NOTE:  I APOLOGIZE FOR THE RAW NATURE OF THESE NOTES, BUT I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE PRUDENT TO PUT THEM OUT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! 

Renaissance art will reflect values of Renaissance humanism and be based on classical models: 1) stresses proportion, balance, harmony, 2) reintroduces the nude human figure, 3) represents a heroic vision of human beings, humans as the focus of attention.

"The Renaissance of the arts can be divided into three periods.  In the early Renaissance artists first imitated nature. In the middle period artists rediscovered classical ideas of proportion.  In the High Renaissance artists, according to Giorgio Varsari (1511-1574), were `superior to nature but also to the artists of the ancient world'" (Noble 522).

I. GIOTTO di Bondone(1266-1336), the 14th century precursor of Renaissance art

   1. 1st major Florentine Renaissance artist

   2. his preeminent characteristic was his realism

   3. his innovation was that he painted a 3-dimensional world peopled with believable human beings dramatically moved by deep emotion (Wallbank, 317) (i.e., using images for dramatic effect, no longer just icons of MA's)

   4. his best work consists of frescoes (wall painting painted while plaster still wet - "fresh"); e.g., frescoes of the Arena Chapel in Padua (1304-1314) which recount episodes in the life of Christ.

II.Quattrocento ("1400's") Achievements:  1)depiction of human figure, 2) three-dimensionality, 3) chiaroscuro, 4) individualized portraiture.

   1.Ghiberti & Brunelleschi:  it could be said that the history of early Renaissance art begins with the competition to decorate the doors of the Florentine baptistery of San Giovanni (1401-1402), situated to the west of the Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore "St. Mary of the Flower") and dating to c.110-1150.  "Their sculpture, architecture, and painting began an ongoing series of experiments with the representation of space through linear perspective" (Noble 522).

1) Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) wins the most famous competition in the history of art held by the merchant's guild to decorate the doors of Florentine baptistery (an ancient, octagonal Romanesque building).  Assigned subject = Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22.1-14). N. doors with 20 panels took almost 25 years.  Then took 25 years for E. doors (44 years total).

       Ghiberti:  "I stove to imitate nature as closely as I could, and with all the perspective I          could produce."  "Later in the sixteenth century Michelangelo remarked that the east doors        were worthy to be the `Doors of Paradise,' and so they have since been known" (Noble         523).

 2)Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) one of 5 competitors who lost to Ghiberti.  After losing the competition he gave up sculpture for architecture and went with Donatello to Rome and while studying Roman architectural monuments, he figured out how to solve a problem thought insoluble:  how to construct the dome for the still unfinished Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower in Florence--see Perry, 271:  combined buttressing methods of Gothic cathedral and classical vaulting techniques such as those used on Pantheon (built the dome in two separated shells that are ingeniously linked to reinforce each other, rather than in one solid mass; as the total weight of the structure was thereby lightened, he could dispense with the massive and costly wooden trusswork required by the older method of construction; instead of having building materials carried up on ramps to the required level, he designed hoisting machines; his entire scheme reflects a bold, analytical mind, always discarding conventional solutions if better ones could be devised; this fresh approach distinguishes Brunelleschi from the Gothic stonemason-architects, with their time- honored procedures).  He designed churches and palaces that reflected classical models and thereby invented Renaissance architecture (Jansen, 400-409).

The cupola remains today the most famous shape in Florence's skyline and is regarded as a triumph of individual will, brilliance, and ingenuity.  Presiding over the Duomo with grace and energy, the cupola is truly a transitional monument:  its graceful ribbing, its composition out of disparate parts, and its egglike proportions are still medieval in their origins, but its cohesive unity proclaims a different future (Wood, 93).

    2. Donatello --Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi (1386-1466) the first great master of 
        Renaissance sculpture

       "David" (1430-1432) = 1st free-standing statue of a nude male since Roman antiquity. (David statues would symbolize the victory of Florence over its larger neighbor Milan in 1428)

                           "Perhaps the most famous sculpture commissioned for personal enjoyment is Donatello's David.  Undated, it was probably made about 1440 for Cosimo de' Medici.  An avid collector of ancient texts; a friend of Leonardo Bruni, the chancellor of Florence; and the founder of the famous Neo-Platonic Academy with Marsilio Ficino, Cosimo was "king in everything but name," according to Pope Pius II.  Would not David, the future king of Israel, have been Cosimo's ideal symbol?

                             "But David is striking not only as a symbol.  The figure was the most advanced, sensitive, and beautiful portrayal of the nude human body since antiquity and the first sculpture meant to be seen in the round since the ancients made the human form their principal subject over a thousand years before.  Gone is any medieval residue of sin or shame associated with the human form.  It stands before the viewer independent of any justification except itself, and unabashedly nude.  David's soft, pubescent flesh seems all the more exposed and set off by his boots and hat.

                             "This seductive youth may be viewed as Donatello's dialogue with antiquity.  Aware of Roman uses of the nude figure, Donatello quoted the ancients but changed the emphasis.  David is not simply nude (as were the athletes) but naked, like a vulnerable young boy.  He is the biblical David.  Neither does David project the idealized neutrality of antique sculptures; instead, his quiet, meditative stance relates to an action completed:  the triumph over Goliath, whose severed head lies at his feet.  David is set in time and place, his is reflective, and his meditations engage our thoughts beyond the concept of universal beauty to notions of transience and mortality.  In this work Donatello demonstrated his familiarity with antiquity, his understanding of narrative, and his knowledge of human anatomy:  all are fused in a single, revolutionary sculpture" (Wood 98-100).

    3. Masaccio [Tomasso di ser Giovanni di Mone] (1401-c.1428)

            1. "In the first decade of the fifteenth century, many commentators believed that painting would never be as innovative as either sculpture or architecture.  They knew of no classical models that had survived for imitation.  Yet the possibilities in painting became apparent in 1427 with the unveiling of Masaccio's Trinity in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella.  Masaccio built on experiments in linear perspective to create a painting in which a flat wall seems to become a recessed chapel.  The space created is filled with the images of Christ crucified, the Father, and the Holy Spirit" (Noble 524).

                This  revolutionized painting (Naturalism--depth and chiaroscuro--and psychological penetration: "the first Florentine painter since Giotto to turn away from the decorative, ambiguous images of the Middle Ages.  Though Masaccio lived about twenty-seven years, his grand vision, which ennobled humanity and cast sacred figures in a similarly heroic mold, fused the sacred and the secular realms in a seamless and unique fashion.  His surviving oeuvre is small, consisting of a few altarpieces, a modestly sized fresco, and parts of a larger fresco cycle....Masaccio stood alone, his serious vision beyond the capacity of most artists.  Yet Masaccio provided his followers with a means to model a figure through light and shade, giving it dimension, visual power, and personality " (Wood 95-6).  Examples of his paintings include:  Tribute Money (c.1425), Saint Peter Healing with his Shadow (c.1425); in these "Masaccio has used contemporary settings and figures to give immediacy and specificity to a biblical tale.  In so doing and in his creation of fictive space through rational systems of illusion (perspective, both linear and aerial), Masaccio helped set the stage for following generations" (Wood 95).  NOTE:  Masaccio was called "Giotto reborn" by many of his contemporaries.

III.Roman or "High" Renaissance

    1. Dominican Friar Savonarola (enemy of de' Medicis) gradually takes control of Florence         by 1494--Medici family in exile.  He was a throwback--populist, puritanical, apocalyptic—who was opposed to pagan influence in art.  Became a threat to church and political order and was eventually burned at stake in 1498.   

    2. Artistic center of Renaissance moves from Florence to Rome:

       1) money - art follows patrimony

       2) end of Medicis in Florence and political turmoil

       3) ego-maniacal popes (created a papal state with Rome as its capital):

            Alexander II (Borgia)

            Julius II (della Rovera) patronage to Michelangelo & Raphael

Leo X (Medici, son of Lorenzo) - it is under Leo "that Rome achieves a splendor it had not known since ancient times (Gardner, 491)"

            Adrian VI - fierce reformer; only non-Italian pope till now (Dutchman)

            Clement VII (Medici)

    3. 3 great figures of Roman Renaissance: new approaches to problem of perspective and composition.  The High Renaissance not only produced a cluster of extraordinary geniuses, but found in divine inspiration the rationale for the exaltation of the artist-genius.  The neo-Platonists found in Plato's Ion his famous praise of the poet:  "All good poets compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed....for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine." (Gardner, 476)  

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the illegitimate son of a notary and raised in a village outside of Florence.  "Cut off from the humanistic milieu of the city, he desired above all else to prove that his artistry was the equal of the formal learning of his social superiors" (Noble 524). Became the greatest of the Florentine artists.

1) Fl (accused of sodomy)-->Milan-->Rome-->Fr. w/ Francis I  

2) artist-genius, Renaissance man who has become a kind of wonder in the modern world.  Blessed with superlative beauty, a magnificent physique, an outstanding singing voice, this definitive polymath dabbled in  engineering, mathematics, architecture, geology, botany, physiology, anatomy, sculpture, painting, music, poetry.  So excited (driven man) that he rarely finished anything he started (also patronage would run out). "Leonardo completed very few paintings; his perfectionism, restless experimentation and far-ranging curiosity scattered his efforts" (Gardner, 481). 
    "In painting he developed chiaroscuro, a technique for showing aerial perspective.  He painted horizons as shaded zones rather than as sharp lines.  `I know,' he said, `that the greater of less quantity of air that lies between the eye and the object makes the outlines of that object more or less distinct.'  It was his analytical observation that made Leonardo so influential on his contemporaries" (Noble 525).  

3) "Leonardo was born near Fl. & was trained in the studios of Verrocchio.  But he left Fl. in 1481, offering his services to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.  The political situation in Fl. was uncertain, & the neo-Platonism of Lorenzo de' Medici & his brilliant circle may have proved uncongenial to the empirical and pragmatic Leonardo" (Gardner, 477).  

4) a real thinker & observer looked at sea shells on Mt. top & decided world = older than Bible says.  

5) said secret for understanding the universe = to be found in numbers, mathematics:   "Leonardo's most famous painting in Milan, the Last Supper is today, tragically, in ruin.  In the Last Supper, done about 1495-98 for the friars of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Leonardo used a novel technique, but the medium, an experimental variation of the fresco technique, soon deteriorated, leaving the present work a shadow of the original masterpiece" (Wood 141).  It is one of most carefully mathematical paintings ever executed.  It depicts the moment when JC is about to announce betrayer (shift from theological to "one of you will betray me"        psychological).  The 12 apostles grouped in 4 groups of 3; X framed by window; JC's head is the focal point of all perspective lines in the composition.
    "The whole image transcends reality, through its beauty, harmony, and perfect perspective" (Wood 142).

  "Mona Lisa," La Gioconda, the wife of a banker Zanobi del Gioconda, is  famous for enigmatic smile that captures the peculiar feminine air of tenderness & humility (Wallbank, 320)"   Leonardo utilized sfumato (softness), i.e., left outline of face vague and shadowy to free it of any woodenness that more exact drawing would impart.
    "In the five thousand pages of his notebooks, drawings, notes, diagrams, and sketches crowd each page, recording everything from the movement of water and the mechanics of flight to the study of light:  `The air, as soon as there is light, is filled with innumerable images to which the eye serves as a magnet'" (Wood 139)  

Raphael Santi (Sanzio, acc. to Gardner) (1483-1520)

1) "School of Athens" = signature piece of the High Renaissance

  = on wall of Stanza della Segnatura (office of papal secretary) in Vatican palace; 4 walls = theology, law, poetry, & philosophy, i.e., four branches of human knowledge and wisdom (Cunningham, 251); sets the great philosophers of antiquity in an immense illusionistic architectural framework (Plato & Aristotle in center, also Diogenes, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Euclid & Raphael himself in lower right corner) Why in room in Vatican?  "The papal court of Julius II shared the humanist conviction that philosophy is the servant of theology and that beauty even if derived from a pagan civilization, is a gift of God and not to be despised."

= "A vast perspective space has been created, in which human figures move          naturally, without effort, each according to his own intention as Leoardo              might say.  The stage setting, so long in preparation, is complete; the Western artist knows now how to produce the drama of man.  That this stagelike space is projected on to a two-dimensional surface is the consequence of the union of mathematics with pictorial science, which yields the art of perspective, here mastered completely.  The artist's psychological insight has matured along with his mastery of the problems of physical representation.  Each character here, and each group is unified by the sharing of its members in the mood."

="The paintings [in the Stanza della Segnatura] also reflect the thinking of the  humanistic scholars and clerics of the sixteenth century, whose admiration of  antiquity impelled them to reconcile the pagan past with the Christian  present"         (Wood 150).  The School of Athens was "a painting that literally shows the debt of the Renaissance to past learning by portraying the great philosophers of the past as well as contemporary artists.  It is in effect the synthesis of the classical learning and artistic innovation for which the Renaissance is famous" (Noble  524).                                                      

2)"Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals" (Perry, 275)  

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)  "In the words of a contemporary, `He alone has triumphed over ancient artists, modern artists and over Nature itself'" (Noble 525).  The greatest of the Renaissance sculptors

1) raised by a wet nurse whose husband was a stone-cutter

2) a master of anatomy & drawing

3) sculpture for him = releasing the form from the rock

4) "Pieta" ("the mourning") 1448 

            The Pieta, produced for a cardinal in Rome of c. 1498-1500, established Michelangelo instantly as the leading sculptor in marble of his time.  Since the ancients, no master had been able to transform marble into such a complex arrangement of figures and draperies.  Showing a youthful, beautiful Madonna (whose face has the oval-shaped perfection of an ancient Venus) holding the body of her son across her lap, the work is a technical and artistic marvel.  The Pieta, is was said, surpassed even the ancients through its virtuosity and the beauty of its proportions.  Yet, despite its physical perfection, the Pieta lacks the emotional depth of Michelangelo's mature work (Wood 143).

5) "David" 1504 = produced from a great block of marble called the Giant that no other sculptor had been able to put to use (Gardner, 493)  "David became a symbol of the ;youthful Florentine republic struggling to maintain its freedom against great odds.  The statue was moved to a place of honor before the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's city hall, signifying, as Giorgio Vasari noted, that `just as David had protected his people and governed them justly, so whoever ruled Florence should vigorously defend the city and govern it with justice`" (Noble 526).

            "Whereas the figures of the Pieta seem soft and sensuous, David displays an aggressive muscularity, an assertive demeanor.  Brilliantly conflating particularity, which allowed him to describe in detail each aspect of David's anatomy, with overall design so that all the parts fit together in perfect harmony, Michelangelo created a hero who was beautiful as well as psychologically inspiring.  With David, the largest sculpture Italy had seen since antiquity, any doubt concerning the perfectibility of man had been banished.  Youthful, optimistic, and powerful, this work exults in the human body" (Wood 143).

6)"Tomb of Julius II" ("Moses", "Dying Slave")

7) Vatican's Sistine Chapel (1508-1511)

   = an area of several thousand square yards (5800 sq. ft.) with scenes from the Bible

                 (128' X 44')

   = its organization is complicated : 4 large triangles at the corners

                                       a series of 8 triangular spaces on the outer border

                                       an intermediate series of figures

                                       9 central panels (4 larger than other 5)

   = its overall meaning is a problem:  a summary of OT story; creation of Adam = most      famous of these frescoes

8) also architect:  designed the dome for new St. Peter's basilica

*Rome sacked in 1595 = end of Roman Renaissance*

Venetian Renaissance   Venice = wealthy city from trade with East

   = not as interested in antiquity or classical canons as with present

  = love of decoration, rich costumes, radiant light & color, & striking nude figures

Giorgione (1477-1510)

1) "Sleeping Venus" sensuous, secular, lush colors

2) "The Tempest" illustrates his making landscape not just a decorative background, but a part of the subject of his paintings.

Titian (1477-1576)

1) brought the Venetian love of striking color to its most beautiful fulfillment

2) famous guy who would influence many other painters (contemporaries & later painters); a favorite of H.R.E. Charles V who granted him noble status after having summoned him on a number of occasions to work at the royal court

3) great ability to capture personality as well as features

4) achieved harmony not through balanced group of figures, but through use of light & color

IV. Northern Renaissance (i.e., the new learning of Italy spreads to other European countries)

1. Reasons for its spread:

   1) It. Renaissance would spread N throughout Europe, largely due to the students who came        to Italy to study law and medicine & were influenced by the new intellectual climate of          humanism that they encountered in Italy.

   2) also spread because of printing press

Johann Gutenberg (c.1395-1468) of Mainz, Germany, originated the method of printing from moveable metal type that was then used with virtually no change until the late 19th c.  Up to this time only had woodblocks that wore out after one printing & therefore were too expensive, so most books up to this time = handwritten (Ferguson, 346) ["Although block printing had long been known in China and was a popular way to produce playing cards and small woodcuts in Europe, only with the creation of movable type in the 1450s did printing become a practical way to produce books" (Noble 529).

(Gutenberg Bible 1454 or 55[Noble says 1452-53]; Wm. Caxton in England The Recuyell (collection) of the Historyes of Troye = the first book printed in English)  

Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) = the most famous humanist printer & publisher of 15th c. (in Venice)

1)recognized need for competent & reliable editions of the classical authors & employed professional humanists to collate and correct MSS. (ex. Erasmus) 

2) technical inventions: Greek Type faces, italic type fonts, new inks obtained new paper from nearby town of Fabriano (paper making known in China in 8th c. & intro. to Europe in 12th c. by Muslims of Spain.  He began to publish pocketsize, easily portable & inexpensive books.

   4)His humanism is evident in his concern  for human beings and the world around them.

    5) The key to his relevance is his "ability to build every concrete fact and action upon a universal truth" (Wallbank, 325).

    6)  His extensive vocabulary, and therefore his ability to expressive himself precisely is part of his genius:     An immense number of new words are first recorded in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Apparently, he used a total of 17,677 different words in his writing and 10% had never been recorded in written form before. Nearly half of Shakespeare's words were what scholars call hapax legomena, that is, words that Shakespeare used only once.  Every tenth word was brand new! He is credited with some 2000 neologisms.

    7) As a result, Shakespeare is widely considered greatest playwright world has ever produced!

V. Evaluating the Renaissance

**classical view of Renaissance:

Jacob Burckhardt (1860) Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy = classical picture of Renaissance as the birthtime of modern man:  "In The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), Burckhardt argued that the creativity and cultural brilliance of the period resulted when Italians suddenly found themselves freed from the medieval restraints of religion, guild, community, and family.  Renaissance Italians, he believed, were the first individuals to recognize the state as an autonomous moral structure free form the strictures of religious or philosophical traditions.  During the Renaissance, an individual's success or failure in all matters depended on personal qualities of creative brilliance rather than on status in a family, religion, or guild.  What Burckhardt thought he saw in Renaissance Italy were the first signs of the romantic individualism and the nationalism that characterized his own society" (Noble 511-12).

1)emergence of a secular concept of the state: "the state as a work of art" Aristotle, Machiavelli

2)stress on the development of the individual: new attention to fame, glory & the expression of the personality

3)discovery of the world based partly on the new voyages of exploration & partly on the new work in natural science

4)a discovery of man involving a new psychology & a new concept of humanity (freedom of the will; basic goodness of humanity)

**the problem of the Renaissance:

  Charles Homer Haskins' The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1927) contends that anything Burckhardt says of the 15th century Ren. can be said of 12th cent. Ren.  "Many critics of Burckhardt...argue that, except perhaps in painting and architecture, the culture of Renaissance Europe was in no way superior to the religious, philosophical, and literary culture that preceded or followed it.  These critics are in large measure correct.  Although the culture of Renaissance Europe was in many ways new and innovative, it had close ties to the ideas of the high Middle Ages and to traditional Christian values" (Noble 512).  But the Italian Renaissance was "far more secular and lay-dominated, had much broader interests, was blessed with far more recovered MSS, and possessed far superior technical skills than had been the case in the earlier `rebirths' of antiquity" (Kagan 353).

5 achievements of the Renaissance

A.

1. it was an elite culture (esp. before printing press) but it would emphasize learning & education.

2. by being so critical about bastardization of Lat. & recovery of style, it had overall effect on enrichment of vernacular

3. laid groundwork (beg. w/ Petrarch) for textual criticism & invented science of philology (profound implication in N with respect to Reformation)

4. broadened perspective of education - secondary education & founding of universities (no univ. in Fl until 15th c.)

5. laid foundation for modern history writing (away from moralizing): historiography

B.

1. secular concept of the state

2. stressed the development of the individual in this world (MA = man conscious of his place     in the hierarchy of the world; a new self-awareness & self-assurance; new attention to fame,     glory & expression of the personality led to the idea of well-rounded person)

3. beginning of scientific methods of investigation

4. new concept of history as cyclical (away from moralizing and history as unfolding of will of    God)

5. a new psychology: emphasis on free will of man & idea of basic goodness of man

4 weaknesses of the Renaissance

1. began with broad view of world but retreated to a narrow view (i.e., criticized the MA's for     their bastardization of Latin and then said themselves that one must write like Cicero)?  "By insisting on ancient standards of Latin grammar, syntax, and word choice, the humanists of the Renaissance succeeded ultimately in turning Latin into a fossilized language that thereafter ceased to evolve.  They thus contributed, quite unwittingly, to the ultimate triumph of the European vernaculars as the primary languages of intellectual and cultural life" (Coffin & Stacey437).

2. No serious philosophical thinking outside ethics & politics (gap from 14th - 17th c. w/        Descartes)

3. No 1st rate lit. after Petrarch (most imaginative in art d& architecture)

4. Ren. It. thinkers not able to translate theory into practice

   (interested in civic & ecclesiastical reform but doesn't come about)

Send comments and questions to Dr. Richard Baldwin, Gulf Coast Community College.
This page last updated 08/17/10