Summary of the Renaissance

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Art History 361: Renaissance Summary http://courses.washington.edu/ah361/resources/summary

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Art History 361

Summary of the

Renaissance

The word "Renaissance" comes from theFrench and means rebirth,the rebirth of ancient learning. In Italian, the word is Rinascenza.

The Italian Renaissance period is usually divided intoEarly Renaissance (1420-1500) and High Renaissance (1500-20).

Major Time Periods in Renaissance Art:

13th Century

14th Century

15th Century

16th Century

Ideas and Concepts: Humanism, Neoplatonism, and Aristotelianism

The Classical in the Renaissance

The Renaissance's Five Great Achievements

Renaissance Characteristics:

Painting

Sculpture




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Architecture

13th CenturyChristian painting and sculpture were just beginning to break away from the restraints of the dogma andconventions of the earlier medieval period.

Breaking away in order to give greater humanemotional content to religious subject matter. The life and teachings of St. Francis of Assisi had

been largely responsible for this. Also responsible were the contacts with FrenchGothic art.

14th Century

Once attention had been drawn to human emotion, it was only naturalthat interest in the human being himself and in his physical surroundingsshould follow.

The resulting secularization of religious subject matter is apparent inthe paintings of the 14th century.

15th Century

More detailed observation of man himself and of nature




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followed in the 15th century with the growth of interest inanatomy, perspective, details of nature, landscapebackgrounds, and form and color in light.

Paintings of the 15th century also reflect the growing curiosity about man's achievement in Italy's past--that is, the Classic past.

It is this preoccupation with and study of Classic culture and art thatgave the Renaissance in Italy its particular character.Classic culture also brought with it mythology and the ideal of beauty.

16th Century

Christianity was added to Platonic ideal: Neo-platonism.

Michelangelo in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Raphael in the Vatican Stanze are representative of this movement at the beginning of the 16th century; they brought the Renaissance to the highestachievement in painting in Rome.

But the attempt to reconcile paganism and Christianity foundered.

The Reformation intervened and the works of the Mannerists show what resulted in painting.

The Counter-Reformation ushered in the new period, the Baroque.

Ideas and Concepts:Humanism, Neoplatonism, and

Aristotelianism




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The art of a period is a reflection of the psychological, religious, andpolitical forces at work during that period.

Humanism

Humanism was the basic concept of the Italian Renaissance. It is theterm used to define that philosophical movement in Italy at the endof the 14th century and during the 15th and 16th centuries whichasserted the right of the individual to the use of his own reason andbelief, and stressed the importance and potential of man as anindividual.

This concept can be identified with a belief in the power of learning and science to produce "the complete man". This rational andscientific conception of the world is the basis of our moderncivilization. Modern Humanism originated in the Renaissance whenscholars, writers, poets, artists, philosophers and scientists soughtregeneration in the freer intellectual spirit of Classical times.

The Humanists saw no conflict between the New Learning--the newly

rediscovered wisdom of the ancient world--and the authority of theChurch. They felt that the study of the ancient great writers of Greeceand Rome was a tool for the understanding of true Christiandoctrine, and that Platonic philosophy (the belief in the ideal of physical beauty as the mani-festation of God, the One SupremeBeing) could only illumi-nate, never undermine, theology.

Neo-Platonism

Neo-Platonism in the Renaissance was the philosophy based on theteachings and doctrines of a group of thinkers of the early Christianera who endeavored to reconcile the teachings of Plato with




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Christian concepts.

The Neo-Platonists, being at the same time both lovers of the paganpast with its Platonic ideals of physical beauty, and being Christians, wanted to fuse this pagan idealism with Christian doctrine. The artand taste during the Renaissance for complicated mythologicalfantasies intermingled with allegories and symbolisms tried to achievethis fusion of the Platonic idealism with Christian doctrine. Theallegorical value of the art lies in this union of the Classical antiqueand the Christian.

The Neo-Platonists conceived of the Christian religion as an eternaldoctrine existing even before the advent of historical Christianity.

The main object of the Neo-Platonic Academy in Florence in the15th century was the reconciliation of the spirit of antiquity with thatof Christianity.

The meaning of God to the Neo-Platonists was thus:

God was Beauty and the source of Beauty.

God's image is Man.

Therefore, the ideally beautiful Man is the closest approximation of God on this earth.

Michelangelo was the greatest Neo-Platonic artist who believed that thespirit of Classical art inspired and guided the formation of the concetto

(concept) of beauty in the mind.

Aristotelianism

In the Renaissance, another school of classical learning wascoterminous and was finally reconciled with Neo-Platonism, called




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Aristotelianism. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) first formulated thisconcept of art based on the writings of Aristotle via Vitruvius (early 1st century A.D. classical author). It is the Aristotelian conception of the visible world as ultimate reality. Alberti's concept of beauty in a work of art is the harmony betweenall the parts so that nothing can be added to it or taken from it without impairing the whole. The work of art is synthesized by adding together the most beautiful observable examples of thecomponent parts. Leonardo da Vinci, always the scientist, even when a painter, was the chief exponent of the Aristotelian concept.

The Classical in the Renaissance

In the broadest artistic sense, Classical art is that art which is based on the study of classical models, and art which emphasizes qualities considered to becharacteristically Greek and Roman in style and spirit:

Reason

Objectivity DisciplineRestraintOrderBalanceDisciplineRestraint

These characteristics can be summed up in oneterm: Harmony.

The essential conditions that encourage Classicalart are:




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Pride in the pastPeace in the presentConfidence in the future

The Renaissance's Five Great Achievements

There are five fundamental elements in the great achievements of theItalian Renaissance in the world of Art:

NaturalismOrganization of space

Invention of parallel perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi: thescientific use of a perspective based on lines that come together at asingle vanishing point on the horizon The use of classical motifs The new dignity of the individual

Characteristics of Renaissance Painting

Harmonious proportions among all elements of apainting

Reintroduction of chiaroscuro: the gradations of light and dark within a picture, especially one in which the forms are largely determined, not by

sharp outlines but by the meeting of lighter anddarker areas

The perfection of geometric or parallel perspective




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Characteristics of Renaissance Sculpture

The reintroduction of contrapposto: the pose of the human form in which the head andshoulders face in a different direction from thehips and legs -- a spiral twist

The systematic study of anatomy and of theorganic functions of the body

Free-standing monumental statues

Characteristics of Renaissance Architecture

A harmony of all parts with symmetry and order of geometric proportions and designs using Classicalarchitectural elements.

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Summary of the Renaissance