Chapter 15: Early Renaissance in Italy: Fifteenth Century
Key Notes
- Time Period: 1400–1500 * Takes place in the courts of Italian city-states: Ferrara, Florence, Mantua, Naples, Rome, Venice, and so on.
- Culture, beliefs, and physical settings * Renaissance art is generally the art of Western Europe. * Renaissance art is influenced by the art of the classical world, Christianity, a greater respect for naturalism, and formal artistic training.
- Cultural interactions * There are the beginnings of global commercial and artistic networks.
- Materials and Processes * The period is dominated by an experimentation of visual elements, i.e., atmospheric perspective, a bold use of color, creative compositions, and an illusion of naturalism
- Audience, functions, and patron * There is a more pronounced identity of the artist in society; the artist has more structured training opportunities.
- Theories and Interpretations * Renaissance art is studied in chronological order. * There is a large body of primary source material housed in libraries and public institutions.
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Historical Background
- Italian city-states were controlled by ruling families who dominated politics
- These princes were lavish spenders on the arts, and great connoisseurs of cutting-edge movements in painting and sculpture.
- They embellished their palaces with the latest innovative paintings by artists such as Lippi and Botticelli.
- They commissioned architectural works from the most pioneering architects of the day.
- Princely courts eventually shifted from religious to secular concerns in a humanistic spirit.
- Humanism: an intellectual movement in the Renaissance that emphasized the secular alongside the religious. * Humanists were greatly attracted to the achievements of the classical past, and stressed the study of classical literature, history, philosophy, and art
Patronage and Artistic Life
- The patrons of this time dictated the quantity of gold used on altarpieces and which family members were to be shown in paintings.
- Great families often had their own chapel in the local church.
- These churches' mysticism was enhanced by muralists.
- Quattrocento: the 1400s, or fifteenth century, in Italian art
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Early Renaissance Architecture
- Renaissance architecture requires order, clarity, and light. * Gothic churches' gloom, mystery, and sacredness were barbarous. * Wide windows, minimal stained glass, and vibrant wall murals replaced it.
- Renaissance architecture emphasizes geometric designs, yet all buildings require mathematics to support their technical principles. * Vitruvius' ideal proportions created harmony. * Humanistic values were reflected in Florentine Renaissance church interior ratios and proportions. * Unvaulted naves with coffered ceilings reminded Early Christianity.
- Thus, the crossing is twice the nave bays, the nave twice the side aisles, and the side aisles twice the side chapels. * The nave is two-thirds arches and columns. * As in Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel, the nave's white and gray marble floor patterns emphasize this logic.
- Alberti's Palazzo Rucellai and other Florentine buildings feature austere, three-story façades. * The first level is usually for public use and business. * A sturdy string course marks the ceiling and floor of the second storey, which rises light. * Roman temple-style cornices top the third story.
- Mullion: a central post or column that is a support element in a window or a door
- Orthogonal: lines that appear to recede toward a vanishing point in a painting with linear perspective
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➼ Pazzi Chapel
- Details * Designed by Filippo Brunelleschi * Basilica di Santa Croce * Designed 1423; Built 1429–1461, * A masonry, * Found in Florence, Italy
- Form * Two barrel vaults on the interior; small dome over crossing; pendentives support dome; oculus in the center. * Interior has a quiet sense of color with muted tones that is punctuated by glazed terra cotta tiles. * Use of pietra serena (a grayish stone) in contrast to whitewashed walls accentuates basic design structure. * Pietra serena: a dark-gray stone used for columns, arches, and trim details in Renaissance buildings * Inspired by Roman triumphal arches. * Ideal geometry in the plan of the building.
- Function * Chapter house: a meeting place for Franciscan monks; bench that wraps around the interior provides seating for meetings. * Rectangular chapel with an apse and an altar attached to the church of Santa Croce, Florence.
- Attribution * Attribution of portico by Brunelleschi has been recently questioned; * The building may have been designed by Bernardo Rossellino or his workshop.
- Patronage * Patrons were the wealthy Pazzi family, who were rivals of the Medici. * The family coat-of-arms, two outward facing dolphins, is placed at the base of each pendentive on the interior.
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➼ Palazzo Rucellai
- Details * Designed by Leon Battista Alberti * c. 1450, stone, * A masonry * Found in Florence, Italy
- Form * Three horizontal floors separated by a strongly articulated stringcourse; each floor is shorter than the one below. * Pilasters rise vertically and divide the spaces into squarish shapes. * An emphasized cornice caps the building. * Square windows on the first floor; windows with mullions on the second and third floors. * Rejects rustication of earlier Renaissance palaces; used beveled masonry joints instead. * Benches on lower level connect the palazzo with the city.
- Function * City residence of the Rucellai family. * The building format expresses classical humanist ideals for a residence: * the bottom floor was used for business; * the family received guests on the second floor; * the family’s private quarters were on the third floor; * the hidden fourth floor was for servants.
- Context * The articulation of the three stories links the building to the Colosseum levels, which have arches framed by columns: * the first floor pilasters are Tuscan (derived from Doric); * the second are Alberti’s own invention (derived from Ionic); * the third are Corinthian. * Original building: * Five bays on the left, with a central door. * Second doorway bay and right bay added later. * Eighth bay fragmentary: owners of house next door refused to sell, and the Palazzo Rucellai never expanded.
- Patronage * Patron was Giovanni Rucellai, a wealthy merchant. * Rucellai coat-of-arms, a rampant lion, is placed over two second-floor windows. * Friezes contain Rucellai family symbols: billowing sails.
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Fifteenth Century Italian Painting and Sculpture
- Linear perspective, which some experts believe the Romans used, is the most distinctive feature of Italian Renaissance art. * In the early fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi created perspective while sketching the Florence Cathedral Baptistery. * Some painters were obsessed with perspective, presenting things and people in proportion, unlike medieval painting, which emphasized humans. * Linear perspective was quickly adopted by pre-Traditional artists. * The artists used trompe l'oeil to purposely deceive the viewer. * Trompe l’oeil: (French, meaning “fools the eye”) a form of painting that attempts to represent an object as existing in three dimensions, and therefore resembles the real thing.
- By the end of the fifteenth century, portraits and mythical subjects had replaced religious paintings, expressing humanist ideas.
- Humanism and Greco-Roman classics revive interest in genuine Greek and Roman sculptures. * Medieval painters saw old naked glory as heathen. * Donatello's David begins the century-long renaissance of nudity in life-size sculpture in Florence.
- Increased anatomy study leads to nudity. * Nude sketches of heroes are cast in stone and metal. * Some painters display tremendous physical interplay of shapes in their twisting motions and straining muscles.
- Bottega: the studio of an Italian artist
- Perspective: depth and recession in a painting or a relief sculpture. * Objects shown in linear perspective achieve a three-dimensionality in the two-dimensional world of the picture plane. * Lines, called orthogonals, draw the viewer back in space to a common point, called the vanishing point. * Paintings, however, may have more than one vanishing point, with the orthogonals leading the eye to several parts of the work. * Landscapes that give the illusion of distance are in an atmospheric or aerial perspective.
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➼ Madonna and Child with Two Angels
- Details * Painted by Fra Filippo Lippi * c. 1465 * Tempera on wood * Found in Uffizi, Florence * Madonna: the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ
- Content and Symbolism * Symbolic landscape * Rock formations symbolize the Christian Church. * City near Madonna's head is the Heavenly Jerusalem. * Pearl motif: seen in headdress and pillow as products of the sea. * Pearls used as symbols in scenes of the Incarnation of Christ.
- Context * Mary is seen as a young mother. * Model may have been the artist’s lover. * Landscape inspired by Flemish painting. * Scene depicted as if in a window in a Florentine home. * Humanization of a sacred theme; there is a sense of domestic intimacy. * Lippi was a monk, as indicated by the word “Fra” that precedes his name; he was working in a Carmelite monastery under the patronage of the Medici.
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➼ Birth of Venus
- Details * Painted by Sandro Botticelli * c. 1484–1486 * Tempera on canvas * Found in Uffizi, Florence
- Form * Crisply drawn figures. * Landscape flat and unrealistic; simple V-shaped waves. * Figures float, not anchored to the ground.
- Content * Venus emerges fully grown from the foam of the sea with a faraway look in her eyes. * Roses scattered before her; roses created at the same time as Venus, symbolizing that love can be painful. * On the left: Zephyr (west wind) and Chloris (nymph). * On the right: handmaiden rushes to clothe Venus.
- Context * Medici commission; may have been commissioned for a wedding celebration. * Painting based on a popular court poem by the writer Poliziano, which itself is based on Homeric hymns and Hesiod’s Theogony. * A revival of interest in Greek and Roman themes can be seen in this work. * Earliest full-scale nude of Venus in the Renaissance. * Reflects emerging Neoplatonic thought. * Neoplatonism: a school of ancient Greek philosophy that was revived by Italian humanists of the Renaissance
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➼ David
- Details * Sculpted by Donatello * c. 1440–1460 * Made of bronze * Found in National Museum, Bargello, Florence
- Form * First large bronze nude since antiquity. * Exaggerated contrapposto of the body. * Sleekness of the black bronze adds to the femininity of the work. * Androgynous figure; homoerotic overtones.
- Function * Life-size work, probably meant to be housed in the Medici palace courtyard; not for public viewing.
- Content * The work depicts the moment after David slays the Philistine Goliath with a rock from a slingshot; David then decapitates Goliath with his own sword. * David contemplates his victory over Goliath, whose head is at his feet; David’s head is lowered to suggest humility. * Laurel on David’s hat indicates he was a poet; the hat is a foppish Renaissance design.
- Context * David symbolizes Florence taking on larger forces with ease; perhaps Goliath would have been equated with the Duke of Milan. * Nothing is known of its commission or patron, but it was placed in the courtyard of the Medici palace in Florence. * Modern theory alleges that this is a figure of Mercury, and that the decapitated head is of Argo; * Mercury is the patron of the arts and merchants, and therefore an appropriate symbol for the Medici.
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