Transcript The Renaissance

The Renaissance
the artistic exploration of life
During the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, European artists
painted in a way that emphasized religious
images and symbolism rather than realism. Most
paintings depicted scenes with holy figures and
people important in the Christian religion. Even
the most talented painters of the Middle Ages
paid little attention to making humans and
animals look lifelike, creating natural looking
landscapes, or creating a sense of depth and
space in their paintings. Realism implied a
valuing of earth over essence or spirit.
Symbols and expressions of piety
Notice the deep emotional piety shown in
these expressive faces and gestures.
Notice the color schemes, the artists
(known or not), and the subject matters.
Think about what aspects seem realistic
and which seem least life like.
Madonna and Child
Berlinghiero (Italian,
Lucca, active by
1228, died by 1236)
Transitions
Perhaps painted about 1300,
this exquisite Madonna and Child
inaugurates the grand tradition
in Italian art of envisioning these
sacred figures in terms appropriated
from real life. The parapet—among
the earliest of its kind—connects
the fictive world of the painting
with that of the viewer. As with
his younger Florentine
contemporary, Giotto, Duccio
redefined the way in which we
relate to the picture: not as an
ideogram or abstract idea,
but as an analogue to human
experience.
Tempera and gold on wood
The Crucifixion, 14th c.
Master of the Codex of Saint
George (Italian, Florentine,
active second quarter of
14th century)
Italian; Probably made in
Avignon
Backgrounds
In the Middle Ages most art in Europe
featured heavenly figures devoted to the
worship of Christ. Because the people in
Medieval paintings were citizens of
heaven and the artists painting these
pictures had never actually seen heaven,
the background was left to the imagination
and the teachings of the church. Gold
backgrounds were very common, as the
air in heaven surely must be precious.
Materials: Egg tempera
Egg tempera was the paint used by virtually all artists
during the Middle Ages. In fact, the use of tempera paint
can be traced back to ancient Egypt. In the early
Renaissance, artists used egg yolk as a binding agent,
mixing in colored pigments to create egg tempera paint.
Limitations:
Couldn’t be stored, each color was mixed when it was
needed
If you didn’t mix enough paint it was hard to match
If you mixed too much paint you wasted expensive
materials
Egg tempera dries quickly so artists had to paint small
areas at one time
Blending colors was difficult so artists layered colors
The Renaissance in Essence
• The Renaissance is known for its dynamic
nature and of course its art but it was
about a new appreciation of life.
• That new appreciation found its way into
Humanist philosophy, pragmatic political
theories, and artistic representations which
strove to present a realistic vision.
• Artists carefully observed nature and felt
that realism was very important.
Work by Parmigianino
Work by Correggio
During the late fourteenth century, artists began to use
paper more and more to explore their ideas for the design
of paintings and sculptures, rather than simply to copy or
record finished works of art. This exploratory type of
drawing offers a vivid and intimate glimpse of the artist
creatively thinking.
Work by Stefano da Verona
The issue of perspective
• No one would deny that the painter has nothing to do
with things that are not visible. The painter is concerned
solely with representing what can be seen.
-- Leon Battista Alberti, 1435
When people became more interested in the world
around them and the ideas of other people rather than
heaven and the teachings of Christ and the saints,
landscapes and buildings began to show up in paintings.
Everyone could see landscapes and buildings everyday
so one of the essential artistic problems of the
Renaissance became how to paint landscapes and
buildings in pictures so that they looked the same as in
real life.
Work by Petrus Christus
Master of the View
of Sainte-Gudule
Work by Joachim Patinir
The issue of perspective, con’t
In the Renaissance, painters needed to be able to
translate the three-dimensional world around them onto
the two-dimensional surface of a painting, called the
"picture plane." The solution was "linear perspective“ -the idea that converging lines meet at a single vanishing
point and all shapes get smaller in all directions with
increasing distance from the eye. The discovery of
perspective is attributed to the architect Filippo
Brunelleschi (1377-1446), who suggested a system that
explained how objects shrink in size according to their
position and distance from the eye.
Alberti’s ideas
In 1435, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), provided the
first theory of what we now call linear perspective in his
book, On Painting. The impact of this new system of
measurement in paintings was enormous and most
artists painting in Europe after 1435 were aware of the
principles Alberti outlined in his book. First, an artist
created a "floor" (a ground or stage on which figures and
objects would be placed) in a painting and drew a
receding grid to act as a guide to the relative scale of all
other elements within the picture. Alberti suggests
relating the size of the floor squares to a viewer's height.
This suggestion is important because it reveals an
underlying principal of the Renaissance. The act of
painting would no longer be to glorify God, as it had
been in Medieval Europe. Painting in the Renaissance
related instead, to those people looking at the painting.
Attempts to use perspective
‘Jesus Before the Caïf’, by Giotto (1305). The ceiling rafters
show the Giotto’s introduction of convergent perspective.
B. Detailed analysis, however, reveals that the ceiling has
an inconsistent vanishing point and that the Caïf’s dais is in
parallel perspective, with no vanishing point.
NOTE that Giotto was before Brunelleschi or Albertini.
Giotto’s Painting
Geometric analysis reveals that Giotto had implemented
the idea of convergent parallels without the use of an
accurate vanishing point. Inspection of the picture also
shows that there is a curious bowing of the back wall
forward. The main reason for the bowing of the cornice
seems to be that the rough vanishing point is much
higher than the shelf at right, which should also project to
the same location. This discrepancy reveals that the
convergence of the beams is steeper than is required by
accurate geometrical perspective. The two windows
have symmetrically opposed highlighting that may be
accurate if lit by a central window on the near wall, but
seems to add to the perceived curvature from the wall
shading.
Implementing ideas of Perspective
‘The Healing of the Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha’, by Masolino (1425).
Note the accurate central convergence of structures from the front of the canvas
to the far distant background.
15th century perspective
Throughout the 15th century, the new tool of linear perspective was
employed by artists with verve to enliven their visual story-telling.
The first known use of accurate central convergence was by
Masolino in 1425 in a picture that is telling two separate stories.
Note the integration of the perspective of the left and right sides of
the scene, both interior and exterior lines, their integration with the
convergence of the streets on the left and right sides of the
background, and the placement of the vanishing point at the eye
height of the standing figures (where it must be if the viewer was
standing in the same plaza). This degree of complete integration can
only be achieved by an explicit implementation of the concept of a
central vanishing point (unless, of course, there were optical
projection of the flat scene onto a picture plane, which seems
unlikely for a fresco such as this work). It seems clear that Masolino
had understood, for the first time, the power of the vanishing-point
construction in depicting visual space.
Raphael’s School of Athens
‘The School of Athens’ by Raphael (1518), a fine example of architectural perspective
with a central vanishing point, marking the end of the classical Renaissance.
One-point perspective
It is surprising to find that almost all Renaissance
examples relied on the simple one-point perspective
scheme. They never broke away from the concept of a
principal vanishing point governing a rectangular grid on
which the architectural elements were constructed. One
of the prime exponents was Raphael, whose ‘School of
Athens’ fully displays the architectural grandeur that
could be achieved with this method, as a background for
his evocation of the pantheon of ancient Greek
philosophers. The central vanishing point is at Socrates
left hand, close to the eye height of the standing figures
in front of the steps, and just where it should be if the
viewer was standing with them on the lower floor.
Science and Art
Italian Renaissance artists became
anatomists by necessity, as they attempted
to refine a more lifelike, sculptural portrayal
of the human figure. Indeed, until about
1500—1510, their investigations surpassed
much of the knowledge of anatomy that
was taught at the universities.
Opportunities for direct anatomical
dissection were very restricted during the
Renaissance. Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the
Artists (a fantastic gossipy biography of
some of the major artists of the
Renaissance) states that the great
Florentine sculptor, painter, and printmaker
Antonio Pollaiuolo (1431/32—1498) was
the "first master to skin many human
bodies in order to investigate the muscles
and understand the nude in a more modern
way."
Anatomical Studies
Work by Domenico del Barbiere
Work by Rubens
Work by Fillipo Lippi
Work by Michelangelo
New Materials
As the Renaissance took hold, artists
became more interested in describing
what the world around them looked like in
their paintings. As landscapes and real
people began to appear in paintings, the
problem of tempera became more
apparent. Oil paint provided a solution.
Oil paint was used as early as the 12th century in
Northern Europe but its potential was not realized until
15th century painters in the Netherlands used oil paint to
combine extraordinary realism with brilliant color.
Oil paint is very flexible so it can be applied in both thick
textured brushstrokes and thin fine detail. It dries very
slowly, allowing artists to mix larger batches of paint and
keep it for more than one painting session. Slow drying
paint can be carefully blended to make soft, seamless
shadows necessary for the modeling that suggests
three-dimensional form.
The oil in oil paint makes pigments translucent, allowing
artists to apply colors in thin layers or glazes, generating
rich, glowing colors. So, it is especially good at
communicating textures of different surfaces.
Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Barbara, 1479
Hans Memling, Oil on wood.
The recently famous…
Why Leonardo painted this particular subject? It was one of the most
popular subjects and that almost every Renaissance painter worth his
salt has a cenacolo (as they are called in Italian) under his belt. It is
hanging on the wall of the refectory in the church of Santa Maria delle
Grazie in Milan (where monks and nuns take their meals.) Traditionally,
the good brothers and sisters were supposed to talk as little as
possible during their repasts, and so it was very common to give them
inspirational art to contemplate as they chewed. What better subject for
a refectory than the most famous meal in the Bible?
As great an artist as he was, Da Vinci was not trained in the art of
fresco, and so instead of putting the greatest emphasis on the correct
techniques and materials, he concentrated on the artistic effect he
wanted to achieve, relying on oil and egg tempera, a combination on
fresco which didn’t meld. It started to flake during his lifetime. Over the
years, the colors faded, spotted and even fell to the ground. It didn't
help, either, that the good monks later decided to cut a doorway right
into a corner of the scene!
The Moment
Leonardo's painting stands out from so many others
because of the intense way that he depicted the psyches
of his subjects. He chose to portray them just at the
moment when Christ is telling them there is a traitor
amongst them. Careful observation shows how each of
the men reacts, some with shock, others with fear,
others with anger.
It is said that Leonardo was able to achieve these
subtleties thanks to the countless hours he had spent
studying anatomy. The artist used the actual shape of
the real walls to accentuate the dynamics of his artificial
scene.
Experimentation and Innovations
A “Renaissance Man” was interested and
involved in many aspects of life. We can
see in the art of the Renaissance an
interest in science and careful
observations of life.
Techniques continued to evolve and
materials changing to fit into the new spirit
of the age.
Sometimes it was unsuccessful but in all it
was a dynamic and interesting time.