Transcript Chapter 14x - HCC Learning Web

Chapter 14
Florence and the Early
Renaissance:
Humanism in Italy
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
How did sculpture and the
use of scientific perspective
contribute to the “rebirth”
that is the Italian
Renaissance?
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
• Florence, Italy, was the center of a more than 150year-long cultural revival in Europe that we have come
to call the Renaissance
• The word Renaissance comes from the Italian
rinascita or “rebirth”
• It indicates that the beliefs and values of the medieval
world were transformed in Italy
• The Middle Ages had been an age of faith, in which
the salvation of the soul was an individual’s chief
preoccupation
• The Renaissance was an age of intellectual
exploration, in which the humanist strove to
understand in ever more precise and scientific terms
the nature of humanity and its relationship to the
natural world
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• The 1401 competition for Florence’s new Baptistery
doors on the north side exemplified the Renaissance
spirit in sculptural decoration
• The competition was not merely about artistic talent,
but also about civic pride and patriotism, and about
appeasing an evidently wrathful God who had sent
repeated outbreaks of the Plague
• Lorenzo Ghiberti’s winning design stood out due to its
figurative naturalism, to his inventive use of
foreshortening, and his creation of an overall more
vivid sense of real space
• Both finalists, Ghiberti as well as Filippo Brunelleschi,
valued the artistic models of antiquity and looked to
Classical sculpture for inspiration
• Both artists created artworks that captured human
beings in the midst of a crisis of faith
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The Gates of Paradise
• In his commission for the Gates of
Paradise, the east doors of the Florence
Baptistery, Ghiberti took the idea of the
Renaissance spirit a step further
• His included self-portrait reflects an
extreme naturalism that underscores the
spirit of individualism that characterizes
the Renaissance
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Scientific Perspective and
Naturalistic Representation
• No aspect of the Renaissance better embodies the
spirit of invention than scientific, or linear,
perspective
• Linear perspective allowed artists to translate threedimensional space onto a two-dimensional surface,
thereby satisfying the age’s increasing taste for
naturalistic representations of the physical world
• The architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1474)
codified Brunelleschi’s findings about the one-point
perspective, providing instructions for artists and a
diagram in his treatise On Painting
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Perspective and Naturalism in
Painting: Masaccio
• According to Alberti, Masaccio was one of the truly
talented artists to employ perspective
• Masaccio’s masterpiece of naturalistic representation
is his fresco The Tribute Money in the Brancacci
Chapel
• While the architecture is presented in linear
perspective, the mountainous landscape in the
background follows the principle of the atmospheric
perspective
• Perhaps the greatest source of naturalism can be
found in Masaccio’s figures, which provide a good
imitation of life through their dynamic gestures and
poses including contrapposto, their individuality, and
their emotional engagement
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The Classical Tradition in
Freestanding Sculpture: Donatello
• Masaccio probably learned about the Classical
disposition of the body’s weight from the sculptor
Donatello
• Donatello’s David reflects the Classical tradition
with an almost exaggerated contrapposto
• Donatello seems to celebrate not just the human
body, but its youthful vitality, a vitality that the
figure shared with the Florentine state itself
• It is as if Donatello portrayed David as an
unconvincing hero in order to underscore the
ability of virtue, in whatever form, to overcome
tyranny
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How did the Medici family
help shape humanist
Florence?
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• The Medici were the most powerful family in Florence
for 76 years, from 1418, when they became banker to
the papacy, until 1494, when irate citizens removed
them from power
• The Medici never ruled Florence outright, but managed
affairs from behind the scenes
• The control of Florentine politics was secured by
Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), who surrounded
himself with humanists
• He sought their guidance about which books and
manuscripts of the ancients to collect, and he
commissioned translations of Greek philosophy and
literature
• Cosimo de’ Medici supported the translation and
interpretations of the works of Plato by the young priest
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499)
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Lorenzo the Magnificent: “…I find
a relaxation in learning.”
• Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo “the Magnificent” (1449–
1492), continued the Medici tradition
• While Lorenzo de’ Medici did not have his grandfather’s
wealth, he saw to it that the artists and architects he
attracted to Florence received ample commissions from
other patrons
• His own circle of acquaintances included many of the
greatest minds of the day, including the composer
Heinrich Isaac, the poet Poliziano, the painter Botticelli,
the philosopher Pico della Mirandola, and the young
sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti, whom he invited to
live in the Medici palace
• By the time of his death, Lorenzo de’ Medici had
created a model humanist city, the envy of all Italy
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
How did the art and literature
created in the ducal courts of
Italy reflect Florentine
humanist values?
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• The humanist philosopher Pico della Mirandola
(1463–1494), who shared Lorenzo de’ Medici’s deep
interest in the search for divine truth, proclaimed the
message of individual free will and of humanity’s
ability to choose a path of virtue and knowledge
• This message inspired Lorenzo’s circle as well as the
courts of other Italian city-states
• Unlike the Medicis, almost all other leaders were
nobility
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The Montefeltro Court in Urbino
• In Urbino, Duke Federigo da Montefeltro (1422–
1482) championed the use of scientific perspective
in the painting of Piero della Francesca (ca. 1420–
1492)
• Baldassare Castiglione’s (1478–1529) The Book of
the Courtier was written during the time of
Guidobaldo da Montefeltro (1472–1508)
• In the form of a dialogue, eloquent courtiers at
Urbino compete with each other to describe the
perfect courtier—the man (or woman) whose
education and demeanor are best fashioned to
serve the prince
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The Gonzaga Court in Mantua
• In Mantua, the court of Marquis Ludovico
Gonzaga (1414–1478) commissioned the
painter Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) to
decorate his palazzo with highly illusionistic
frescoes
• Mantegna’s extremely accomplished realization
of illusionistic space, presented with panache
and wit, became famous instantly
• That Ludovico had been able to attract such a
skilled artist as Mantegna to his employ added to
the Gonzaga prestige
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The Sforza Court in Milan and
Leonardo da Vinci
• In Milan, Ludovico Sforza (1451–1508) commissioned
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) to paint the Last
Supper for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria
delle Grazie
• Leonardo’s restless imagination inspired him to the
study of almost everything: natural phenomena like
wind, storms, and the movement of water; anatomy and
physiology; physics and mechanics; music;
mathematics; plants and animals; geology; and
astronomy; as well as painting and drawing
• Leonardo was a humanist and was deeply swayed by
Neoplatonic thought
• He saw connections among all spheres of existence
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How did Michelangelo’s David
symbolize the new Florentine
republic?
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• In 1494, a Florentine mob drove the last of the
Medici rulers from the city
• The Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola (1452–
1498), abbot of the monastery of San Marco,
stepped into this power vacuum
• Savonarola preached a moralistic brand of fire and
brimstone, condemning humanist values
• At first wielding great political power, Savonarola
was finally tried as a heretic in 1498 and burned at
the stake
• A relieved city council sought to reassert republican
values in visual terms
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• The city council moved Donatello’s David from the
Medici palace to the Palazzo della Signoria, and they
commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to create
another freestanding sculpture of David
• Michelangelo represents David before, not after, his
triumph
• His sculpture appears sublimely confident, ready to take
on whatever challenge faces him—just as the republic
itself felt ready to take on all challenges
• When the statue was moved from the Michelangelo’s
workshop to the Piazza della Signoria, supporters of the
exiled Medici hurled stones at it
• They understood correctly that the statue was a symbol
of the city’s will to stand up to any and all tyrannical
rule—including that of the Medici
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.