Arturo Pertore here, but you can call me Art. This is Explorations in Art History, starring me and the hand. Well, what about the rest of me? How embarrassing, people watching from around the world and I'm stuck waiting on some five-fingered prima donna.
That's better. It looks like we'll be talking about the Renaissance period. During the medieval period, the torch lit by the Greeks and carried on by the Romans had been rejected. Medieval values instead elevated the spiritual and denounced the flesh. Then, in the mid-14th century, Petrarch, an Italian poet and scholar of Latin, was able to reconcile Christianity and classical and Roman Greek thought in his writings and revive interest in what had been dismissed as the pagan past.
This started the period called the Renaissance, or Rebirth. The shift of focus from God-centered to more human-centered interests became known as Humanism. Of course, there wouldn't have been much of a renaissance without a renaissance man or two. A man with expertise in many fields. Take Brunelleschi, who was a goldsmith, architect, engineer, sculptor, and mathematician.
As an artist, he discovered the principles of linear perspective, which gives the illusion of three-dimensional... space to two-dimensional art. Start with a horizon line, add a vanishing point, and then lines that converge to that vanishing point.
Now you have a framework for making objects appear farther away. Or closer. Of course.
Brunelleschi was most famous for his massive dome. No, not that dome. The dome he built for the Florence Cathedral, equal in size to the dome of the Pantheon.
Brunelleschi's new method of construction was so different that some Florentines wondered if he was mad. He devised a way to build the dome without scaffolding and without using flying buttresses commonly used in Gothic architecture to support the weight of large structures. Sixteen years later, when the dome was completed, it was recognized as one of the most important as a marvel of the era and brunelleschi was heralded as a genius yes donatello also started as a goldsmith no no no no donatello was not a crime fighting turtle but donatello did study the old roman styles of sculpture and ornamentation his david is famous as the first freestanding bronze sculpt It depicts David as the beautiful youth of the Bible just after decapitating the giant Goliath and uses classical techniques like contrapposto in its design.
Donatello also developed a new way of sculpting in shallow. relief that applied the rules of linear perspective to create a greater illusion of depth. He would have been hailed as the most accomplished sculptor of the Renaissance, if not for the coming of Michelangelo, who, along with da Vinci and Raphael, kicked the art world into high gear, or the High Renaissance. Perhaps no one exemplifies the ideal of the renaissance man more than Leonardo da Vinci.
No, renaissance man was not a superhero. Really, read your history. Leonardo was a talented painter, sculptor, sculptor, scientist, architect, and even a military engineer. He painted the most famous portrait in the world, the Mona Lisa.
His boundless curiosity was best exemplified by his notebooks, which were filled with inventions, like a tank. a flying machine, and a parachute. In 1482, Leonardo went to Milan where he painted his famous mural, The Last Supper, on the wall of a monastery. He chose to portray the emotional moment when Jesus predicts that one of the apostles will betray him, and the betrayer will take bread at the same time he does.
The apostles react in varying degrees of surprise and horror, except for Judas, who, distracted by the commotion, reaches for a piece of bread. Leonardo used perspective lines as a compositional device that leads the eye to Jesus' face, the calm sinner in the chaos. Though The Last Supper had been painted by others, Leonardo's version was the first to depict the Apostles as real people acting, or reacting, like real people.
Now we come to Michelangelo. Do you think we could do this one straight? Okay.
At 24, Michelangelo carved the famous Pieta, which in Italian means pity. The Pieta depicts the body of Jesus on his mother Mary's lap as she mourns his death by crucifixion and combines the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty and naturalism. Shortly after installing the Pieta, Michelangelo overheard someone say that the sculpture was the work of another artist. That night, Michelangelo chiseled the words Michelangelo Buonarroti Florentine made this on the sash running across Mary's breast.
Later, Michelangelo regretted this act. It was the only statue he ever signed. Michelangelo was reluctant to accept the commission to paint the Sistine Chapel, but Pope Julius II insisted.
Contrary to popular belief, Michelangelo did not lay on his back to paint, but stood on specially designed scaffolding and had to reach upward, craning his neck awkwardly to paint. Fresco required painting into a newly applied layer of wet plaster and Michelangelo, also a poet, complained in a letter to a friend, My beard turns up to heaven, my nape falls in. A rich embroidery bedews my face from brush drops thick and thin.
Four years later the arduous task was done and a masterpiece created. Eww! The paintings of the Sistine Chapel had a profound effect on other artists. One story claims that Raphael slipped into the chapel to examine the paintings when Michelangelo was absent.
Mama mia! What's the matter with me? It's about to do the drawing board! Raphael scraped the fresco he was painting off the wall and repainted it, imitating the more powerful style of Michelangelo.
Raphael became a favorite of the Pope and was commissioned to paint other rooms in the Vatican. His greatest masterpiece, the School of Athens, portrays Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists from classical antiquity sharing their ideas and learning from each other. It's a kind of intellectual fantasy gathering since these figures all lived at different times.
And it shows that humanism had become accepted in the church. Raphael even included himself standing with the astronomers. Sounds like my kind of party.
Plato, Aristotle, Arturo. Huh? We haven't mentioned the Northern Renaissance. No, no, no.
Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael did not go north for a skiing trip. Sorry, folks, you'll have to excuse the hand today. It's just that, well, for many, the Renaissance was an intoxicating time.
Okay, so what happened in Italy didn't stay in Italy. The ideas of the Renaissance migrated up into the rest of Europe and started what was called the Northern Renaissance. Jan van Eyck pioneered the techniques of painting with oil-based paints, on wooden panels.
Artists of the north had a fondness for meticulous detail and were more interested in realism than classicism. Albrecht Durer traveled to Italy and was friends with Raphael and other artists of the Renaissance. He was able to incorporate Italian and northern ideas into his paintings and prints. He became one of the most influential artists of printmaking and elevated this relatively new art form to new levels of aesthetic quality and popularity. After the death of Leonardo in 1519 and Raphael in 1520, artists rejected the values of the high renaissance for a more heightened or more mannered approach.
Mannerists like Tintoretto created unbalanced compositions that gave a visual tension to the work. Tintoretto's painting of The Last Supper shifts the table from the center to the left side and emphasizes dramatic light and motion to increase the drama of the image. Mannerist artists also intentionally distorted and stylized the human body and spatial relationships.
Like this painting of the Madonna by Parmigianino. The figures are elongated, and instead of balancing the angels on either side of Mary, they are deliberately squeezed into left side with only a tiny Saint Jerome on the right. Does she do it? The Renaissance was a period of great discovery, invention, and creativity.
The Renaissance included the discovery of the New World by Columbus, the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg, the beginner of the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther, and the scientific advances of Copernicus and Galileo, to name a few. The influence of the Renaissance on Western art is ongoing and even went viral without Facebook or Twitter or YouTube because of the strength of its ideas and the beauty of its creations.