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
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