Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture: Early Renaissance (Part 1)

Introduction
- Chronology:
  - Proto-Renaissance (Trecento): 1300s (1300-1399 CE)
  - Early Renaissance (Quattrocento): c. 1400–1490 (1400s)
  - High Renaissance (Cinquecento): c. 1490–1527 (1500s)
  - Late Renaissance & Mannerism: c. 1520-1600
- Renaissance is a transformation of culture from passive ignorance to grand human potentialities.
- Humanism: System of education emphasizing human potential.
- Giorgio Vasari: Author of Lives of the Artists (published 1550).
Florence and the Renaissance Beginnings
- Key Figures:
  - Patronage and the Medici family.
- Shift from Gothic to Renaissance:
  - Florence Cathedral.
  - Pisano's Baptistry doors.
  - Ghiberti’s Baptistry doors.
Architecture
- Filippo Brunelleschi:
  - Dome of Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), 1420–36; Height 35.5 m., diameter 140 m.
  - Hospital of the Innocents, Florence (Began 1421).
  - Basilica of Santo Spirito, Florence (Designed from 1428, begun 1446).
- Leon Battista Alberti:
  - Treatises on painting and architecture.
  - Basilica of Sant’Andrea, 1472-90, Mantua.
    - Pilaster: A shallow, rectangular architectural element.
Perspective and Pictorial Space
- Linear perspective:
  - Discovered and published by Brunelleschi and Alberti.
  - Representation in painting: Pietro Perugino’s Delivery of the Keys (1482).
  - Andrea del Castagno’s Last Supper (c. 1445-50).
- Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise (1425–52).
- Masaccio’s Holy Trinity.
Sculpture
- Donatello:
  - St. Mark.
  - David (c. 1420s-60s).
  - Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata (1445–50).
Painting
- Religious Themes:
  - Masaccio’s The Tribute Money (c. 1425).
  - Fra Angelico’s Annunciation (c. 1435).
  - Fra Filippo Lippi’s Madonna and Child with the Birth of the Virgin (1452–53).
  - Andrea Mantegna’s St. Sebastian (c. 1450s).
- Mythological Themes:
  - Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (c. 1482) and Birth of Venus (c. 1485).