Renaissance art

RENAISSANCE ART

14th to the 17th century

By: Lucylle Bianca Cawaling, Alina Bianca Arellano, Sofia Valera, Rheana Gabriel, Dominique Avanzando

RENAISSANCE• The 14th century was a time of great crisis; the plague, the Hundred

Years war, and the turmoil in the Catholic Church all shook people’s faith in government, religion, and their fellow man. In this dark period Europeans sought a new start, a cultural rebirth, a renaissance.

• The Renaissance began in Italy where the culture was surrounded by the remnants of a once glorious empire.

• Italians rediscovered the writings, philosophy, art, and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans and began to see antiquity as a golden age which held the answers to reinvigorating their society.

• Humanistic education, based on rhetoric, ethics and the liberal arts, was pushed as a way to create well-rounded citizens who could actively participate in the political process.

• Humanists celebrated the mind, beauty, power, and enormous potential of human beings. They believed that people were able to experience God directly and should have a personal, emotional relationship to their faith. God had made the world but humans were able to share in his glory by becoming creators themselves.

CATEGORIES OF RENAISSANCE ART• Pre- (or "Proto"-) Renaissance

• around 1150 or so• stable enough to allow explorations in art to develop

• Early Renaissance• period of great creative and intellectual activity, during which artists broke

away from the restrictions of Byzantine Art• 15th century, artists studied the natural world in order to perfect their

understanding of such subjects as anatomy and perspective.

• High Renaissance• lasted from roughly 1495 to 1527

• Late Renaissance• between 1527 and 1600 • artistic school known as Mannerism

• complexity and virtuosity over naturalistic representation• favored compositional tension and instability rather than the balance and clarity• distortion of the human figure, a flattening of pictorial space, and a cultivated

intellectual sophistication.

Pre-Renaissance Early Renaissance High Renaissance Late Renaissance

Nicola Pisano Brunelleschi Giovanni Bellini Pontormo

Arnolfo di Cambio Ghiberti Leonardo da Vinci Benvenuto Cellini

Giovanni Pisano Masolino Filippino Lippi Bronzino

Giotto Nanni di Banco Michelangelo Parmigianino

Pietro Lorenzetti Donatello Giorgione Tintoretto

Ambrogio Lorenzetti Fra Angelico Raphael Paolo Veronese

Taddeo Gaddi Uccello Titian Giambologna

Orcagna Masaccio Andrea del Sarto El Greco

Altichiero Filippo Lippi

Giusto de' Menabuoi Piero della Francesca

Andrea del Castagno

Gentile Bellini

Antonello da Messina

Botticelli

Signorelli

Perugino

Ghirlandaio

Donatello (ca. 1386–1466)Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi

Donatello• The greatest Florentine sculptor before Michelangelo (1475–1564)and was the most influential individual artist of the 15th century inItaly.

• He was gaining a reputation for creating larger-than-life figuresusing innovative techniques and extraordinary skills. Before,European sculptors used a flat background upon which figures wereplaced. Donatello also drew heavily from reality for inspiration in hissculptures, accurately showing expression in his figures’ faces andbody positions.

David [marble](1408–1409)Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

The marble David is Donatello's earliest known important commission, and it is a work closely tied to tradition, giving few signs of the innovative approach to representation that the artist would develop as he matured.

David [bronze](1400s)Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

Donatello's bronze statue of David is famous as the first unsupported standing work of bronze cast during the Renaissance, and the first freestanding nude male sculpture made since antiquity. It depicts David with an enigmatic smile, posed with his foot on Goliath's severed head just after defeating the giant. The youth is completely naked, apart from a laurel-topped hat and boots, bearing the sword of Goliath.

Equestrian statue of Gattamelata(1453)Piazza del Santo, Padua, Italy

After Erasmo of Narni's death in 1443, the mercenary’s family paid for a sculpture in his honor. It is the earliest surviving Renaissance equestrian statue and the first to reintroduce the grandeur of Classical equestrian portraiture. After its conception, the statue served as a precedent for later sculptures honoring military heroes.

Penitent Magdalene(1453–1455)

Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

A statue of a gaunt-looking Mary Magdalene.

Donatello died of unknown causes leaving his work

unfinished however faithfully completed by his

student Bertoldo di Giovanni.

Sandro Botticelli1445- 17 MAY 1510

• flat backdrop• Devoid of atmospheric perspective• lyrical and courtly style of visual poetry parallel to the love

poetry of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di VanniFilipepi, better known as SandroBotticelli, was born in Florence,

Republic of Florence (Italy)

Italian painter, belonging the Florentine school under Lorenzo

de Medici

His work to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance

painting

The Virgin and Child Surrounded by Five Angels

STYLE Early Renaissance

GALLERY Louvre, Paris, france

COMPLETION DATE c1470

TECHNIQUE oil

MATERIAL panel

DIMENSIONS 40X58 CM

GENRE religious painting

Madonna of the Magnificat


GALLERY Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy

START DATE 1480

COMPLETION DATE 1481

TECHNIQUE Tempera

MATERIAL panel


Portrait of a Young Man


GALLERY National Gallery

COMPLETION DATE 1483

TECHNIQUE tempera

MATERIAL wood


The Mystical Nativity


GALLERY National Gallery

COMPLETION DATE c.1500

TECHNIQUE tempera

MATERIAL canvas

DIMENSIONS 109X75 cm


Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci•Born in small town of Vinci, near Florence

•“Renaissance man”

•Unquenchable curiosity

•Studies Botany, Geology, cartography, zoology, Military, Engineering, Animal lore, Anatomy, and Aspects of Physical Science, including hydraulics and Mechanics

•Studying gave him an understanding of perspective, light, and color that he used in his painting

•Scientific drawings are themselves artworks

•His great ambition in his painting, as well as scientific endeavors, was to discover the laws underlying the processes and flux of naure

•All his scientific investigations made him a better painter

Madonna of the Rocks

• Use of chiaroscuro

• Subtle play of light and dark (modeling with light & shadow, and expressing emotional states = heart of painting for Leonardo)

• 2 chief objects to paint• Man

• Intention of his soul = expressed by gestures and the movement of his limbs

• Pyramidal grouping

• Share the same light-infused environment

Last Supper•For the refrectory of the Church of santa Maria delle Grazie in Millan

•Christ• Center of the 2-dimensional surface

• Focal point of all converging perspective lines in the composition

• Perspectival focus

• Psychological focus and cause of Action

•Disciples• Agitated

• In four groups of three, united among within themselves by the figures, gestures and postures

•Light source- corresponds to the window in the refrectory

•Emotional responses: fear, doubt, protestation, rage and love

Mona Lisa• World’s most famous portrait

•Renaissance etiquette: a woman should not look directly into a man’s eye’s

•Chiascuro and atmospheric perspective

•Portrayed of this self-assured young woman without trappings of power but engaging the audience psychologically

•Darker today than 500 years ago

•Backdrop of a mysterious uninhabited landscape

Anatomical Studies• very few paintings

•Perfectionism, relentless experimenting and far-ranging curiosity

•Originated the scientific illustration

•http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-anatomy/items

A male nude, and a partial study of the left leg

A study of the nude figure of a man seen full length, facing the spectator. His legs are set well apart, and his arms are slightly raised from his sides, resting on two sticks which are slightly indicated. To the left is part of a flexed left leg.

it was important for the artist to know how to draw the muscles in tension, it was just as important to know how to draw the body when relaxed.

Recto: The superficial anatomy of the shoulder and neck. Verso: The muscles of the shoulder

This sheet displays the full range of Leonardo’s illustrative techniques, showing the structure of the muscles of the shoulder. Pectoralis major is divided into parts to represent the lines of force along which it acts. This method reaches its logical conclusion in the drawing at top right, which is an example of Leonardo’s ‘thread model’. This technique - invented by Leonardo - reduced the muscles to single cords along their central lines of force, such that the spatial structure of an entire system can be perceived at once.

Recto: The foetus in the womb. Verso: Notes on reproduction, with sketches of a foetus in utero, etc.Recto: Large drawing of an embryo within a human uterus with a cow's placenta; smaller sketch of the same; notes on the subject; illustrative drawings in detail of the placenta & uterus; diagram demonstrating binocular vision; a note on relief in painting & on mechanics. Verso: A note on light & shade; numerous notes on reproduction; L side of a foetuswith a cord; 3 drawings of foetal liver, stomach & umbilical vein; sketches of chick embryo & membranes & front

(uterus is sphere-shaped; characterization of lining is incorrect)

Recto: The heart, bronchi and bronchial vessels. Verso: A sketch of the heart and great vessels

Recto: Drawing of a bovine heart, great vessels & bronchial tree. Details of trachea & effects of respiration on it; numerous notes on the action of the heart. Verso: Sketch of human heart & main vessels

Michelangelo (1475–1564)Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Michelangelo

•Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of theHigh Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence onthe development of Western art.

•He believed the image produced by the artist’s hand mustcome from the idea in the artist’s mind. But artists are notthe creators of the ideas they conceive. They find their ideasin the natural world, reflecting the absolute idea: beauty.

Michelangelo•The artistic license to aspire far beyond the “rules” was, inpart, a manifestation of the pursuit of fame and success thathumanism fostered.

•He put in its stead a style of vast, expressive strengthconveyed through complex, eccentric, and often titanicforms that loom before the viewer in tragic grandeur.

Terribilità the sublime shadowed by the awesome and the fearful conception and execution in an artist.

Pietà(1498–1500)Saint Peter’s, Vatican City, Rome

Michelangelo’s representation of Mary cradling Christ’s corpse brilliantly captures the sadness and beauty of the young Virgin but was controversial because the Madonna seems younger than her son.

Pietà

•French cardinal Jean de Bilhères Lagraulascommissioned the statue to adorn thechapel in Old Saint Peter’s in which he wasto be buried .

• Michelangelo transformed marble intoflesh, hair, and fabric with a sensitivity fortexture that is almost without parallel. Thepolish and luminosity of the exquisitemarble surface.

David(1501–1504)Galleriadell’Accademia, Florence

In this colossal statue, Michelangelo represented

David in heroic classical nudity, capturing the tension of Lysippan athletes and the emotionalism of Hellenistic

statuary.

David or “the Giant”•Florence Cathedral building committeecommissioned him to fashion a statue ofDavid.

•Served as a symbol of Florentine liberty.

•Michelangelo chose to represent the young biblical warrior sternly watchful of the approaching foe.

David or “the Giant”

•David exhibits the characteristicrepresentation of energy in reserve.

•The anatomy of David’s body plays animportant part in this prelude to action:Every aspect of his muscular body,

including his face, is tense with gatheringpower.His rugged torso, sturdy limbs, and large

hands and feet alert viewers to thestrength to come.The swelling veins and tightening sinews

amplify the psychological energy of thepose.

David or “the Giant”•He greatly admired Greco-Roman statues, inparticular the skillful and precise rendering ofheroic physique.

•David is compositionally and emotionallyconnected to an unseen presence beyond thestatue, a feature also of Hellenistic sculpture.

• Michelangelo invested his efforts in presentingtowering, pent-up emotion rather than calm,ideal beauty.

The Sistine Chapel1473

The Sistine Chapel•Takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere

•Restored between 1477 and 1480

• A team of Renaissance painters that included SandroBotticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, DomenicoGhirlandaio and Cosimo Roselli, created a series offrescos depicting the Life of Moses and the Life ofChrist

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508–12)Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Rome, Italy

Fresco painting that Michelangelo labored almost four years in the Sistine Chapel painting more than 300biblical figures on the ceiling illustrating the Creation and Fall of humankind.

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling

•Its dimensions (some 5,800 square feet), its height above the pavement (almost 70feet), and the complicated perspective problems the vault’s height and curvepresented.

•A long sequence of narrative panels describing the Creation, as recorded in Genesis,runs along the crown of the vault. (God’s Separation of Light and Darkness toDrunkenness of Noah)

•More than 300 figures in a grand drama of the human race.

•The ceiling’s design and narrative structure not only presents a sweeping chronologyof Christianity but also is in keeping with Renaissance ideas about Christian history.


•The Hebrew prophets and pagan sibyls who foretold the coming of Christ appearseated in large thrones on both sides of the central row of scenes from Genesis,where the vault curves down.

•In the four corner pendentives, where the four Old Testament scenes placed withDavid, Judith, Haman, and Moses and the Brazen Serpent.

•The ancestors of Christ fill the triangular compartments above the windows,nude youths punctuate the corners of the central panels, and small pairs of puttiin grisaille. (monochrome painting using shades of gray to imitate sculpture)


•Focuses on figure after figure

•The body was the manifestation of the soul or of a state of mind andcharacter.

•Michelangelo represented the body in its most simple, elemental aspect—inthe nude or simply draped, with no background and no ornamentalembellishment.

•That is why many of the figures seem to be tinted reliefs or freestandingstatues.

The Creation of Adam (1510)Life leaps to Adam like a spark from the extended hand of God in this fresco, which recalls thecommunication between gods and heroes in the classical myths so admired by Renaissance humanists.

The Creation of Adam

•Michelangelo did not paint the traditional representation but instead produced abold, humanistic interpretation of the momentous event.

•God and Adam confront each other in a primordial unformed landscape of which Adam is still a material part, heavy as earth while the Lord transcends the earth, wrapped in a billowing cloud of drapery and borne up by his powers.

•Michelangelo incorporated into his fresco one of the essential tenets of Christian faith—the belief that Adam’s Original Sin eventually led to the sacrifice of Christ: Redemption of humankind.

The Creation of Adam•The focal point of this right-to-left-to-right movement—the fingertipsof Adam and the Lord—is dramatically off-center.

•Michelangelo’s style is The reclining positions of the figures, theheavy musculature, and the twisting poses are all intrinsic.

•Michelangelo replaced the straight architectural axes thus, motiondirects not only the figures but also the whole composition.

The Last Judgement (Il Giudizio Universale)

(1536–1541)Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

The fresco painting depictedChrist as the stern judge of theworld—a giant who raises hismighty right arm in a gesture ofdamnation so broad anduniversal as to suggest he willdestroy all creation.


•A large fresco for the Sistine Chapel’s altar wall

•Michelangelo depicted Christ as the stern judge ofthe world—a giant who raises his mighty right armin a gesture of damnation so broad and universalas to suggest he will destroy all creation.

•The choirs of Heaven surrounding him pulse withanxiety and awe.

•On the left, the dead awake and assume flesh.

•On the right, demons whose gargoyle masks andburning eyes revive the demons of Romanesquetympana, torment the damned.


•Michelangelo’s terrifying vision of the fatethat awaits sinners goes far beyond anyprevious rendition.

•The figures are huge and violentlytwisted, with small heads and contortedfeatures.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

(APRIL 6 OR MARCH 28, 1483 -APRIL 6, 1520)

Raphael• also known as just Raphael

• His work is known for its clarity of form and ease of composition

• left behind an extraordinary amount of work despite having died an early death at 37

•declared a master, meaning he was fully trained, in 1501

•His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.

Early Work•Reputedly an apprentice of Pietro Perugino due to their similar techniques and stylistic closeness.

•For example, having paint applied thickly to shadows and darker garments but applied thinly on flesh areas. Many art historians claim to detect his hand in Perugino's work.

Early Work

These are large works, some in fresco, where Raphael confidently marshals his compositions in the somewhat static style of Perugino.

The Oddi Altarpiece is an altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin painted in 1502-1504

The Mond Crucifixion.An early work influenced by Perugino, it was originally an altarpiece in the church of San Domenico in Città di Castello, near Raphael's hometown of Urbino.

The Wedding of the Virgin, Raphael's

most sophisticated altarpiece of this

period.

Influence of Florence•Raphael was able to assimilate the influence of Florentine art, whilst keeping his own developing style.

•Most striking influence is Leonardo da Vinci's work.

•He also perfects his own version of Leonardo's sfumato modelling, to give subtlety to his painting of flesh, and develops the interplay of glances between his groups, which are much less enigmatic than those of Leonardo. But he keeps the soft clear light of Perugino in his paintings.

The Madonna of the Meadow, c.

1506, using Leonardo's pyramidal

composition for subjects of the

Holy Family

Saint Catherine of

Alexandria, 1507,

borrows from the

pose of Leonardo's

Leda

Roman PeriodBy the end of 1508, he had moved to Rome, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Raphael was immediately commissioned by Julius to fresco what was intended to become the Pope's private library at the Vatican Palace.This was a much larger and more important commission than any he had received before; he had only painted one altarpiece in Florence itself.

This first of the famous "Stanze" or

"Raphael Rooms" to be painted, now

always known as the Stanza della Segnaturaafter its use in Vasari's

time, was to make a stunning impact on

Roman art, and remains generally

regarded as his greatest masterpiece, containing The School

of Athens, The Parnassus and the

Disputa.

•Raphael was clearly influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling in the course of painting the room.

•The reaction of other artists to the daunting force of Michelangelo was the dominating question in Italian art for the following few decades, and Raphael, who had already shown his gift for absorbing influences into his own personal style, rose to the challenge perhaps better than any other artist.

•Michelangelo accused Raphael of plagiarism and years after Raphael's death, complained in a letter that "everything he knew about art he got from me".

One of the first and clearest instances was

the portrait in The School of Athens of

Michelangelo himself, as Heraclitus, which

seems to draw clearly from the Sybils and

ignudi of the Sistine ceiling. Other figures in that and later paintings

in the room show the same influences, but as

still cohesive with a development of

Raphael's own style.

The Mass at Bolsena is located in the Stanza di Eliodoro, which is named after The Expulsion of Heliodorusfrom the Temple.

The Mass at Bolsena shows an incident that is said to have taken place in 1263. A Bohemian priest who doubted the doctrine of transubstantiation, celebrated mass at Bolsena, where the bread of the eucharistbegan to bleed.

The liberation of Saint Peter is

located in the Stanza di Eliodoro.

The painting shows how Saint Peter was

liberated from Herod's prison by

an angel, as described in Acts

12.

Other Work (portraits)

The woman portrayed is Elisabetta Gonzaga, wife of Duke Guidobaldo I of Urbino(the portrait is now exhibited at the Uffizi next to the latter's) and a woman of literary and artistic interests. Details include the black dress with applied trim in a patchwork pattern, and the scorpion-like diadem on the woman's forehead. Her hairdo includes the coazzone, a long plait which is present also in a medal of her now at the British Museum.

The portrait of Pope Julius II was unusual for its time and would carry a long influence on papal portraiture.

Raphael's last and unfinished portraitThe Transfiguration is the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. Commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de Medici, the later Pope Clement VII (1523–1534) and conceived as an altarpiece for the Narbonne Cathedral in France, Raphael worked on it until his death in 1520. The painting exemplifies Raphael's development as an artist and the culmination of his career. Unusually for a depiction of the Transfiguration of Jesus in Christian art, the subject is combined with an additional episode from the Gospels in the lower part of the painting.

Education

Renaissance art