The Renaissance

Renaissance beginning in Italy

The ruins of the Roman Empire, The fall of Constantinople, Wealth from Trade, New ideas from trade, Competition between states, Patrons.

A Patron

A wealthy person who hired artists to produce artwork

Florence

Wealthy Italian city is the 1400s, wool trade/banking, the de Medici’s, sponsored artists and architects

Medieval art themes

Religious images, encouraging Catholicism

Renaissance art themes

Fewer religious images, ancient Greek/Roman mythology, portraits

Medieval materials and colours

Wooden panels, fresco, egg tempera (Powder pigment and egg yolk)

Fresco

Painting on walls while plaster was wet

Renaissance materials and colours

Canvas, fresco, paint with oil (precision and timing), sfumato (blurring/smudging, soft)

Medieval perpsective

Flat, 2-D, No depth

Renaissance perspective

Created depth, 3-D, rounded

Medieval people in art

Not ‘real’, bodies not to scale, lifeless expressions

Renaissance people in art

Anatomy, ‘realistic’, different expressions

Leonardo da Vinci

1452-1519, Vinci near Florence, apprentice to Andrea del Verrocchio at 14 in Florence, 1482 work for Duke of Milan, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Last Supper, 1499 Florence, Mona Lisa 2 years, mirror writing right to left notebooks, France 1516 King Francis, died there 1519

Spread of Renaissance

Visiting artists, outside trade, European rulers becoming patrons, movable printing press (main)

Johannes Gutenburg

Believed to invent the movable type printing press in 1450

Effects of printing press

Rapid spread, major by 1500, much cheaper books, more literate people, introduced to new ideas, popularity of fiction, Catholic Church control over learning declined, Latin declined

Medicine

Dissections, important discoveries about the heart

Humanism

The idea that human beings are at the centre of everything