The word Renaissance means "rebirth". It was a rebirth of the ideas of classical antiquity, specifically the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome. It is considered the beginning of the modern era in art. What made it so different from the past was a change in ideas and how the world was viewed. Man was no longer at mercy of the gods, but for the first time has the power to use "a God given brain" to control life. This is not to say that religion was unimportant, but man is no longer just a pawn in life, but a player. The importance of the individual and individual achievement became a focus in society. It was an age of exploration and discovery.
Late Gothic Art in Italy
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italian cities resisted the attempts of Germanic kings to rule them and instead adopted a republican form of government. Milan and Florence became strong economic and cultural centers.
Humanism, the ancient Greek philosophy, which placed the interests and values of man above but not opposed to religious values, became the dominating philosophy of the time. In art, the artist was no longer anonymous, their individual achievements were recognized. Artist also began to use natural objects rather than other pieces of art as the basis for new works. In the past works of art were copied, as it was believed that the sacred qualities of religious art would be passed down by duplicating sacred pieces. The influence of St. Francis was partially responsible for the new observation on nature rather than past art as a prototype for new works. St. Francis taught that studying nature was a way to understand God. That religious ideas should be discovered through human experience of the world. This led to new observations of nature in art and the beginnings of scientific study.
Two of the visual influence on the art of the Italian Gothic period were the art of the French Gothic style and the art of the Byzantine Empire. The St. Francis Altarpiece by Berlinghieri shows a strong influence of the Byzantine traditions. It is a tempera painting on a wooden altarpiece. Tempera was a popular method of painting were the pigment (the color) was mixed with egg whites. The egg whites formed a strong bond with the background surface. Wood was a common surface for tempera painting because of its rigid quality. Tempera paintings had a tendency to flake and crack when the background surface was bent. The subject of this altarpiece was St. Francis, showing his figure in the middle and scenes from his life surrounding him. The subject is important because of St. Francis influence on the religious ideas of the time. Visually, the piece is stylized. This simplification and distortion comes from the Byzantine style. Notice that there is no sense of proportion or roundness to the figure. He is very flat. This flat sense of no roundness to the body beneath the clothing can be compared to the Byzantine mosaic of Justinian and Attendants. St. Francis has the same "coat hanger effect", with no sense of three dimensional space to his body. Notice also that his feet are not standing on the ground but rather seem to float above it, just as Justinians did.
As artists began to observe nature more, the flat, stylized qualities of the Byzantine influence would gradually be replaced with more life like, three dimensional figures and space. As you move through the art of this period, keep this spacial development in mind.
The Maesta Altarpiece created by Duccio was a four paneled wooden altarpiece. It was painted on both the front and the back. The main panel shows the Virgin and
Child Enthroned with Saints. Duccio created this altarpiece for the people of the town of Sienna. They believed that the Virgin had helped then achieve independence by defending them against the military aggressions of Florence. She was seen as the protectress of the city of Sienna. Visually, this main panel has a strong Byzantine character. This can be seen in symmetrical composition and flat sense of space. The saints overlap one another, but appear not to be behind each other, but rather stacked on top of one another. I call this a stacked sense of space. Some innovations were made, including more individual characteristics to the faces of the saints.
While Duccio was conservative and tradition bound in the main panel, he did begin to experiment in the smaller side panels of the Maesta Altarpiece. The Betrayal of Jesus is from one of these side panels. Here, he showed three scenes in one. He included Judas' false kiss, the disciples fleeing in terror and Peter cutting off the ear of the high priest's servant. While the background is very flat with no sense of space, looking more like a stage setting than real space, the figures have evolved tremendously. They don't look as flat as before. Duccio has used light and shadow to create more rounded figures who appear to have a body beneath their clothing. The overlapping appears more natural and less stacked. However, notice that their feet still float above the ground. He has also humanized the subject, by giving the figures human reactions and individual responses to the events that are occurring.
Simoni Martini was one of Duccio's students. He followed Duccio's lead by experimenting some with crude ideas of perspective and the use of light and shadow to create visual space. But the advances created by those experiments were overshadowed by the influences of French Gothic styles. From the French Gothic came ideas of excessive ornamentation, rich textured surfaces and elegance at the expense of realism. The French Gothic influences became know as the International Style or International Gothic Style. This style appealed to the tastes of the wealthy patrons of Sienna. The Annunciation by Martini is an example of the use of the International Style. The background is flat and characterized by rich gold surfaces, pointed gothic arches, elaborate ornamentation and detail. The figures are thin and refined rather than realistic in their appearance. There are some attempts at the use of light and shadow for depth, but they are overwhelmed by the unnatural refinement of the figures. Although, the thrown that the Virgin sits on has a new sense of depth. It appears to surround and enclose her rather than simply support her. The subject, the Annunciation, refers to the story of the angel coming to Mary to tell her that she is pregnant with the Christ child. It is a subject common to this time period.
Two other students of Duccio that experimented with space in art were the Lorenzetti brothers. They experimented with crude ideas of linear perspective and roundness created through light and shadow. They were also known for their careful observation of the details of life around them. In the Birth of the Virgin, Pietro Lorenzetti revealed the everyday domestic world of an Italian interior. Ambrogio Lorenzetti used similar devices in his fresco, Allegory of Good Government. A fresco is a painting on a plaster wall. The Peaceful City was a detail from the Allegory of Good Government fresco. In this fresco, Ambogio Lorenzetti illustrated the effects of good and bad governments. This painting shows a city of peaceful, productive citizens. He has carefully observed the details of the city and its architecture. While he did not understand the mathematical method of creating exact linear perspective, he did realize that it exists visually and did use it to achieve a sense of space in the buildings of this fresco. In addition, he played with the idea of how the figures related to and interacted with the space. Notice the figures on the street behind the center building. In the Peaceful Country, he carefully observed the landscape outside the city and created an amazing sense of space in the background. He used atmospheric perspective as one means of doing this. This subject of peace is ironic in that both brothers probably died of the Black Plague in the 1340's.
The final break with the flat, stylized influences of Byzantine art came with the artist, Giotto. Giotto no longer just experimented with ideas of space, but effectively used the observation of the natural world to create a new sense of solidity and realism in art. His figures become more earthly and more human with a sense of mass and heft not seen before. They are also individuals, with individual emotions and personalities. They show the development of humanism in art. Giotto is most famous for his frescos in the Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy. This small family chapel contains thirty eight framed scenes of the life of the Virgin, the life of Christ and the death of Christ. The works are done in a wet fresco process, where the paint is applied to wet lime plaster. As the plaster dries, the paint chemically becomes part of that plaster. So rather than just sitting on the surface of the plaster, the paint is actually absorbed by the plaster and becomes part of the wall. the figures in these frescos are about one half of life size. All thirty eight scenes are unified by the rich blue sky, seen in each one.
The Lamentation is one of the panels from the Arena Chapel. The lamentation was another traditional subject that showed figures mourning the death of Christ. In Giotto's Lamentation, Christ's death is mourned by the Virgin, his disciples and other humans as well as angels. Both earthly and heavenly mourners show individual illustrations of grief through facial expressions as well as body language. This new sense of human qualities defines Giotto as different, but is only one way that he breaks from the Byzantine influence. Unlike Byzantine compositions, the Lamentation is not symmetrical, but asymmetrical. Your eye is drawn visually to lower left corner by several devices, including the eyes of the mourners and the rock wall behind the group. These figures loose the gothic elegance for heft and mortality. Light and shadow are used to give them three dimensional weight. The illusion of space is intensified by the fact that the Christ figure is not the closest figure to the viewer, but is separated from the viewer by the back of one of the mourners
The artists of the Italian Gothic period successfully moved from a stylized Byzantine influence to a more humanized, three dimensional style in art.
Early Italian Renaissance (15th Century)
The fifteenth century Italian Renaissance began in Florence for two reasons. First, was the patronage of the Medici family. They were a wealthy family of bankers who supported the art and architecture of Florence. Cosimo Medici built the first public library since antiquity, spending today's equivalent of twenty million dollars on books over a thirty year period. The second reason was that Florence's was a free city, having won their freedom in the battle with Milan. The Florentines expressed this civic pride through the arts.
The Early Renaissance began with a specific event, a competition for the commission to sculpt the east doors of the Cathedral of Florence. The contestants were asked to create a bronze panel with the subject being the Sacrifice of Isaac. The two finalists were Brunelleschi and Ghiberti.
Brunelleschi's submission, the Sacrifice of Isaac, showed carefully observed, realistic human figures. Humanized, it contained violent energy and emotion, as the angel stops Abraham from plunging the knife into Isaac's neck. The composition, which places Isaac at the center and the other figures revolving around him, was the weak point of his submission. It was disjointed, lacking in unity, with little depth to the landscape.
Ghiberti's Sacrifice of Isaac was not as energetic or violent. Drawing on the elegance of French gothic influences, Abraham stands in the position of the gothic S curve. And much like ancient Greek sculptures Isaac goes beyond realism to idealism. Isaac illustrated not only an understanding of the human body, but an appreciation for its beauty. The drama in the composition is found on the right side, rather than in the middle, with the line of the ragged hillside drawing the viewer's eye down to the action. The angle of the hillside also serves as a device to create a sense of depth and space. It was a much more unified composition.
Ghiberti won this commission as well as a later commission to sculpt a second set of doors for the same baptistery. In both sets of doors, he embraces the Greek philosophy of humanism. His idealized human figures inhabit stage like compositions that create deep space within clear, unified confines. He worked to incorporate mathematical perfection into his art, adhering to Plato's idea that "the excellence of beauty in every work of art is due to the observation of measure". This inclusion of mathematical measure would not be possible however, without a contribution from Brunelleschi. While Brunelleschi abandoned sculpture for architecture after loosing the competition, he made a huge contribution to art none the less. His contribution was that he developed the mathematical formulas for linear perspective. Artists since the Romans had known that it existed visually, but Bruneslleschi made it a repeatable, mathematical process, adding the rationalization that would characterize the Early Renaissance art.
Brunelleschi made one other significant contribution to art. This time in the realm of architecture. He created the design for the dome of the Cathedral of Florence, solving an architectural problem that had evaded all others of his day. His design was revolutionary its shape and construction and showed again the application of rationalization in art.
The idealization of the human form was not limit to the bronze relief of the doors of the Cathedral of Florence. In his freestanding sculptures, Donatello also applied this quality. Donatello was a sculptor with a long career. He experimented with many different styles and subjects. While his work varied tremendously in visual style, the quality remained consistently high. At one point in his career he became fascinated with the art of classical antiquity. (Note: from here forward, classical refers to the ideas and art of ancient Greece and Rome). From these classical ideas he developed his sculpture of David.
Donatello's David was designed for the Medici family. David was not only know as the slayer of Goliath but also served as a symbol for Florence's love of liberty. He represents the one who took on a power much larger than himself and conquered that power. For this reason, Donatello gives us David as an adolescent boy. This sensuous figure looks down at his own body as if due to his heroic act, he is seeing for the first time his own beauty and strength. The subject of this sculpture is self discovery. David was modeled on classical sculptures like the Doryphoros. In fact, he was the first freestanding nude to be created since classical antiquity. During the Christian middle ages, nudes were considered idolatrous and indecent. Following that classical tradition, he is seen standing in the contraposto position, with an idealized body and expressionless face. This is David after the battle. The head of Goliath under his foot.
Later in life, Donatello turns away from classical idealism and reverts to exaggerated realism. His later sculptures depicted the ugly, the painful and the violent aspects of life and religion. His sculpture of Mary Magdalene is an example from this period. Here, Mary Madgalene is seen in old age, emaciated and wrinkled. Still standing in the contraposto position, she is also nude, clothed only in her own long hair. The message that Donatello was sending was that she had been saved through denial of physical beauty. That inner beauty was ultimately more important than physical beauty.
The classical traditions also served as a model for painting. Masaccio was a great painter whose life and career were cut short by his death at the age of twenty-seven. In his short life he radically affected painting in four ways:
1) He studied the sculptures of antiquity to learn about correct human proportions, human movement, and idealization of the human body.
2) He learned to observe nature as a model for his art, paying special attention to the effects of light and shadow.
3) He created paintings that contained a narrative, with the meaning of the work in that narrative.
4) He applied Brunelleschi's ideas of linear perspective to painting.
These influences can all be seen in his work the Tribute Money, a fresco painted on the wall of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. In this fresco, he showed an understanding of human proportion and movement. Notice that the figures are standing in the classical contraposto position. He also showed his observation of nature by including only one light source, with all the shadows falling in the same direction. These shadows are used to give roundness to the figures and to unify the painting. He created a three part narrative in this work. First, you see Christ in the center telling Peter that that in the mouth of a fish he will find a coin to pay the tax collector, then on the left you see Peter removing the coin from the fish's mouth and on the right, Peter pays the tax. Linear perspective was also used. The lines of the architecture are drawn in one point perspective with the
falling behind the head of Christ. This served not only as a device to create space, but also to draw the viewers attention to Christ as a focal point. In addition to linear perspective, atmospheric perspective is used in the background.
Masaccio's observations and narratives create a powerful image in his Expulsion of Adam and Eve, also from the Brancacci Chapel. Here, he used strong shadows to give the figures a sense of volume. He also used a shadow under the feet to emphasize their weight. This was revolutionary both from a visual and a symbolic standpoint. Visually, it created figures that no longer floated above the ground, but were anchored to the ground through gravity, adding a sense of weight not seen in Late Gothic painting. Symbolically, it illustrated that man was an earthly being, emphasizing the humanity of Adam and Eve.
In the Expulsion of Adam and Eve, Massacio created a narrative, which was conveyed through the gestures of the characters. The angel points, Adam covers his face and Eve covers her body, all symbols of their being expelled in sin.
Masaccio's Holy Trinity fresco from Santa Maria Novella gives us a comparison of the Old and New Testaments. He used linear perspective in this work both to create a realistic depiction of space, but also to carry the narrative. The vanishing point is found just below the base of the cross, with invisible lines drawing the viewer's eye up to the figures of the father (man above the cross), the son (Christ on the cross) and the holy ghost (the white dove between the other two figures). These invisible lines also draw the viewer down to the skeleton of Adam laying on a tomb. The inscription says says "I was once what you are, and what I am you will become". This comparison of Old Testament mortality and New Testament salvation is held together by using linear perspective and placing the vanishing point at the viewer's eye level, forcing the viewer to look up and down.
In each of these works, Masaccio has combined the new Renaissance concepts of observation of nature and use of mathematical ideas of proportion and perspective with the medieval concept of art having a didactic, narrative function.
Donatello and Masaccio both worked in the early part of the fifteenth century, when the city of Florence dominated advancements in art. But during the second half of that century, other cities began to share that role and some important changes occurred. These changes included the invention of the printing press and the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks. At this point, many Byzantine scholars fled to Italy. They brought with them the ideas of classical antiquity. This conquest also closed the land east of the Mediteranean to trade routes forcing Europeans to find new routes to the far east, sparking an age of navigation and exploration. Art during the second part of the fifteenth century became much more philosophical and intellectually based rather than purely visually based.
In sculpture, Verrocchio created his version of David. This David, also created for the Medici family, again shows him as an adolescent at the end of the battle. Once again, we see him standing in the contraposto position with Goliaths head under his foot. This sculpture, however, is much more of a psychological study of David. He presents an air of being brash, confident and proud, very different from the timid, discovering David of Donatello.
In painting, Botticelli painted the first female nude since antiquity in his Birth of Venus. Botticelli studied the ideas of Neo-platonism. Neo-platonism was the rewriting of Plato's philosophies in an attempt to reconcile Plato's pagan ideas within the framework of Christian theology. What neo-platonism concluded were that both were different expressions of the same idea. The subject of the Birth of Venus can be seen as both a pagan myth from classical mythology or a Christian image. If read as a myth, the central character was Venus, goddess of beauty and love. In the myth, she was born of sea foam and rose to surface on a shell. She was then blown to shore by the wind of passion (the figures on the left) and cloaked in the cloth of reason (the figure on the right). If read in Christian terms, she was the symbol of the perfect soul (true beauty), fallen to original sin (the figure on the left) and covered in shame (the figure on the right). While the subject of this work was much more intellectual, the visual qualities of the early part of the century persist with the use of light and shadow, mathematical proportions and an understanding of the body through the use of the contraposto position.
In Rome, the artist Perugino created a work whose subject shows Christ giving the keys to heaven to St. Peter. This is the event that the Catholic popes base their claim to the authority of the church. In this work from the Sistine Chapel, entitled Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter, Perugino again used many of the visual developments of the early renaissance. From antiquity, he learned the proportions of the body and how it moves including the contraposto position. From Florentine artists he learned to observe nature, especially the use of light and shadow and he learned about the mathematical ordering of space, specifically the use of linear perspective.
These visual qualities were also applied by an artist in the town of Orvieto by the name of Signorelli. Signorelli was fascinated by the human body and sought to understand how it looked and moved in every conceivable position. He applied the ideas of linear perspective to the body in what was called foreshortening. Foreshortening uses the ideas of linear perspective to make natural objects look as if they recede backwards into space. Signorelli's fresco The Damned Cast into Hell from San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto was done purely as a study of the human body. The subject was judgment day, here St. Michael and other angels cast the damned into Hell where they are tortured by demons. The demons are the figures with flaming hair and green and blue bodies, the colors of rotting flesh. The figures are lean and muscular and seen in every position imaginable. Notice the proportions of the figures with arms and legs (or even torsos) that extent out toward the viewer. Those proportions look natural due to application of foreshortening.
Foreshortening was also used by an artist in the town of Mantua named Mantegna. In his humorous piece for the ceiling of the room of the newlyweds (in Italian the Camera degli sposi), Mantegna created a tompe l'oiel. Trompe l'oeil means to fool the eye. This work was painted on the flat ceiling, but was meant to give the impression of the ceiling continuing upward with these cherubs and a peacock spying on the newlyweds. The image was found directly over the marriage bed. The peacock was a symbol for lawful marriages and the fruit a reference to fertility. Symbolically, one can't deny the relationship between the Christian cherub and the pagan cupid, son of Venus who was the goddess of love. These fat bottomed cherub are painted in extreme foreshortening, which successfully makes them appear to be standing above the bed.
The early renaissance began in Florence and as the century wore on spread to other cities throughout Italy. These artist looked to classical antiquity for ideas of proportion and natural body positioning. They learned to observe nature and to apply mathematical and scientific observations to art.
