The Renaissance Revisited

Medieval Art

More, sigh, medieval art

          While the art alone of the Renaissance did not suggest radical social changes, it certainly depicted them indirectly.  The art of the Middle Ages had been two-dimensional, boring, and restricted to religious imagery.  The infusion of classic Roman and Greek culture into a region dominated by Catholicism led to the belief that through combining the best ideas of all intellectuals could mankind flourish.  Even popes immersed themselves in the new styles of antiquity.  Increased tolerance of different ideas helped set the climate for such a radical upheaval like the one Martin Luther would bring about.  The anatomical observation paid by artists like da Vinci and Michelangelo, evident in Vitruvian Man and David, would pave the way to the great improvement in medicine that would come in the following centuries.  Art was also improved through techniques such as perspective, chiarascuro, and sfumato to be more realistic and appealing to the eye.  Comparing the quality of Medieval and Renaissance art illustrates how much artists had improved.  Sprouting from the Renaissance were Baroque, Mannerism, and most successive movements.  Architecture during this period took on different forms throughout each region, but the Italian overhaul of a neo-Roman movement showed that it was not the Dark Ages, but the time that preceded it, that was to be proud of.
          However, the most profound change that the Renaissance brought about was the new perspective that men had on the world.  Instead of despairing at the loss of the Black Death, Modern Europe was born, bringing with it optimism that has remained largely unfazed ever since.

           

        RENAISSANCE: God passing the divine spark to mankind in The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, 1511

Renaissance Architecture: Harmonious Grandeur

Florence Cathedral

          Architects were once viewed as skilled laborers, an even lower level than common artists.  However, the designers of Renaissance structures were hailed as artists and were appreciated as much for their accomplishments as painters, sculptors,

Villa Medici

and other intellectuals.  While the rest of Europe was more reluctant to move on from Gothic architecture, the Italian states, due to residing over the ruins of the Roman Empire, were willing to experiment in order to resurrect their culture.  The poor condition of most ruins and the lack of Roman-age commentary led to heavy reliance on Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect, ingenuity, and imagination to try to recapture the glory of the classic years.  The other art forms had already began to emphasize harmony, balance, and symmetry, but architecture soon joined them.  Domes, columns, niches, and round arches replaced the unbalanced and proportionally distorted hallmarks of the architecture of the Middle Ages.  Churches were not modified as much as other buildings due to the need to accommodate many people before a separated group of priests.  Church styles over Europe

Corinthian Architecture (Maison Caree)

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

continued to vary more from each other, especially after the Protestant Reformation.  Residential villas were revived and architects ornamented homes accordingly to social class, following the perception of the Renaissance being an elitist movement.  Perfect geometry was sought by urban planners for a sense of order.  New cities were centrally designed and old ones were revised, albeit with little success, for similar balance.  Urban planning continued, but on a smaller scale, focusing on sections rather than entire metropolises.  Italian architects wrote treatises to explain their methodology to scholars and to teach it to their successors.  Leon Battista Alberti’s On the Art of Building, the seven volumes of Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), and  Andrea Palladio’s Four Books on Architecture (1570) were among the most famous of these new manuals.   Academies of design were established throughout Italy to give architects a place to discuss and teach, as well as have a professional identity.  These societies demonstrate that architects sought to unite their craft with other art forms by practicing the same Renaissance ideals.  This was accomplished through a focus on antiquity and also through attaining geometry and balance similar to that of other artists.   Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was considered to be the first Renaissance architect.  He is best known for constructing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, but also was instrumental in classic architectural revival by regularly incorporating the Greek orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, to his work.  His work appears simple because he used a repeated unit of measurement for each building to achieve harmony.  Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) was a well-rounded humanist who wrote numerous treatises on art.  His essays explained the fine techniques of painting, sculpting, and designing.  He and Brunelleschi were both enamored by Roman architecture and the works of Vitruvius, the mind behind da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.  Andrea Palladio (1508-80) was the most famous architect of the Venetian Republic and is known for his villas and treatise, Four Books on Architecture.  Palladio designed his villas after those of Rome, which were centrally oriented through symmetry and axiality.  This simplicity made them easy to be imitated in England, and later in the plantations of the American colonies.

Gothic Architecture (Laon Cathedral)

Palmanova, designed as an ideal Renaissance city

Raphael: Comprehender of the Renaissance

The School of Athens, Raphael, 1511

Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) brought balance and harmony to contrast Michelangelo’s deep emotional depictions and da Vinci’s blurred serenity.  A native of Urbino, Raphael was first trained by his father, but then sent to learn from the well-known Perugino.  Raphael undertook Perugino’s smooth and cloying style, but soon absorbed the techniques of the established Florentine artists, da Vinci and Michelangelo.  Raphael sold his art to noble and merchant families, a market available due to the immense costliness and demand for the art of his superiors.  Raphael differed from da Vinci and Michelangelo by his lack of anatomic detail and chiarascuro, the dramatic contrast between light and darkness in his works, but had respect for his rivals nonetheless through his apparent mimicking later on in his career.

The Parnassus, Raphael, 1511

Raphael’s greatest contribution to the Renaissance was his School of Athens (1510), which displayed the great interest in classic Greek culture.  He integrated the philosophers with the modern artists, implying that human accomplishment was universal and interconnected.  This was similarly shown through The Parnassus (1511), the final part of the trilogy commissioned by Pope Julius II.  Apollo is the center of the painting, which presents the four categories of human knowledge: law, poetry, philosophy, and religion.  The first painting created of the three was the Disputation of the Sacrament (1511), which featured heavenly biblical figures watching over a mortal debate over transubstantiation.  Much of Raphael's work was religious, but that a Pope had such intrigue in a movement based on classicism and openness instead of strict religious doctrine showed the extent of the Renaissance's appeal.

The Transfiguration, Raphael, 1520

His Triumph of Galatea (1513) suggests influence from Michelangelo with more attention to anatomic detail, specifically through similarities in his own cupids and the characters on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.  It is said that he was shown Michelangelo's unfinished work in the Sistine Chapel by his friend and mentor, Bramante, and infused these observations into his later art.  Raphael’s last great work was The Transfiguration (1517), which offers a preview to the powerful and dark Baroque period.  This painting certainly pleased his patron of the time, Cardinal Giulio de Medici.  The contrast between the light of Jesus and the darkness, an excellent use of chiarascuro, shows a polar change from his original style.  The image of mankind in despair is a deviance from the Renaissance ideals, demonstrating the overlap among Renaissance art and that of the next two eras, Mannerism and Baroque.   However, the idea of perfection departing but leaving behind hope and human unity for men to seek what they had lost still may subtly manifest Renaissance philosophy.  Due to his short life, Raphael lacked the time to develop that Michelangelo and da Vinci had, but his work remains some of the most spectacular of the Renaissance.  Viewed as simpler and therefore easier to emulate than his peers, Raphael is often under-appreciated.  However, the deeper meanings behind his pieces make them possibly the most fascinating of the entire era.

Triumph of Galatea, Raphael, 1513

Disputation of the Sacrament, Raphael, 1510

Michelangelo: The Most Talented Renaissance Artist?

Portrait of Michelangelo at about 60

Forbidden Fruit portion of Sistine Chapel ceiling, preview of mannerism

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) had the longest lifespan of the three great High Renaissance artists, so his craft understandably evolved the most.  He rose as an artist through his father’s minor political career in Florence that brought connections with the Medici family and its access to numerous works and local apprenticeships with the successful Ghirlandaio and the sculptor Giovanni, a student of Donatello.  He was convinced that he had the blood of an ancient noble line, so he dressed appropriately and worked restlessly to gain social status.

Pieta, Michelangelo, 1499

He even received some humanist education through the Medicis, which made him aware of current issues and love the works of Dante and Petrarch.  His fame and Medici ties led him to eventually acquire popes Julius II and Leo X as patrons later in his life.  
          Michelangelo's initial delicate style is demonstrated by his first famous work, the Pieta (1499), the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Jesus, but is then replaced by his iconic David (1504), which varies drastically with its powerful and confident nature.  This sculpture was inspired by the bronze David of Donatello, although the predecessor had a child's body and wore a smirk instead of a powerful gaze.  Coincidently carved from marble quarried for Donatello, the mature and heroic David symbolized the pride of Florence, which had grown powerful despite being surrounded by larger states.  
          A fine architect, Michelangelo's numerous projects include the Laurentian Library, the fortifications of Florence, and the chapels of both the Sforzas and the Medicis.  He was in the process of designing a tomb for Julius II when the pope abandoned the project, prompting Michelangelo to temporarily leave Rome in anger.  Both men had unyielding personalities and never got along. Despite being known as a master of thrilling sculpture and his ongoing feud with Julius II, Michelangelo deviated from this talent with his biblical depictions on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which helped usher in the emergence of mannerism, the straining of

David, Michelangelo, 1504

what is real with impossible positions or through inaccurate perspective and proportion.   This can be shown from the odd distortions and the senses of stress confusion they invoke.  The artists of this future movement craved the creativity Michelangelo displayed later in his career and strived for similar emotional responses.  The depictions of the Chapel's ceiling begin with the creation of the world and end with the great flood.

David, Donatello, date unknown

          Michelangelo is remembered for his sculpture, primarily through the Pieta and David, but was known for rising to the occasion to silence his challengers, even if a project strayed from what he was comfortable with.  This, along with the impossible nature of some of his architectural projects and the obscene amount of commissions, led to a great deal of his work being left unfinished.  Like da Vinci and many other artists, abandoning work was frequent due to realizing that its completion could never match the mental image the creator had for it.  The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was a difficult task due to its positioning and sheer size.  Possessing the same ability to accurately depict the human body as da Vinci, but also combining it with stirring emotions defined Michelangelo’s legacy. 

The ceiling of Sistine Chapel, completed in 1512

Leonardo da Vinci: the Ultimate Renaissance Man.

Mona Lisa, Da Vinci, 1519

The Last Supper, Da Vinci, 1498

Anatomical Study, one of many sketches of the human body by Da Vinci

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (1500)

The Adoration of the Magi, Da Vinci, 1481

          Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) had one of the greatest minds the world has ever seen.  He was an artist, designer, and observer.  It was initially hard for him to enter guilds due to being an illegitimate child of a politician, but he learned how to paint and sculpt in Florence under Andrea del Verrocchio.   He did not receive a humanist education as a result of his lowliness and came to despise the pretentiousness of the learned.  He believed that they lacked the skills that he had garnered through experience, for art was truly a science learned best by practice.  He mathematically mastered perspective and dimension, which were originally utilized in art by Giotto, considered to be the first Renaissance artist.  


     Drawing for him was merely an instrument to depict what he imagined; his drawings of anatomy and invention were accompanied by a hidden code that was not deciphered for many years after his death.  Most of his work was unfinished, but his sketches may be more impressive than his paintings.  His interest in war machines lured him to Milan, where he obtained the patronage of the warmongering Sforza family.  After France invaded Milan, da Vinci fled back to Venice, then returned to Florence.  He worked for the infamous despot Cesare Borgia, drafting plans for cities, war machines, and battlements.  After again residing in Milan from 1508-1513, he lived in Rome until moving to France to live with the court of Francis I.  Here he was assigned numerous tasks, but the largest was to eventually design a new royal palace, but he died before being able to take up that immense project. In addition to designing tanks, flying machines, other vehicles, and canals, his organic interest led to his using of the writings of Vitruvius to depict the "ideal man," physically based on the two perfect shapes: the circle and square.  Despite being primarily interested in natural science and mechanics, da Vinci is remembered for his paintings, the most famous being Mona Lisa (1519) for the mysterious facial expression of the merchant's wife and The Last Supper (1498) for the depth of the room given by perspective.  His love for experimentation is evident in the latter; straying from the traditional fresco to try out layered oil paints led to the deteriorating of the classic work.  The dominant characteristic of his painting was sfumato, the blurring of colors instead of stark contrast between light and dark.  This is most evident in The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (1500), but is present in all of his paintings.  Da Vinci’s work in the High Renaissance influenced his peers and also the future artists of the Baroque period, although his work was too harmonious and natural to be classified as such.  As one who had mastered human anatomy and expression to utilize in art, his skill set was imitated by the next era of artists who sought to distort both.  Today, many of his sketches and ideas remain in his Notebooks and have finally materialized.  He existed in a time when he had insufficient time and technology to implement his ideas, but his brilliance is acknowledged for thinking of many concepts and inventions centuries before their fruition.  

Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci, 1487

Da Vinci's tank drawings

Virgin of the Rocks, Da Vinci, 1486

The Impact of the Renaissance

David, Michelangelo

Cosimo de Medici

Leonardo da Vinci

        The period between the mid-14^th to mid-16^th centuries in Italy was the dawning of the modern era.  It was not outstanding technological or social improvement that defined this time, but a new sense of optimism regarding the human condition and future.  The Black Death showed the faults and vulnerability of people, so secular emphasis and a vivacious outlook countered it accordingly in the following centuries.  Renewed interest in the Greek and Roman classics led to their incorporation into newer and more creative art, which had previously been dominated by religious matter. The quality of paintings and sculpture improved tremendously as a result of developed techniques and improved anatomical knowledge.  However, what stood above all else of this age was a new sense of purpose and optimism that engulfed the minds of the elite and drove them to advance society in all of its facets.                      

Florence Cathedral

Vitruvian Man, da Vinci

Sandro Botticelli: lover of classic mythology

Adoration of the Magi, Botticelli, 1475

Primavera, Botticelli, 1482

Suspected self-portrait of Botticelli in Adoration of the Magi

          Alessandro Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510), was born in Florence.  He was trained by Fra Filippo Lippi and rose to the inner circle of the city's artists, the Compagnia di San Luca.  His patrons were connected to the Medicis and decorated mostly religious buildings.  He joined other artists at the Pope Sixtus IV's request to decorate the walls of the newly created Roman Sistine Chapel in 1480. During this decade Botticelli painted some of his finest works, characterized by their rich colors and flowing curves.  However, after Lorenzo de’ Medici died in 1492 and the takeover of the Dominican monk Savonarola, who despised Renaissance culture, Florence began its decline.  Botticelli’s artwork changed significantly over this period.  Harder, more emotional paintings with religious emphasis succeeded his smooth, peaceful works.  His last project was creating a set of illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy, but died before its completion.  

The Birth of Venus, Botticelli, 1486

          Botticelli’s artwork can be divided into two themes: mythological depictions and religious imagery.  His most famous religious painting is Adoration of the Magi (1476), which features three foreign kings and their followers paying homage to an infant Jesus.  He was praised for the detailed faces of the followers, which included his own along with those of five members of the Medici family.  Primavera (1882) and The Birth of Venus (1886) are Botticelli’s other two prominent paintings.  These two paintings were intended to be placed next to each other and show the Renaissance themes of love and classical interest.  The Birth of Venus was controversial because of Venus’s nudity, but the relaxation of previous artistic norms defined the period.  Botticelli accurately shows how Christians directed the age of acceptance toward classic Greek and Roman figures.  Inserting nudity, pagan gods, and even people from the current age into paintings of the past demonstrates the greater creativity and toleration of the age.