| Key to Art History |
|
|
1. The term Renaissance means rebirth and describes developments in culture during the 14th and 15th century in Europe. 2. Some art historians believe that these developments peaked during the early years of the 16th century, when Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael Sanzio all were active. This time is referred to as the High Renaissance. 3. By the 1300’s, Europe had become relatively stabilized, permitting commerce, trade and the growth of a prosperous merchant and banking class. Wealthy families, such as the Medici of Florence, supported artists, poets and musicians. 4. Greek and Roman sculptures were discovered as excavations for new construction revealed the ancient Greco-Roman world, literally, beneath the feet of 14th century Europeans. 5. Renaissance artists learned by copying works that were, in many cases, copies by Roman artists of earlier Greek work. 6. Monks, working in the scriptoria of the many monasteries established throughout Europe, had preserved ancient writings on science, government, philosophy and art. 7. Florence was the center of the Italian Renaissance. Petrarch, the poet, and Dante, author of the Inferno and the Divine Comedy , were Florentine. Many of the important European painters, sculptors and architects of the 14th and 15th century were either from Florence or worked in Florence. 8. During the 1300’s, two artists, Duccio and Giotto, served as examples of the transition from the style of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. They lived at the same time in two separate city-states in central Italy. Duccio, who lived in Sienna, continued to work in the formalized style of the Middle Ages. Giotto, from Florence, created a revolution in painting by depicting characters that displayed vivid emotion. Nothing like it had been seen for nearly a thousand years. 9. In the early years of the 1400’s, Florence’s most progressive painter was Masaccio, born Tommaso Cassai. Masaccio only lived to be 26, but his work heavily influenced later Florentine artists, in particular, Michelangelo. 10. In sculpture, the most prominent Florentine was Donatello. 11. The architect Filipo Brunelleschi was among the first to incorporate scientific perspective into his work. He was involved in a noteworthy competition for a commission to create bronze doors for the baptistery in Florence with another artist, Ghiberti. Ghiberti’s design was conservative while Brunelleschi’s incorporated new ideas about perspective. Brunelleschi lost but went on to dominate Florentine architecture, designing the dome of the great cathedral, Santa Maria Della Fiori. 12. In the middle of the 1400’s, Guttenberg’s invention of the printing press contributed to the spread of ancient science, philosophy and law to an audience that had never previously been exposed to these ideas. 13. By the end of the 1400’s, Greco-Roman humanism had become a popular philosophy in the upper classes of Renaissance society. Images by Botticelli that would have been seen as sacrilegious during the Middle Ages adorned the walls of Renaissance palaces. 14. Michelangelo placed images from Greek mythology in the ceiling frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. 15. The most important work from this period is by Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael Sanzio. 16. In the "School of Athens" , Raphael portrayed Greek philosophers, mathematicians and scientists using portraits of his contemporaries such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. 17. Florence was not the only City-State to produce important artists during the Renaissance. The Venetians Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese are considered equal in stature to the Florentines. 18. During the later stages of Michelangelo's life, his sculpture and painting, such as the Last Judgement from the Sistine Chapel, took on a distorted elongated appearance. Classical balance and harmony were abandoned in favor of a more personal and expressive form. This style has been referred to in a negative way as "Mannerism." In Italy, Mannerists included Parmagianino, whose "Virgin with the Long Neck" is one of the oddest of 16th century religious paintings. 19. Bronzino, another Mannerist, ignored both naturalism and realism for an elegant and some believe "decadent" effect. In Mannerism, the artist uses the form and content of a work to communicate a personal vision. The artist becomes more important than the subject matter. 20. The expressive distortion of Mannerism affected artists outside of Italy, such as El Greco in Spain and Peter Brueghelin in the North.
[
Italian Renaissance
Overview
]
|
|
|
