Introduction to the Introduction to the High Renaissance High Renaissance … continued. … continued.

What is Ideal beauty ?

Today we are looking at Idealisation

• Antiquity: the notion of Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture &

• Antique: Philosophy: (Plato and Neo-Platonist ) - thinking from the past.

• The notion of the Renaissance Man

• The notion of Restraint

Idealisation

Idealisation refers to `perfection’ in both form and the physical environment. The Philosophy of Plato established the belief that everything

had a perfect form in the mind of God.(Despite the fact this was not the Christian God)

• Idela

Ideal beautymeans the highest form of beauty

Idealism in Art has Two distinct meanings

• The origins of Ideal Beauty is from Antiquity

• `Idealism’ is also from Antique Philosophy; -namely the philosophy of Plato (428 – 348 B.C.)

Plato ( 428-348 B.C.) Greek Philosopher

Ideal beauty is a theme stemming from Antiquity and of deep interest to the Renaissance

• Aristotle ( 384 – 322 B.C). - (a student of Plato) – in Poetics, his essay on drama noted that dramatists of his time, either imitated people above or below average.

• Aristotle used the example of a Greek painters from his time. Polygnotus was a Greek painter who used to paint people above their average, (Idealism) and this was preferred mode. The other artists, painted people below their average, and others painted people exactly they way they were.

• • Pliny the Elder, (b. 24 - d. 79, first century A.D.) –was a Roman Encyclopaedist,-

he mentions the legend of the Greek painter Zuexis, (5th century B.C.) when he was commissioned to paint a picture of Helen of Troy for the temple of Hera in the city of Croton. ( B.C). Zeuxis held a red carpet line up of the 5 top models in the city and chose their best bits from their best features and made up a single composite picture of ideal beauty.

• This method was referred to by Alberti in the Quattrocento 15th century in, De

Picturra ( 1436) .

Renaissance interest was in the rediscovery of Antique Sculptures

The Belvedere Torso

• &

• &

The Belvedere Apollo

Antiquity and Antique sculpture

• Antique forms become a canon of `perfection’ for Renaissance artists to study. Belvedere Apollo, Belvedere Torso, and the Laocoon (rediscovered 1506).

• Artists felt they had a connection with the Ideal. Reconsiderations and rediscovery of Antique sculptures became an Ideal in the 16th century. Artists and scholars found in classical sculpture a key to reality, awakening the awareness of human body and its expressive potentialities. They feature Ideal proportion and musculature which seemed superhuman in their time.

Ideal Beauty (Plato’s Philosophy)

• Plato’s theory of Ideas. Everything we see is an imperfect copy or corruption, approximating `Ideal forms’ that are imperceptible to us on earth, and that these are` Ideas’ that are not found on earth, but only in

the mind of God. ( Plato argued that painting was two removes from reality, because it is just a representation of an `appearance,’ or

approximation of reality.) Some believed these Ideas or Forms ultimately reside in the mind of god.

• Later Neo – Platonists like Plotinus, maintained that the work of Art can directly mirror the Idea itself. That is what the Renaissance was driving for. Some believed that artists could directly access the Ideal forms in the mind of God. (Michelangleo etc). This is what Neo Platonism proposed.

• Consider the Idealism of Michelangelo and Raphael.

HuHumanism Humanism and Renaissance. Renaissance man and education:

The Renaissance re-iterated the value of self education.

From Medieval Times The Seven Liberal Arts was core subjects their Universities.

If you were going to do a Bachelor of Arts in those days you would have to study these subjects.

Music, astronomy, geometry, mathematics. (Quadrivium) - Upper division

Rhetoric, Grammar, Poetry. (Trivium ) - Lower division

• Key Question. `What do the subjects in the upper division have in common ?

• Music, astronomy, geometry, mathematics ?

ANSWER

Harmony, Proportion, Order, Proportion

Note: Proportion is based on the idea that two same things are compared together. From this there is derived ratios. Eg. 2:1 1.2, Pi, 3.1…. etc this is used in study of anatomyand in measurement of how things recede from the human eye in regards to the human eye.

Arguments for the quality of Restraint.

Arguments for the quality of RESTRAINT

• Baldassar Castiglione (1478 – 1529). Italian writer and Courtier/ a member of ancient aristocratic family he received a

thorough Humanistic education, and acquired and refined a learned appreciation of art. He produced The Book of the Courtier (1561). It is a dialogue set in the court

of Urbino in 1507 (not Rome) and contains discussions in the court the qualities that outline the courtier as cultivated Renaissance man. Deeply valued is the Idea of being highly learned and educated. Apart from the topics of courting ladies and

the affairs of writing of love letters, the courtier was supposed to learn several languages and play musical instruments and paint as well as conducting their

professional affairs. But there was something far more important the courtier was supposed to do all these things he was supposed to conduct these things with restraint. He studies learns and practises this things with restraint not into a

boastful of awkward or forceful way. That is a distinction of a courtier and the same for Renaissance artists as well. And should demonstrate these things with ease. Italian. Sprezzatura + = nonchalance. def. not being boastful or being done

with difficultly but done with ease.