The Renaissance 1400-1600

Renaissance is a French word that means rebirth.

It is a term that refers to that time in European history when people renewed their interests in the arts, science, and philosophy.

Renaissance Europe

Renaissance Economy

• The Black plague killed many of the workers/surfs who worked for large land owners

• Skilled workers demanded to be paid – end of Feudalism

• Growth of Cities (People earning money and having money to spend)

• Art became the way to advertise economic success

• People were united under one king and one government instead of small kingdoms run by lords

• Kings also had stronger military due to the invention of the long bow

The Printing Press

• Invented by Johannes Gutenburg in 1463

• Books no longer were printed by (monks)

• More books were made

(more production = cheaper cost)

• People wanted to learn how to read since books were cheaper

Humanism

A philosophy in which emphasis is placed on MAN and the extraordinary ability of the human mind.

Scholars were influenced by the knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations and by the emphasis placed on man, his intellect, and his life on Earth.

The Renaissance

In the Medieval period, the church was the center of existence.

During the Renaissance, people began to discover the world around them and realize that they were an important part of that world.

The Reformation• Emergence of the Protestant religion and it’s

separation from the Roman Catholic Church

• Martin Luther – German monk who argued that the Bible was the sole source of religious authority (not the Pope)

• Church services and religious books done in the vernacular (native language) of the area, not just Latin

A New Art Style

• A Medieval artist Giotto from Florence started changing the art world with his paintings that showed real emotion, solid figures, and perspective.

• Renaissance artists started building on Giotto’s ideas.•Giotto’s paintings dealt largely with traditional religious subjects.

•Bright colors commonly associated with the Renaissance were used to create harmony through out the painting.

Giotto di Bondone

1266-1337Lamentation, 1305 Fresco

Renaissance Art• Artists started studying nature and surviving classical works of

art in order to make their own art more realistic.

• Development of perspective

Linear perspective – creates the illusion of depth on a flat surface by slanting lines that converge at a

single point. Devised by Filippo Brunelleschi in 1413.

Aerial perspective – use of duller, bluer hues for distant objects

• Renaissance artists started using landscapes or architecture to give their work a more realistic setting.

• Refined the technique of oil paint (instead of egg tempera)

(colors blended in a medium of linseed oil)

Brunelleschi

Early Renaissance

Masaccioand

Linear Perspective

The Trinity, 1427fresco

• Knowledge of linear perspective (first to demonstrate linear perspective system devised by Filippo

Brunelleschi in 1413) and architectural styles.The viewer’s eye level (horizon line) is at the base of the cross and the vanishing point is in the center of the line – the point at which the lines meet.

• Light source is from the front – modeling the figures with light and shadow

• Chiaroscuro – refers to the new technique for modeling forms in painting by which lighter parts seemed to emerge from darker areas, producing the illusion of rounded, sculptural relief on a flat surface.

• Trompe l’oeil effect – barrel-vaulted niche drawn through linear perspective / illusion of stone funerary monument and altar table

• Praying donors in front

Fra Angelico, Annunciation, 1438-45(fresco) at the Monastery of San Marco, Florence

Gabriel and the Virgin Mary

• Fresco (painting on wet plaster)

• Natural light models

forms

• Perspective used

to create the

vaulted porch

• Landscape gives a

glimpse of artist’s interest in nature

High Renaissancean explosion of creativity

1490-1520Halos goneMore naturalismDefinite light source (shadows and three-dimension)Sense of stability and order (static compositions)Commissions from private sources

Leonardo da Vinci•Born in 1452 in the village of Vinci

•Began career working for a master painter in Florence

•1478 set up his own workshop

•Skilled in many fields scientist, inventor,as well as an artist a true “Renaissance Man”

•Filled 120 notebooks with drawings from his study of subjects ranging from anatomy to nature to military fortifications

•Invented clever machines – designed imitation wings

The Last Supperby

Leonardo da Vinci

Tempera and oil on plaster c. 1495-98Milan, Italy

•Painted in the dining hall of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan

•The stage-like space recedes from the table to three windows on the back wall, where the vanishing point of one-point perspective lies behind Jesus’ head – Natural light surrounds Jesus’ head instead of the symbolic halo.

• Jesus’ out stretched arms form a pyramid at the center and the disciples are grouped into threes on each side – reinforce a sense of order

•Leonardo was an acute observer of human beings and his art vividly expressed human emotion – The scene captures the moment when Jesus tells his companions that one of them will betray him.

Mona Lisa

Oil on wood c. 1503

•May have been the wife of a prominent merchant in Florence

•Her solid pyramidal form is silhouetted against distant mountains

•Mysterious atmosphere

•Gazes straight out at the viewer

•Her direct stare, combined with her apparent serenity and inner strength, has made the Mona Lisa one of the most popular and best-known works in the history of art.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

• Sculptor, painter, and architect

• Considered himself a sculptor instead of a painter

• He felt as if he was freeing the figures that were trapped inside the block of marble

• Born in 1475 in the small village of Caprese, in Tuscany

• Worked as an apprentice to the painter Domenico

Ghirlandaio learning the art of fresco

• Studied at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Pieta1498-1500

• Tomb monument made for a cardinal (high church official) in St. Peter’s Church in Rome.

• Traveled to central Italy to select the marble

• Envisioned the statue as already existing within the marble and needing only to be “set free” from it.

• This masterpiece represents Mary holding Jesus. She is a huge figure with an extremely wide lap (inconsistencies of age and size)

• Both are young and beautiful, more like an ideal man and woman

• The entire sculpture fits into a smooth, simple pyramid shape, although within the shape the lines are complicated.

• Throughout the work, Michelangelo combines opposites in this way, and as a result convinces the viewer that it is both real and ideal.

David1504 (marble 14.24 ft.)

•A model of heroic courage for Florentines

who recently had fought the forces

of Milan, Siena, and Pisa.

•Athletic, manly character, very concentrated and ready to fight

•Infused formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and meaning

•Example of contrapposto – a twisted stance of the human figure where most of the weight is on one foot– giving the figure a relaxed appearance.

Sistine ChapelCeiling

•Illustrates the Book of Genesis, with scenes including Creation of Adam and Eve, Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Flood.

•Michelangelo drew numerous figure studies,

devising scores of figure types and poses demonstrating his understanding of human anatomy and movement.

The Sistine Chapel(ceiling frescoes by Michelangelo, 1508–1512)

God separating the light from the darkness

Creation of the Sun and Moon

The Creation of Adam

Raphael SanzioBorn in 1483 in Urbino, ItalyItalian painter and architect of the High RenaissanceReceived training in art from his father and in 1499 became a student and assistant of the painter Perugino1508 – Pope Julius II commissioned frescoes for the Vatican Palace – one was the School of AthensDied young at the age of 37

School of Athensby

Raphael

Plato

(da Vinci)

Aristotle

RaphaelMichelangelo

The School of Athens, Raphael,Mural, 1510 C.E.

Fills one whole wall in the pope’s palace in Rome.Imaginary gathering of the great thinkers of ancient GreeceGesturing, moving, talking, and interactingGestures and expressions show us how important their ideas are to them.Arches frame the two most important philosophers Plato and Aristotle who stand in the centerArchitecture of classical antiquityPerspective to create deep sense of space

The Alba Madonna, 1510In “The Alba Madonna”,

Raphael was influenced by

Leonardo’s sfumato in the

portrayal of deep space, clear

light, and the Italian landscape.

The foreshortened leg of

Mary, her pose, and the sculptural

quality of her robes are

reminiscent of Michelangelo,

but the sensitive faces, graceful

gestures, and the balance of all

elements are Raphael’s.

Northern Renaissance

Albrecht DurerBorn on 1471 in Nuremberg, Germany

Trained under his father who was a goldsmith

Apprenticed to Michel Wolgemut leading Nuremburg painter and designer of woodcuts for book illustrations

Employed by Emperor Maximilian I and was granted a pension

Produced over 70 paintings, over 1000 drawings, 250 woodcuts, and more than 100 engravings

Known as the first modern German painter to bring the artistic language of the Italian Renaissance to the north.

Durer’s work was influenced by his interest in humanism and knowledge of science.

His keen observation of nature lent him to produce extraordinary lifelike studies, superby drawn, of men,

animals, plants and landscapes.

Considered one of the greatest figures in the history of graphic arts because of the technical mastery of his works and his vivid power of imagination.

Albrecht Durer

Albrecht DurerThe Four Horsement of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

1498

• A woodcut

• Illustrates the Apocalypse, the last book of the New Testament

• Four riders Death, Famine, War, and Plague

• Expressive line – powerful left to right motion of the horses

and riders by their diagonal sweep across the picture space.

• Less powerful zigzags of cowering figures reveal their panic

in the face of the unrelenting advance of the horsemen.

In this woodcut the aged and withered figure of Death rides the skeletal horse, trampling a bishop whose head is in the jaws of a monster. Cowering before the horse are figures awaiting destruction. Next to Death, and the most prominent of the four, rides Famine, carrying a scale. War brandishes a sword, which is parallel to the angel above. Plague, riding the background horse, draws his bow (the arrow’s wounds were associated with the sores caused by the plague.) Finally, the presence of God as the ultimate motivation force behind the four horsemen is indicated by rays of light entering the picture at the upper left corner.

Albrecht DurerMelencolia, 1514

• Copper engraving

• Portraying a melancholic personality (sadness or depression)

• Represents Durer himself idle, uninspired creator, and unemployed “genius”, looking inward for inspiration and not finding it.

• Idle tools : bell that does not ring, empty scales, and a ladder leading nowhere

• Hourglass refers to the passing of time

• The bat in the darkened sky pierced by rays of light contrast the mental states of black melancholy and the light of inspiration

Late RenaissanceMannerism- meaning simply “style”

A style developed in Florence and Rome between 1520-1600 that focused on the human form depicted in intricate poses and in exaggerated, not always realistic settings.

Rejected the balance of the Renaissance period in favor of a more emotional and distorted point of view.

Paintings contained artificial color, unrealistic spatial proportions, and figures were elongated and exaggerated

Works were unsettling and strange, probably a result of upheaval from the Reformation, plague, and sack of Rome.

El Greco, Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586

Oil on canvas