Renaissance Arts

1. Renaissance Arts • By DebaratiMukherjee • meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com • Like our page on Facebook to stay updated • https://www.facebook.com/bforbureaucracy meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

2. 1: The impact of renaissance on arts:Humanism and art • Humanism as a cultural movement had great impact in creating interest in art- architecture, sculpture, painting, music etc • The aim of humanism was to perfect all forms of art and scholarship • The emancipation of man and the focus on the dignity of men created an atmosphere of intellectual freedom and individual expression • The recovery of the secular and humane philosophy of Greece and Rome not only led to individualism but promoted new trends and styles in the spheres of art. • The architects, sculptors and painters indulged in sweeping independent inner expressions • The craze of classics and the love of beauty became the most striking features of Italian Renaissance. meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

3. 2:Humanism and art • The beginning of some new styles of Italian art can be located in the works of artists like Giotto di Bondone of Florence (1267-1337) • Boccaccio described him as the founder of a new art. Dante in his Divine Comedy cited him as the greatest living artist • He can be described as the founder of Renaissance painting. • He revived the beauty of classical art by abandoning the conventional and the rigid forms of Byzantine art. Instead he tried to the appearance of the world as he saw it. • Compared to the late fully developed form of art during ‘High Renaissance”, Giotto’s landscapes did not look very realistic. But what was original in his work was his ability to extract from nature its essential forms and reproduce them in a simple and expressive way. • Was in great demand in his time and was patronized by prosperous bankers like Peruri, Bardi and by King Robert of Anjou. • Among his important works were the frescoes in the Upper Church of the Bascilica of San Francesco d’ Assisi, Arena Chapel in Padua, Florence Cathedral and his paintings included the Massacre of the Innocents and Monuments of truth, the Lamentations, the Betrayal of Christ and the Death of Saint Francis • All these works displayed his power of expression of human emotions and that of presenting narrative details. meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

4. 3:Upper church of the Basilica of San Francesco d’ Assisi meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

5. 4:Giotto Massacre of the Innocents meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

6. 5: Giotto Betrayal of Christ meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

7. 6: Giotto lamentation meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

8. 7: Giotto death of St. Francis meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

9. 8:Humanism and art • The art that developed after Giotto successfully established a more realistic relationship between figures and landscapes • Florence became the most important centre of artistic creations. • In no other city was the feeling of confidence and hope more intense than in the city of wealthy merchants. The revolutionary trends seen in the artistic developments during the Renaissance is evident in the works of Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), Filippo Brunelleschi(1377-1466), Masaccio (1401-28) and Donatello (1386?-1466) • Their sculpture, architecture and paintings were based on experiments and in the process they brought about visual representation of space through the laws of perspective. meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

10. 9:Humanism and art • After Giotto, among the young Florentine artists and architects, the name of Filippo Brunelleschi stands out • He was employed to complete the cathedral of Florence, a Gothic structure • The Florentines had wanted their cathedral to be crowned by an imposing cupola which no artist had been able to do as it required spanning the immense face between the pillars on which this cupola was to be created. He successfully devised a method for this. • It is said that he travelled to Rome and personally studied the ruins of the temples and palaces and made sketches of their ornamentations and forms • His architecture was not mere imitation of the past • His work was very different from the past as it combined columns, pilasters and arches to produce an effect of light of light and shade. His framing of the doors clearly show his mastery of the mastery of the ancient structures. • For the next few centuries, architects and Europe and America adopted meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

11. 10: Brunelleschi’s cupola meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

12. 11:Brunelleschi’s cupola meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

13. 12:Brunelleschi’s cupola meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

14. 13:Brunelleschi’s cupola meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

15. 14: Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence) meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

16. 15: Donatello (DonatodiNiccolodiBettoBardi) 1386-1466 • He broke new grounds-creation full of energy and spirit • There was realism and vigor in his as is evident form his bronze statue of David • He also tried to replace the study of gentle refineness of his predecessor by a new and vigorous study of nature • He encouraged the study of anatomy and he also believed that beauty was a matter of proportion • This attitude of the Renaissance artists towards beauty was one of the key features of Renaissance art meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

17. 16:Donatello’s works • In 1430 Cosimodi Medici commissioned him to work on his Palazzo Medici- the result was David • At the time of its creation , it was the first known standing nude statue produced since ancient times • Conceived fully in the round, independent of any architectural surroundings and largely representing an allegory of the civic virtues triumphing over brutality and irrationality, it was the first major work of the Renaissance sculpture meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

18. 17: Donatello’s works: statue of St. Mark and Equestrian meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

19. 18:Humanism and art • the good painter must paint principally two things: man and the ideas in man’s mind”-Vinci • Indeed few sources make so attractively explicit the humanist philosophy of man as do Renaissance works of art-it is because Leonardo’s contemporaries did indeed choose them as their subject • The poems, orations, moral essays, histories, and educational treaties of even the greatest humanist are little read today except by specialist as it was written in Latin. • But the paintings, the buildings the statues of Renaissance artists are easily accessible. meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

20. 19:Humanism and art • Renaissance art was a humanist art- in its source, its content, and its style • Allegory of Philosophy by Albrecht Durer(1471-1528) • The woodcut illustrates a volume of love poems(Amores) by the German humanist Conrad Celtis and published in 1502 • The woodcut is humanist as it illustrates a humanist ideal of knowledge meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

21. 20: Durer’s woodcut • The central figure is a women richly gowned and jeweled, wearing a crown and seated on the throne • A tag identifies her as philosophy • The literary source for both Durer and Celtis is the opening paragraph of the popular Consolation of Philosophy, by the late Romanist moralist and scholar Boethius (c.480-524) • In a dream, Boethius saw a majestic women. “In her right hand she had certain books, and in her left she held a scepter,” while on the lower part of her dress was “placed the Greek letter I, and on the upper ® and between the two letters like stairs, there were certain degrees made by a passage from the lower to a higher letter.” • Celtis made one change. He replaced Boethius’ I by the letter Ø, probably intending it to represent phronesis, or prudence, defined by Cicero as “practical knowledge of things of things to be sought for and things to be avoided.” • The two Greek letters therefore stands for the two great divisions of philosophy, ethics(moral beliefs and rules about right and wrong) and metaphysics. (® denotes theoria, speculative or contemplative philosophy) • The stairs between them are the seven liberal arts; grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and medicine meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

22. 21: Durer’s woodcut • Celtis spelt out the meaning of the picture at the top and bottom. “everything in heaven and on earth, in the air and sea, all things human, everything the flaming god (sun) brings to pass in the whole world (of nature), I philosophy, hold them all in my breast.” and • Again “ the Greeks call me sophia(wisdom), the Latinssapientia (wisdom). • The Egyptians and Chaldeans discovered me, the Greeks wrote me down, the Latins translated me, the Germans have added to me.” meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

23. 22:Durer’s woodcut • In medallions fixed to the wreath around the central figure are portraits of the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy, Plato the Greek, the Latins Cicero and Virgil, and to represent the wisdoms of the Germans, Albertus Magnus, the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas. • His inclusion is a touch of German nationalism, but a reminder too that the great scholistics of the Middle ages continued to be widely read and admired throughout the 16th c. meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

24. 22:Durer’s woodcut • In each corner is one of the four elements( fire, air, water and earth), one of the four humors (the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic and the melancholic), one of the four seasons, and one of the four ages of man. • Finally on each of the arms of the throne is a Greek inscription: on the left, “First honor God, "on the right, “Be just to all .” • The wise man, clearly , should know something about everything , have some knowledge of all things divine and human. He must be both humanist and encyclopedist. For the word “encyclopedia”, as more than one 16th c scholar ahs pointed out, is made up of the words Kyklos(circle, orb) and paideia (humanitas) and denotes therefore an all embracing humanitas. • Durerhad made his central figure the central of the ideal. meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

25. 24:19:Humanism and art • The idea of humanitas included virtue as well as knowledge • In 1502, the year of Durer's Allegory of Philosophy appeared, Andre Mantegna finished his Minerva expelling… • In it he pictured the kingdom of the will and of moral choice meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

26. 25: Minerva expelling vices from grove meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

27. 26:Minerva expelling vices from grove • Vice has entered the grove of virtue-the pool has become infected with swamp • Venus, the mother of vices, has imprisoned the mother of virtues in a rock who calls out for help • Standing on the back of a centaur, emblem of a humanity more beast than man, Venus surveys her conquest. • In the pool wallow sloth, ingratitude, ignorance, avarice, hate, suspicion, fraud and malice. • A female satyr with her satyr babies represent lasciviousness • A little monkey women carries a bag of seeds labeled, “the bad”, “the worse” and “the worst” meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

28. 27:Minerva expelling vices from grove • Behind the garden the mountain seems to explode-which portrays destruction by vice of the order, beauty and harmony of the moral world • Answering the prayers of the olive souls cry, prudence, or moral wisdom, in the guise of Minerva rushes in from the left, preceded by Diana (with her bow) and Chastity (carrying an extinguished torch) • In the sky on a cloud, waiting for their sisters to open the way for their return to earth, are the three other cardinal virtues: Justice (on the left with sword and scales), Fortitude (wearing a lion’s skin as helmet), and Temperance (holding two jars) meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

29. 28:Minerva expelling vices from grove • The fierceness of the fight is emphasized by a fantastic confrontation in the clouds, where an attentive eye can discern heads in profile facing each other, some light ,some dark personifying the combat of vice and virtue and giving it a cosmic resonance • The theme of the battle of virtue and vice was an old one but Mantegna has treated it with a typically humanist sensibility. • It records the recurrent struggle of man to order his soul, to subordinate his passions to the rule of reasons. • Virtue is as natural as vice. Both are in man’s power…… meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

30. 29: High Renaissance • Period from about 1490-1520 described as such • Art in this period was scientifically and critically analyzed • The new ideas were understood and appreciated by the educated humanists and the elites in the city states • In fact the change is noticed in the field of painting from 1450’s • The different disciplines such as ‘ the universal man’ of the humanist philology, technique of art and scientific theory, anatomy, the use of geometry to express a sense of proportion, antiquity and rhetoric were getting interlocked and became the hallmark of high renaissance • Art and architecture in this period expressed the skills and genius of the individuals such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante and many others. • In fact his phase was dominated by the works of three great artists Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

31. 30: Leonardo (1452-1519) • Probably the greatest of Florence • Regarded as the most versatile genius who personified in himself the diverse qualities of a painter, architect, engineer, musician, mathematician, military and hydraulic engineer, poet and scientist. • Came from a low social background; began life from an artist’s shop but succeeded in obtaining the patronage of Lorenzo di Medici • Continued the tradition of experimentation initiated by earlier artists, particularly Brunelleschi • His work based on intensive study of human anatomy and large scale experiments that included dissection of the human body • His creations are divided into 4 periods: • Began his career in Florence and worked till 1482 • Moved to Milan and stayed there till 1499 • Returned to Florence and worked till 1506 • Accepted the invitation of the French king, Francis I, worked and lived till his death meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

32. 31: Leonardo • Believed in the most accurate imitation of nature and he himself created his works on the study of nature • His analysis of human anatomy was remarkable as it was based on his personal experiments of dissection of human corpses • His love for nature was close to worship • His creations not only depicted his extraordinary technical skill and understanding of science but also his sense of geometric composition • The smallest object in a painting is presented with accurate detail meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

33. 32: Leonardo: study of animals meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

34. 33: study of fetus : Leonardo meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

35. 34: Leonardo : landscapes meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

36. 35: Leonardo : maps meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

37. 36: study of anatomy : Leonardo meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

38. 37: Michelangelo Buonarroti(1475-1564) • Genius-a painter, sculptor, architect and poet • From Florence, a Tuscan, belonging to a family of bankers • Princes and popes outbid each other to obtain his services • He depicted human figures, particularly the male as strong and powerful character • Was temperamental and short tempered which became worse with age • Admired and feared for his temperamental outburst and unrestrained independence meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

39. 38: The Sistine Chapel • His greatest achievement (1508-12); was thirty three • Depicted a scene from the Book of Genesis, presenting a concentration of paintings at a single location • Covered more than one thousand yards of plaster with frescoes and had to paint three hundred figures while lying curled up under the ceiling • His feat apart from everything else was one of sheer physical endurance • while carrying out the task, he wrote a letter to his friend describing the curious torture • “my stomach is thrust towards my chin my beard curls up towards the sky my head leans right over onto my back my chest is like that of an old shrew, the brush endlessly dripping onto my face has coated it with multi layered paving my loins have retreated into my body, and my buttocks act as a counter weight. I tread blindly without being able to see my feet, my skin stretches out in front of me and shrinks in folds behind. I am bent as a Syrian bow.” meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

40. 39: Michelangelo's masterpieces • the natural manner in which the human figures were portrayed, the high quality of the drawings, the use of perspective, and the outstanding combination of coherence and movement embodied in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes so enchanted contemporary critics that they for centuries failed to realize that he was a fine colorist as well • it placed Michelangelo at a height that no artist had reached before meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

41. 40: god dividing the light from the darkness meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

42. 41: creation of sun moon and planets meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

43. 42: god dividing land and water meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

44. 43: creation of Adam meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

45. 44: creation of Eve from the rib of Adam meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

46. 45: the temptation meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

47. 46: fall of man : banishment meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

48. 47: the Deluge meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

49. 48: the Deluge-details meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com

50. 49: Noah’s sacrifice meetdebaratimukherjee.wordpress.com