Italian Renaissance Sikes Final Exam

The Crusades of 1096-1229

the Italian states become crossroads of the east and the west

The significance of the trading routes…

brings wealth; leisured classes pursue educational, artistic, and architectural projects.

What issue did the growth of Italian cities create?

a need to address complex problems of government and politics

Why was attention turned away from Christian religious texts?

Trading brought in wealth, which promoted leisured classes to pursue educational, artistic, and architectural projects. Renewed interest in Pre-Christian writings; scholars first turn to familiar Latin texts.

How did the fall of Constantinople affect the Italian states?

Christian refugees bring old Greek texts to the Italian states.

This is first access of scholars to Greek drama and to the Poetics; an explosion of interest.

Old plays restaged in Latin and vernacular; then new plays written in Latin and vernacular.

The Neoclassical Ideal

derived from studies of the works of Aristotle and Horace. Learned audiences in courts and academies know these works; debates among them ensue.

Reality

Believable but idealized depictions of life.

No supernatural elements unless found in the original; no chorus, violence, or battle scenes.

Morality

Drama should always teach a moral lesson.

The concept of poetic justice demanded good always triumph over evil in a moral universe.

Universality

Common expectations for characters

Decorum or conventional behaviors assigned to character types based on their class or rank.

Time

The action takes place during a single revolution of sun.

Alternately, the duration of the play could equal the duration of the action

Place

The stage is single and so the location should be single.

Alternately, various locations reachable during a single revolution of the sun

Action

The single play should concern a single central character.

Double plots and subplots were discouraged and became critical sticking points.

Comedy

Audiences laugh at the ridiculous actions of base characters.

Tragedy

Audiences admire and feel pity and fear for elevated characters

Pastoral

Idyllic love stories replace the bawdy ancient tales of the satyr plays

What did Horace think was the most ideal amount of episodes for a drama?

five acts

What did Horace say that dramas should do?

they should teach lessons and please the audience

What did Horace say about comedies?

they should have original plots, but tragedies should have familiar plots that people are familiar with; like Greek myths

Medieval Adoration of the Magi from the Ethelwold Beneditional 973 CE

There is no distinction between foreground and background; no circumscribing frame.

Unlike the framed and limited vision of humans, there is no limit on the vision of God.

Renaissance Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli 1475 CE

There is clear distinction of foreground and background, and a circumscribing frame.

Rather than understanding it as faulty,human vision is now celebrated in visual arts

1414 De Architectura of Vitruvius

is rediscovered with descriptions of the Roman theatre.

1545, Serlio publishes Archetettura with illustrations based on the descriptions of ____

Serlio provides…

scenes for comedy, tragedy, and pastoral with angled wings and a backdrop.

By the 1600s, what replaced angled wings to facilitate multiple scenes?

flat wings

Chariot and Pole system

wheeled "chariots" under the stage connected by poles to scenic flats, allowing a single winch to move multiple flats on and off stage simultaneously

Teatro Olympico 1584

This is the oldest surviving Renaissance theatre.

The scaena frons, orchestra, and auditorium follow Roman models.

Two practical entrances onto the stage are at the sides of the auditorium.

Perspective vistasin the frons and the entrances were added by Scamozzi.

Teatro Farnese 1618

This theatre has the oldest surviving proscenium stage.

It was designed for the Duke of Parma by the architct Aleotti.

The deep horseshoe orchestra modified the original Roman semicircle.

A permanent proscenium arch opens on a deep stage for perspective scenery.

Niccolo Machiavelli

born in Florence and implicated in its government shifts.

He wrote The Prince in 1513, advice on how to conquer and maintain a state.

He had republican sympathies, but wrote the text to find favor with the Medici rulers.

The advice is to be moral and restrained when possible, practical and brutal when needed.

(first political scientist in history)

Mandragola (mandrake; plant shaped like a person) (cries when uprooted)

This comic play has a complicated relation to the rules of the Neoclassical Ideal.

A young man (Callimaco) pretends to be a doctor to get close to his love interest (Lucrezia), convincing her foolish husband (Nicia) that a potion made from the mandrake root is needed to cure his wife's infertility, which requires her to sleep with a stranger (Callimaco) first.