish such a triumph. When he heard, he went into the Vatican and carved his name on a ribbon across Mary’s breast, the only work he ever signed.

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling

• 340 human figures• Represents the origin

and fall of man.• Took less than four

years.• 10,000 square feet• Figure painting from

imagination, torsos more expressive than the faces.

Sistine Chapel Alter PieceThe Last Judgment

• Finished 29 years after ceiling.

• Depicts Christ not as merciful redeemer but as avenging judge.

• 400 hundred contorted figures struggle, fight, and tumble to hell.

David

• Heroic Nudity.• Over proportioned

hands, head, and feat.

• Relaxed pose in movement.

• Compare to Donatello’s David.

Moses

• Designed for tomb in Vatican

• Has horns.• Massive scale.

Tombs of the Medici

The Designer

• Designed the Swiss Guard Uniform

Raphael

• Outgoing• Learned painting from

father.• Master at age 17.• Used Pyramidal

composition.• Modeled faces with

light and shadow.• Adapted full bodied

dynamic figures and the contrapposto pose.

School of Athens

• Balance• Sculptural quality• Architectural perspective• Fusion of Pagan and Christian

elements.

The Three Graces

Cherubs

The Last Judgment

• Compare to Michelangelo’s the Last Judgment.

Titian

• Father of modern painting.• Dominated art in Venice for 60 years• Use of strong colors as main device

of expression• Established oil on canvas as typical

medium

Venus of Urbino

John the Baptist

Mary Magdalene

St. Jerome

Cain and Abel

Adam and Eve

• Multiple revisions

• Notice the serpent

Jan Van Eyck

• Credited with inventing oil painting• After his death, right arm preserved

as a holy relic• Focused on extreme details

Arnolfini Wedding• Captures

surface appearance and textures precisely and renders effects both direct and diffused light.

Up-Close

• A master of realism, Van Eyck recreates the marriage in miniature in the mirror.

• Virtually every object symbolizes the painting’s themes – the sanctity of marriage – with the dog representing fidelity and the cast off shoes holy ground.

Adam and Eve

St. Christopher

The Virgin with Child

Hieronymous Bosch

• Moralistic paintings suggested inventive torments meted out as punishments for sinners.

• Grotesque fantasy images – inhabited his weird, unsettling landscapes.

• He believed that corrupt mankind, seduced by evil, should suffer calamitous consequences.

The Garden of Earthly Delights• An allegory, warning against the dangers of eroticism.

Forerunner of surrealism

Up-close

Ship of Fools

Untitled

Hans Holbein

• German born – left for England during Reformation

• Portrait painter• Linear patterning• Accurate textures• Symbolic knickknacks• Neutral faces

St. Thomas More

Erasmus

The Ambassadors

Albrecht Durer

• Believed art should be based on scientific observation.

• Called “Leonardo of the North.”• Gentleman scholar – raised artist

stature from craftsman to near prince.

• Worked in woodcuts and graphic techniques

The Madonna and Child

The Fallen Angels

The Four

Horseman of the

Apocalypse

Melencolia

KnightDeath and the

Devil

St. Jerome

El Greco

• Use of inner light of in forms.• Harsh colors• Distorted figures• Elongated figures• Cared little for accurately

representing the visual world.• Preferred to create an emotion laden

vision of celestial ecstasty.

Agony in the Garden

Loacoon

Candle Light

Mary Magdalene

Caravaggio

• Most original painter of 17th Century• Painted bodies in “down and dirty”

style• Secularized religious art making

saints and miracles seem like ordinary people and everyday events.

Calling of St. Matthew• Apostle to be sits in the pub surrounded by dandies counting

money when ordered to “Follow” Christ. A strong diagonal beam of light illuminates the thunderstruck tax-collector’s expression and gesture of astonishment.

Conversion of St. Paul

• Shows Paul flat on his back, fallen from his horse, which is portrayed in an explicit rear end view.

• The hard focus and blinding spotlight reveal details like veins on the attendant’s legs and rivets on Saul’s armor, while inessential elements disappear in the dark background.

St. John the Baptist

St. Peter’s Crucifixion

Salome

David and Goliath

St. Thomas

The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History

From Prehistoric to Post-Modern

• Carol Strickland, PhD.• 1992, Adrews and McMeel, Universal

Press.• Kansas City, Missouri.• Most ideas about art in this slideshow

are a product of this text and the author’s real life experience of the art objects.