Transcript The Art and Architecture of the Renaissance

The Renaissance
Before the Renaissance:
Middle Ages (400s – 1400s)
100 Years War
Bubonic Plague
Reliance on religion for answers
Ex: Plague
Crusades
Feudalism/Manoralism
Bubonic Plague
“The Plague” or “Black Death”
~75 million dead (30-60%)
Origins
Biological warfare – Caffe (Ukraine)
Ring Around the Rosie?
The Plague and the Church
Feudalism
lords
vassal
serfs
Feudalism – The Manor
Results of Middle Ages
Questioning of institutions
Catholic church!
Desire to return to “educated, enlightened”
ways of ancient Rome or Greece
The Renaissance (14th – 17th cen.)
Italian city-states
Florence
Wealthy families as patrons
Medici
Isabella d’Este
Inspirations
Greece and Rome
The Renaissance: Themes & Ideas
Decreased focus on religion
Realism
Humanism
Learning and understanding
Eventually – Scientific Rev.
Themes in Artwork
Perspective
Realism & Expression
Classicism
Emphasis on individual as subject
The Trinity
Masaccio, 1427
What you are, I once was;
what I am, you will
become.
RETURN TO LIST
 Expulsion from the Garden
 Masaccio, 1427
RETURN TO LIST
Giotto di Bondone
(Giotto) 1267-1337
Considered first of artists who contributed to the
Italian Renaissance
The Mourning of
Christ (1305)
The Kiss of Judas
Madonna and Child
Filippo Brunelleschi
1377-1446
Father of Renaissance architecture
Formulated techniques for lifting construction
into position and creating a self-supporting
upper shell of domes
Cupola = dome
The Cathedral at Florence
Writing of the Renaissance
Baldassare Castiglione
Defined a “Renaissance Man”
Francesco Petrarch
Poet
“Father of Renaissance Humanism”
Vernacular
Niccolo Machiavelli
Political science
The Prince, 1513 (Il Principe)
…Nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even
whilst you exercise it, you lose the power to do so,
and become either poor or despised, or else, in
avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated.
A prince should guard himself, above all things,
against being despised and hated; and liberality
leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to have a
reputation for meanness which brings reproach
without hatred, than to be compelled through
seeking a reputation for liberality to incur a name
for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.
Is it better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?
One might wish to be both, but because it is difficult to
unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared.
In general, men are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly,
covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours
entirely; they will offer you their blood or property when
the necessity is distant; but when it approaches, they revolt.
The prince who, relying entirely on their promises, and has
neglected other precautions, is ruined; friendships that are
obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of
mind, may be earned, but they are not secured, and in time
of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in
offending one who is beloved than one who is feared.
Writing of the Renaissance
Vittoria Colonna (1492 – 1547)
Poet
Assisted Castiglione in
publishing
The Renaissance Spreads
End of 100 Years War
Monarchs sponsored art
Emigration from Italy
N. European artists brought ideas home
Christian Humanism
Desiderius Erasmus
Reform Church from within
The Praise of Folly, 1509
Thomas More
Presented improved model of society
Utopia, 1516
Elizabethan England
Elizabeth I – 1558-1603
Supported the arts!!!
The Bard – b. 1565
Contrast w/ rest of Europe
Defeat of Armada