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The High Renaissance in Italy. Da Vinci, Michelangelo Raphael. Leonardo da Vinci – the Renaissance Man. The term “renaissance man” is used to describe someone who has a wide variety of interests, and expertise in many fields.
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The High Renaissance in Italy • Da Vinci, • Michelangelo • Raphael
The term “renaissance man” is used to describe someone who has a wide variety of interests, and expertise in many fields. • Leonardo da Vinci was the quintessential renaissance man. He was a painter, sculptor, inventor, architect, musician, engineer, and scientist. • He is widely recognized as a genius of the highest level. • Historians tell us that he was not only intellectually gifted, but that he was noble in appearance and manners as well.
Thank you Samantha and Lauren for introducing this work to us.
The Last Supper was painted on the wall of the refectory (dining hall) in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy • The Last Supper measures 450 × 870 centimeters (15 feet × 29 ft)
Christ is depicted here with his disciples at the last meal he shared with them before his crucifixion. We are shown the moment after Jesus has announced that one of the disciples will betray him. • The disciples react with dismay, and their gestures show their disbelief and concern.
Notice how effectively Da Vinci leads the viewer’s eye to Jesus: • By centering Jesus • By using the lines of perspective in the walls and ceiling • By framing Jesus’ head in the window • By isolating Jesus, while all other figures are grouped and overlapping • By following the gazes and gestures of the disciples • By contrasting Jesus’ stillness with the agitation of the other figures
Disasters plague The Last Supper • The Last Supper is one of the most famous paintings in the world, but it has not been well preserved. • Shortly after Da Vinci finished the painting it began to peel off the wall. (Da Vinci did not use the fresco technique; instead, he sealed the surface of the wall and painted on top of it.) • Several attempts by lesser artists were made to restore it, and parts of it were painted over with oil paints. • At one point a door was cut into the wall below the picture, partly cutting off the bottom of the painting. • During the Napoleonic wars, when the monastery was used as an armory, soldiers threw their boots at Judas. • During WWII, the dining hall suffered a direct hit in a Nazi bombing raid. • The painting was covered by a canvas, but trapped moisture caused fungus to grow on the surface of the painting.
Mona was an abbreviation of madonna, meaning “my lady,” the equivalent of Madame, or Signora. So the title means Madame Lisa. • Lisa became the wife of a Florentine silk merchant at the age of 16. She was 24 years old when the portrait was completed. • Da Vinci worked on it for four years and kept it with him until he died at age 50.
The painting was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by a former Louvre employee and rediscovered in a hotel room in Florence 2 years later.
Mona Lisa, A Prototype for Renaissance Portraiture • The portrait is a prototype of the Renaissance portrait. In other words, Da Vinci introduced a new way of painting portraits. • He used both linear and aerial perspective in the background • He used a relaxed, natural, three-quarter pose which was a departure from the stiff profile head and shoulders portraits which had become the norm at that time. • He used a technique known as sfumato, (smoke) building the painting with layers of semi-transparent glazes, so the expression on the model’s face, especially her smile, is softly ambiguous, or mysterious.
There are 2 versions of this painting, one in the Louvre, in Paris, and one at the National Gallery, in London. • The scene refers to a legend that Jesus and John the Baptist met up as infants on the road to Egypt, fleeing Herod’s decree that all Jewish infants under the age of two years must be murdered.
The cross and halos that are absent in the first version (the Louvre version) were possibly added to the London version by another artist, to make identification of the two child figures easier. • The pool of water foreshadows John’s role as the one who will baptize Jesus.
Leonardo da VinciThe Virgin and St. Anne • Da Vinci shows us three generations of the Holy Family here in an intimate and relaxed moment. The Virgin Mary sits in her mother’s lap (St. Anne), and reaches lovingly toward Jesus, who plays with a lamb. The lamb, of course, symbolizes Jesus’ future role as a sacrifice for all mankind.
The Lady with the Ermine was painted in oils on wooden panel • Cecilia Gallerani was the mistress of Leonardo's employer, Lodovico Sforza • At the time of her portrait, Cecilia was about sixteen. • was renowned for her beauty, her scholarship, and her poetry. She was betrothed at the age of about ten years to a young nobleman of the house of Visconti but the marriage was called off. Cecilia became the mistress of the Duke and bore him a son, but he chose to marry a girl from a more noble family, Beatrice d'Este.[3]
Cecilia's dress is comparatively simple, revealing that she is not a noblewoman. Her coiffure, known as a "coazone", confines her hair smoothly to her head with two bands of hair bound on either side of her face and a long plait at the back. Her hair is held in place by a fine gauze veil with a woven border of gold-wound threads, a black band and a sheath over the plait.
Why an Ermine? • There are several interpretations of the significance of the ermine in her portrait. The ermine was a traditional symbol of purity because it was believed that an ermine would face death rather than soil its white coat by hiding in a muddy burrow. • For Ludovico il Moro the ermine had a further personal significance in that he had been in the Order of the Ermine in 1488 and used it as a personal symbol. • Given that Cecilia gave birth to a son acknowledged by Lodovico in May of 1491, and the association of weasels and pregnancy in Italian Renaissance culture, it is also possible that the animal was a symbol of Cecilia's pregnancy.
This is one of only four portraits of women by Leonardo da Vinci. • It is thought by some art historians that this woman was another mistress of the Duke of Milan.
Leonardo da Vinci • Vitruvian Man 1487 • The Vitruvian Man remains one of the most referenced and reproduced artistic images in the world today.
Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed classical architect, Vitruvius, for which it is named. • The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man.
According to Leonardo's notes, (written in mirror writing), it was made as a study of the proportions of the (male) human body as described in Vitruvius. For example: • the length of a man's outspread arms (arm span) is equal to his height • the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is one-eighth of a man's height etc. (ie. The figure is 8 heads high)
The Renaissance was a period in which the human form was recognized as noble, made in the image of God. Mankind was seen as “the measure of all things,” and human proportions were thought to correspond with measurements found in the natural world and in the structure of the universe The Renaissance was a period in which the
Michelangelo Sculptor Painter Architect
"In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it."—Michelangelo
Michelangelo’s David. • This statue is perhaps the most iconic image of the Renaissance period. • Michelangelo’s statue stands 17 feet high (about 3 metres)
"In it may be seen most beautiful contours of legs, with attachments of limbs and slender outlines of flanks that are divine; nor has there ever been seen a pose so easy, or any grace to equal that in this work, or feet, hands and head so well in accord, one member with another, in harmony, design, and excellence of artistry. And, of a truth, whoever has seen this work need not trouble to see any other work executed in sculpture, either in our own or in other times, by no matter what craftsman."Giorgio Vasari 1550
Michelangelo’s David • It was sculpted between1501 and 1504. • Michelangelo was only twenty-six years old, when he won the commission to complete the statue from a block of marble (the giant) that had been abandoned 30 years earlier by another artist. • When it was finished, David was placed in front of the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall. In 1873 the statue was moved from the piazza, to protect it from damage, and brought to its current location in the Academia Gallery, in Florence.
A Classic Pose • David is a Renaissance interpretation of a common ancient Greek theme of the standing heroic male nude. • In the High Renaissance, contrapposto poses were thought of as a distinctive feature of antique sculpture. In David, the figure stands with one leg holding its full weight and the other leg relaxed. This classic pose causes the figure’s hips and shoulders to rest at opposite angles, giving a slight s-curve to the entire torso. This curve gives the figure its classical grace. • Michelangelo’s David has become one of the most recognized pieces of Renaissance sculpture, becoming a symbol of both strength and youthful human beauty.
Traditionally, David was portrayed after his victory, triumphant over the giant Goliath. Both Verrochio’s and Donatello’s Davids are depicted standing over Goliath's severed head. • Michelangelo has depicted David before the battle. Davis is tense, but not so much in a physical as in a mental sense. The slingshot he carries over his shoulder is almost invisible, emphasizing that David's victory was one of cleverness, not sheer force.
The hand that holds the stone is larger than the other, drawing the viewer’s attention to the action that is about to unfold.
Facing down the enemy • Michelangelo was a citizen of the city state of Firenze (Florence), and Florence was surrounded by much more powerful enemy city states. • When the statue of David was placed on the square in front of the city hall, the people of Florence immediately identified with him as the cunning underdog triumphing over the big bad guy. David was positioned so that his glare was directed south, toward the rival city of Rome.
Michelangelo’s Moses • This statue was commissioned by Pope Julius II for Julius’ tomb. • It was one of 40 figures that were intended to adorn the tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica. The tomb ended up in a smaller church, with only a third of the originally planned figures.
Moses • Moses, sculpted in marble, has horns on his head, in the manner that was traditional in medieval depictions of Moses (tongs of fire according to the bible). • Horns were symbolic of authority in ancient Near Eastern culture, and the medieval depiction had the advantage of giving Moses a convenient attribute by which he could easily be recognized in crowded pictures.
Pieta • Pieta means ‘Pity,’ and this is certainly the emotion that this magnificent sculpture evokes. • We feel pity for Christ’s suffering, but also for his grieving mother, who holds her son’s body in an attitude of quiet acceptance.
