Renaissance Art Notes

INTRO TO ART

RENAISSANCE

  • Objective:

    • Understanding Renaissance artwork and vocabulary.

    • Identify different Renaissance Artists

VOCABULARY

  • Byzantine Art: comprises the body of Christian Greek artistic products of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

  • Gothic style: a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century AD.

  • Humanism: a moral philosophy that drew inspiration from classical antiquity and had significant influence on the work of Italian Renaissance artists.

  • Fresco: a painting done rapidly in watercolor on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling, so that the colors penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries.

ABOUT THE RENAISSANCE

  • The Renaissance (Rinascimento) was an upsurge of creative activity in all fine arts disciplines, centered in Italy between 1400 and 1530.

  • Divided into two consecutive eras:

    • Early Renaissance 1400-1490

    • High Renaissance 1490-1530

  • It firmly re-established Western art according to the principles of Classical Antiquity, especially Greek sculpture, and its theories about aesthetics.

  • The hierarchy of the genres remained dominant until Pablo Picasso and Cubism.

The Renaissance started in Italy:

  • From the early 14th century, Italian artists and thinkers became inspired by the ideas and forms of ancient Greece and Rome.

  • This was perfectly in tune with their desire to create a universal, even noble, form of art which could express the new and more confident mood of the times.

  • In addition to its status as the richest trading nation with both Europe and the Orient, Italy was blessed with a huge repository of classical ruins and artifacts.

  • Examples of Roman architecture were found in almost every town and city, and Roman sculpture, including copies of lost sculptures from ancient Greece, had been familiar for centuries.

  • In addition, the decline of Constantinople - the capital of the Byzantine Empire - caused many Greek scholars to immigrate to Italy, bringing with them important texts and knowledge of classical Greek civilization.

Giotto di Bondone (c.1267-1337)

  • One of the first Old Masters

  • The Italian painter Giotto di Bondone (known simply as Giotto) was active during the proto-Renaissance era in Padua and Florence.

  • Best known for his humanistic religious frescoes.

  • Was a key figure in the pre-Renaissance period and is considered one of the founders of fine art painting in Europe.

  • His pictures broke away from the symbolism of Byzantine art and introduced a new naturalism and realism into painting.

  • Although much of his work has been destroyed, his most notable feat was the cycle of fresco paintings in the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua (Arena Chapel) (1304-13).

  • Fresco Scrovegni Chapel by Giotto

Andrea Mantegna (c.1431-1506)

  • One of the most outstanding figures in Early Renaissance painting.

  • The Italian painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna is best known for his large paintings of realistic figures, often viewed from a low perspective in order to a create greater monumentality.

  • The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, 1490. Andrea Mantegna.

Leonardo Da Vinci (c.1452-1519)

  • One of the greatest of all Old Masters in the history of art.

  • Leonardo Da Vinci excelled as a painter, sculptor, engineer, architect and scientist.

  • Along with Michelangelo and Raphael, he is considered to be one of the three great creators of the Italian High Renaissance of the sixteenth century (1490-1530).

  • Renowned principally as a painter, Leonardo was a pioneer of oil painting, and also the painterly techniques of chiaroscuro (use of shadow to create a 3-D effect) and sfumato (use of glazes in slightly different tones of color creating an almost imperceptible transition from light to dark).

  • Both techniques are visible in his masterpiece, Mona Lisa.

  • Female Head, Leonardo Da Vinci

  • Unfortunately, Leonardo's creative gifts were so diverse that he completed only a handful of artistic projects.

  • Two of his paintings, the Mona Lisa (1503-6, oil on panel, Louvre) and The Last Supper (1495-8, and tempera fresco, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan), are respectively the most celebrated portrait and history painting of all time.

  • Only a fraction of his fine art painting survives (perhaps 15 pictures in all), not least because of his thirst for ( often disastrous) experimentation with new techniques..

  • Leonardo Da Vinci, c. 1503-1519, Monalisa, Oil on poplar, Musee du Louvre, Paris.

  • Even so, these few paintings, together with a number of drawing sketchbooks crammed with figure drawings, including some of the best drawings of the Renaissance, anatomical studies, scientific diagrams, and his views on the techniques and aesthetics of painting, comprise a legacy rivaled only by Michelangelo.

  • Leonardo da Vinci's late 1490s mural painting in Milan, Italy, the Last Supper

Raphael (c.1483-1520)

  • Raphael is one of the three supreme Old Masters of the High Renaissance period.

  • He is also known as 'II Di vino' (The Divine One).

  • Influenced by Pietro Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Masaccio and Fra Bartolomeo.

  • He is famous for the perfect grace and spatial geometry of his High Renaissance painting and drawing.

  • His most notable works include his frescos in the Raphael Rooms (including the Stanza della Segnatura) at the Palace of the Vatican, long regarded as being among the greatest Renaissance paintings, and his altarpiece compositions The Sistine Madonna (1513, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden) and The Transfiguration (1519-20, Vatican Museum).

  • Raphael, The Sistine Madonna, Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

  • Born in Florentine territory, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni - usually called simply Michelangelo - was one of the greatest masters of Italian Renaissance art.

  • Twenty years younger than his rival Leonardo da Vinci, his diversity of talent caused him ( along with Da Vinci and Raphael) to be regarded as one of the three great creators of the High Renaissance.

  • Above all, he promoted the idea that painting and sculpture merited the same status as architecture, and that painters and sculptors were genuine artists, rather than mere decorators or stone masons.

  • Michelangelo's creative output has made him one of the most scrutinized Old Masters of the sixteenth century, responsible for some of the greatest Renaissance paintings and marble statues.

  • Michelangelo created one of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

  • Michelangelo Buonarroti: David, detail of the copy outside the Palazzo