Art & History Appreciation

Chap 12

Early Renaissance Art

Slide 1 Early Renaissance Art 1400-1500

The word Renaissance is generally defined as the rebirth of classical antiquity in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yet scholars argue about exactly when the Renaissance happened, where it took place, how long it lasted, or if it even happened at all. Scholars also disagree about whether the Renaissance is a “rebirth” of classical antiquity (ancient Greece and Rome) or simply a continuation of classical traditions but with different emphases. Traditional accounts of the Renaissance favor a narrative that places the birth of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy.

Slide 2 Renaissance scholars and artists tried to understand, describe and reproduce the natural world in a rational and scientific way. In Italy, the achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans were rediscovered. In Flanders, artists developed an intense interest in the natural world, developing art with breathtaking accuracy.

Slide 3 The subjects alternated between peasants’ labors and aristocratic pleasures.

In the February page, farm people relax before a fire.

Although many people at this time lived in hovels, this farm looks comfortable and well maintained.

This painting clearly shows some Gothic conventions including:

1. The missing front wall of the house

2. Attention to detail

3. High placement of the horizon line.

The influence of the International Gothic Style (think elongated, pointed architecture with intricate detail) is manifest in the meticulous, near microscopic paintings of Northern Europe that resemble medieval manuscript illuminations. The Très Riches Heures is a late example of an illuminated Book of Hours (Christian devotional text) that both looks back to medieval artistic traditions and forward to the Renaissance. The Limbourg Brothers were famous late Gothic illuminators. They synthesized the achievements of contemporary illuminators into a style characterized by subtlety of line, painstaking technique, and minute rendering of detail. This book of hours, considered their greatest work, is one of the landmarks of the art of book illumination. It combines naturalism of detail with an overall decorative effect. The Limbourg brothers were among the first to render specific landscape scenes with accuracy. Their art did much to determine the course that Early Netherlandish art was to take during the 15th century. A generalized calendar (not specific to any year) of church feasts and saints' days, often illuminated, is a usual part of a book of hours, but the illustrations of the months are exceptional and innovative in their scope, and the best-known element of the decoration of the manuscript. Most of them show one of the duke's castles in the background and are filled with details of the delights and labors of the months, from the Duke's court to his peasants, a counterpart to the prayers of the hours. Each illustration is surmounted with its appropriate hemisphere showing a solar chariot, the signs and degrees of the zodiac, and numbering the days of the month and the letters for the clergyman lunar calendar.

Slide 4 Map Throughout the 15th century, the artists of Flanders were considered to be the best in Europe. The art produced there is called Flemish. The major seaport and commercial center of Bruges was the commercial power of Northern Europe, rivaling the Italian city-states of Florence and Venice.

To understand why Flanders became the site of such intensive artistic production in the fifteenth century, it is useful to consider its place within the wider western European economy. Flanders was the most urbanized region of northern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Between c. 1000 and 1300, its town and ports grew and number as it became the major center for trade in northern Europe, acting as a nodal point for merchants from England, the Baltic, Italy, and France. For this reason, its cities, particularly Bruges and Ghent, became centers of artistic production.

Slide 5 Annunciation Triptich (Merode Alterpiece) The Annunciation Triptych displays the hallmarks of the emergent Early Netherlandish style. A fascination with the natural world dominates. The smallest details are meticulously worked to reflect reality on a two-dimensional plane. Illusionistic effects are enhanced by the technical innovation of overlaying translucent oil pigments on aqueous opaque pigments. The resulting luminous, enamel-like surface achieves apparent depth, rich gradations of light, and a broad distribution of color values. The Annunciation Triptych was conceived as an object of private devotion. Although scholars have given complex interpretations for its iconography, the significance of the imagery must have been understood by the ordinary educated person of its time. The center panel focuses on the Virgin in prayer. As she has not yet recognized the presence of the archangel Gabriel, the event depicted is the moment just before the Annunciation. Some objects, such as the lily and the laver, symbolize the Virgin’s purity expressed through the divine birth of Christ. The tiny figure of the Christ child bearing a cross and descending on rays of light from the round window indicates that the primary subject is the Incarnation. This understanding is borne out by the flame of the candle, symbolic of God’s divinity, which has just been extinguished, a further reference to the Incarnation, the moment when God became man. This significant detail is placed in the exact center of the composition. The presence on the right panel of Joseph, who is not usually attendant at the Annunciation, can also be explained in the context of the Incarnation. Joseph has made two mousetraps on the bench and in the shop window opening onto the street are thought to allude to references in the writings of Saint Augustine identifying the cross as the devil’s mousetrap. On the left wing, the kneeling donor appears to witness the central scene through the open door. His wife kneels behind him, and a town messenger stands at the garden gate. The owners would have purchased the triptych to use in private prayer. An image of Christ’s conception in an interior not unlike the one in which they lived also may have reinforced their hope for their own children. One of the most celebrated early Netherlandish paintings—particularly for its detailed observation, rich imagery, and superb condition—this triptych belongs to a group of paintings associated with the workshop of Robert Campin. Stylistic and technical evidence suggests that the altarpiece was executed in phases. The Annunciation, which follows a slightly earlier workshop composition, probably was not commissioned. Shortly thereafter, the male donor ordered the wings. At a later point, in the 1430s, presumably following the donor’s marriage, the portraits of his wife and of the messenger were added. The windows of the central panel, originally covered with gold leaf, were painted with a blue sky, and the armorial shields were added afterward.

Slide 6 Van Eyck’s best-known painting today is an elaborate double portrait of a couple, traditionally identified as Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife, Giovanna Cenami. The true meaning of the painting remains a mystery. Early interpretations suggested that this was a wedding or a betrothal. Above the mirror on the back wall the artist signed the work with the words “Jan van Eyck was here” as if he were a witness.

VIDEO 7:11

Slide 7 Ghent Altarpiece In the film The Monuments Men, George Clooney solemnly pronounces the Ghent Altarpiece to be the most important work of art in the Western tradition. As humbug as that may sound, it is certainly important, as much for its unparalleled technique as for what the painting has meant historically. Removed from its place in the Cathedral of Ghent by Napoleon (well, the main panels, anyway) and then by German occupying forces during World War I, the panels were returned and reassembled, only to be taken again by the Nazis in 1942 and stored carelessly in a salt mine for the duration of the Second World War. The altarpiece was rescued by Allied art experts in 1945 who reassembled, cleaned and restored the panels, which had lost much of their varnish and suffered some surface abrasion. In its basic configuration, the rather austere, largely monochromatic outer panels—which show the kneeling patrons and statues of prophets and glimpses into orderly rooms; are grounded in the material and sensible terrestrial world, in which Gabriel appears to Mary at the moment of the Annunciation. The relatively large size of the panels pushed Jan Van Eyck to new heights of virtuosity as a master of light; directional light, saturation, the softest scale of illuminations in the gradation of shadow, the construction of space through light and shade, symphonies of reflection and refraction alive in a world of textured surfaces—literally, the light of the world. Here, for the first time on such a scale, is a picture of the completely natural world saturated by the light of God—the perfect intermingling of divine illumination with the created world—and all described in paint. Van Eyck creates a world within the painting as substantial and real as the world outside the painting.

Slide 8 Ghent Altarpiece closed The kneeling donors are depicted on the outer extremes, separated by simulated statues of two standing saints painted in grisaille (shades of grey)—St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist. In the middle panels is a depiction of the Annunciation. Figures of the angel and Mary are found on the outer edges of the panels. The Holy Spirit hovers over Mary. The two contiguous scenes between them are pure genre scenes. Beside Gabriel, a window opens onto a view of buildings in Ghent (left), beside the Virgin, a recessed niche holds a silver tray, a small hanging silver pitcher and a linen towel neatly hanging from a rack. These items are consistent with iconography of the period that uses domestic objects as a means of expressing the purity of the Virgin. We are drawn most deeply into the center of the altarpiece (achieved without mathematically calculated perspective—you can tell because the floor appears to tilt upward), toward the mystery within. At the top of the Gabriel panel, beneath a shallow rounded arch, is the Old Testament prophet Zacharias, father of John the Baptist; and above the Virgin, we see the Old Testament prophet Micah, who predicted the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. The two central panels in this upper register depict the Erythraean and Cumaean Sibyls (sibyls are female figures from ancient Greece and Rome who prophesied the future). These four figures are all messengers of the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ.

Slide 9 Ghent Altarpiece open Astonishingly, given its many trials and tribulations, the altarpiece has weathered well. Only one of the original 12 panels (8 of which are part of the hinged shutter apparatus, and therefore painted on both sides), has been lost. In 1934 the panels depicting St. John the Baptist, and another depicting the Just Judges were stolen from the church. The John the Baptist panel was recovered. The Just Judges panel (on the lower left when the altarpiece is open—see image at the top of the page) was replaced with a modern copy during the 1945 restoration. The other panels have all survived, although there is some lingering disagreement about whether they are now reassembled in their original configuration, given the many times the altarpiece has been taken apart. But when the altarpiece is opened, we travel, accompanied by prophets on foot and princes on horseback, saints and martyrs and more angels, to the brilliantly-colored heart of the scene depicting the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.

Slide 10 The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (right) is presided over by the figure of God-the bearded Jesus with crown and scepter, (left). This figure can also be read as Christ, flanked by separate panels of John the Baptist to the right and the Virgin Mary to the left. In The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the sacrifice of the lamb, symbol of Christ’s slaughter for our salvation, is similarly Byzantine in origin.

The inner panels are painted in the bold and dynamic naturalistic style for which the artist Jan van Eyck is justifiably famous. In all of its positions, the Ghent Altarpiece is a vision of the visionary. It alludes not only to sight but to sound—musical angels accompanying the elaborate orchestration of the whole. Its appeal to the senses threatens to overwhelm the intellectual apprehension of its content.

Slide 11 Rogier van der Weyden, a little younger than van Eyck, had a large workshop in Brussels that attracted artist as far away as Italy. Van der Weyden's style is most often characterized as one that paid special attention to human emotion. The earliest painting that can be ascribed to Rogier van der Weyden with any certainty is also the artist's greatest and most influential extant work: the great Deposition. The Deposition was an altarpiece, intended for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Archers of Leuven, who commissioned it. At just over 7 ft high and 8 ½ ft wide, the painting is very large by the usual standards of Early Netherlandish pictures. Ten figures in all cover the painted surface almost entirely, with their heads close to the upper edge of the panel. The body of Jesus has already been removed from the Cross, and is received by two elderly men, the bearded Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus. Surrounded by Jesus's mourning friends they are holding His dead body for a moment before setting it down. Mary is sinking to the ground in a faint beside her son, and is supported by John, the favorite disciple of Jesus, and by one of the holy women. On the extreme right, the despairing Mary Magdalene seems on the brink of collapse.

The scene shown would have lasted for only a moment, but there is nothing momentary about its depiction, which is quite detached from the historical event. Rogier achieves this effect principally by placing the group in a painted niche like an altar shrine; the hill of Golgotha, the Place of Skulls where the Cross stood, is suggested only by skulls and arm bones on the narrow strip of stone floor. A connection is thus established with those gilded shrines holding painted statues that were a particularly costly and lavish form of retable. However, Rogier was not imitating a carved altar. He shows "live" figures rather than statues, and the life-like effect is emphasized by their appearance, almost life-size, in the place where mere wooden statues would be expected in an altar. Using such methods, Rogier gives them the three-dimensionality of statues but the look of a painting, which is much more life-like than sculpture.

Slide 12 This Deposition was the center panel of an altarpiece commissioned by the Louvain Crossbowmen’s Guild. The altarpiece once included panels representing the Four Evangelists and Christ’s Resurrection.

Rogier relates the figures to each other in a masterly composition, yet he emphasizes a number of different accents. The limp body of Christ is at the center and appears to be held quite naturally by the two men so that it is almost facing the observer, with hardly anything else encroaching on it. This is the part of the picture intended to inspire the greatest reverence, referring to the sacrament in which, in the Catholic faith, the host and the wine become the body and blood of Christ. During divine service the bread and wine would have stood on the altar below this picture, and when the priest raised the host above his head during the ceremony, the congregation would have seen him doing so directly in front of the painted body of Christ. The almost radiant body is immaculate and beautiful, undisfigured by the marks of scourging, and its delicate but almost swelling form has a distinctly sensuous softness. Only the marks of the five wounds are ugly gashes running with blood. However, the long trickle from the wound in Christ's side passes over the body like a delicate line that traces the curve of the stomach.

Slide 13 Each person has their own personal reaction to grief, reflecting the new Humanistic concern for the individual. The body of Jesus is arranged in a graceful curve, framed by jarringly angular arms. The curve of the body and the arm position are echoed in the fainting Virgin. These figures, set against a solid gilded background, allow the viewer no escape from their expressions of intense grief. The other main character in the picture is Mary. The Mother of God, sinking to the ground as if dead, forms a parallel to Christ, allowing the artist to create a link between the two main groups in a bold effect of composition, since they are moving in different directions: Christ is being carried away to the right, while Mary is falling to the left. At the same time, the correspondence between the figures illustrates an important theological idea of the time both of Mary's own compassionate suffering and her part in Christ's act of redemption. On the right of the picture not directly involved in the action, stands Mary Magdalene. Her magnificent, worldly garments, with the low-necked dress showing her full, sensuous breasts, indicate that she is the "great sinner" who has abandoned her depraved way of life and turned to Christ in repentance. In terms of composition, the Magdalene's figure closes off the picture on the right like a large bracket, matching the similarly bowed figure of John on the left. The curve of Mary Magdalene's cloak, sweeping forward into the picture, is echoed by the hem of the brocade robe worn by Nicodemus, and is continued in the left half of the picture by the folds in the Virgin Mary's blue dress. Such overlapping forms and lines determine the structure of the whole picture: the curve of Christ's body is continued in the Magdalene's left arm and is crossed by the diagonal running in the opposite direction from the eyes of Nicodemus, through the hands of Christ and Mary, to the eye sockets of the skull. Christ's left arm too echoes the movements that seem to curve and turn on each other at the center of the picture.

Slide 14 This painting by Petrus Christus, of a goldsmith in his shop, provided the model for a long line of clearly secular pictures showing people doing business in their shops. These paintings provide a wealth of information about how people lived during this time. Like many Northern Renaissance paintings, Petrus Christus’ Goldsmith in his Shop reveals its complexities to the viewer over time. At first, one sees a group of three people inside a room filled with trinkets. The two standing figures—a male and a female in dressed in rich, expensive-looking clothing—appear to be a couple, as the man has his arm wrapped around the back of the woman. This woman gestures with her left hand towards the seated man, who, clad in a plain, red garment with a matching hat, looks up at the woman. In his left hand, he holds a small balance which supports a gold ring. In fact, the figures are inside a gold shop, and the man is a goldsmith. The baubles on display—objects made from precious metal, stones, glass, and coral—are his wares, and the standing couple is probably about to make a purchase.

However, there is much more to this story. The smith appears to be seated at a work desk, but in fact, the front of the desk is visible, and a length of fabric hangs over it, into our space. Most importantly, a convex mirror resting on the smith’s desk (in the lower right-hand corner of the painting) reveals a cityscape. What we see is not a mere desk however. It is, in fact, the front of the smith’s shop, which opens on a street in Bruges. The two young men captured in the mirror hold a falcon and approach the smith’s shop. The mirror situates us, the viewer, on the street in Bruges with that couple, looking into the smith’s shop at the artisan and the rich patrons behind him.

Slide 15 Close up The two men in the convex mirror may not only be a device used to demonstrate the artist's virtuoso skill in this tour de force of illusionistic painting. The falcon held by the men is a symbol of greed and pride. Since the scale in the hand of the goldsmith, along with the illusions to marriage and purity, represent perfection and balance, the presence of the two figures with their ill-associated bird creates a contrast between the perfect world of the royals and the imperfect world of the viewer. The royal couple is morally superior to the common man.

Slide 16 Hugo van der Goes brought together the intellectual challenge of Jan van Eyck and the emotional intensity of Rogier van der Weyden in an entirely new style. Van der Goes major work was an altarpiece more than 8 foot tall.

It was commissioned by the Portnari family for the family chapel in Florence

Also known as the Portinari Triptych, it represents the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Holy Family according to the Biblical story in Luke (2:10-19). Sadly, within a short time of completing this masterpiece, Hugo Van Der Goes suffered a complete mental breakdown. In 1482, a year before the painting was even installed, he died. The work - now seen as one of the most influential works of Christian art of the 15th century - resides in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Slide 17 The Portinari family were from Florence but living in Bruge. Mr Portinari worked in a bank that was owned by the Medici family. Mr. and Mrs. Portinari are shown in the side panels of the Altarpiece with their children.

The central scene celebrates the joy at the birth of Jesus, but also highlights the humility of the family and the peasants. Three realistic figures of shepherds are kneeling before the Christ child, who - most unusually - is not lying in a crib, but on the ground, surrounded by golden light. For his figures, Van der Goes introduces an old-fashioned hierarchy of scale: the Holy Family are given the largest dimensions, while angels and donors are smaller. The figures are arranged according to diagonal axes around the Virgin Mary, whose hands form the center of the painting. This unusual arrangement produces a rather unbalanced sense of movement. In the foreground, the exquisite still life - consisting of two vases of flowers and a sheaf of wheat - is a reference to the Eucharist and the Passion. The wheat alludes to the Last Supper, when Jesus broke the bread. The vine leaves and grapes on the vase relate to the wine. The white irises symbolize purity, while the orange lilies refer to the Passion (the red carnations symbolize to the bloodied nails of Christ's cross); the purple irises and columbine stalks represent the seven sorrows of the Virgin Mary. Thus, taken, this scene of Christ's Nativity prefigures the later Salvation which he achieves through his death.

Slide 18 On the side panels, kneeling donors are flanked by their patron saints.

Portinari, for instance, is shown on the left panel together with his two sons Antonio and Pigello. Opposite, on the right panel, his wife Maria di Francesco Baroncelli is portrayed together with their daughter Margarita. All the donors, with the exception of Pigello, are shown along with their patron saints: Saint Thomas (with spear), Saint Anthony (with bell), Mary Magdalen (with ointment) and Saint Margaret (with book and dragon).

The background of the triptych is painted with scenes related to the main theme. And on the left, we see Joseph fleeing to Egypt with his pregnant wife; in the central panel, the shepherds are visited by the angel; and on the right, the Three Magi are shown on their way to Bethlehem.

Slide 19 The importance of textiles in the 15th century cannot be over emphasized. Flemish and French artists produced outstanding tapestries that served both as wall coverings, and as a form of portable wealth.

One of the finest examples of Renaissance tapestry is a series of wall hangings called the Hunt of the Unicorn.

Video 5:57

Slide 20 Renaissance Art in Italy By the end of the Middle Ages, the most important Italian cultural centers were north of Rome at Florence, Milan, Venice, and several smaller duchies. Much of the power and art patronage was in the hands of wealthy families. The Renaissance really gets going in the early years of 15th century in Florence. In this period, which we call the Early Renaissance, Florence is not a city in the unified country of Italy, as it is now. Instead, Italy was divided into many city-states (Florence, Milan, Venice etc.), each with their own government (some were ruled by despots, and others were republics). Florence saw itself as the ideal city state, a place where the freedom of the individual was guaranteed, and where many citizens had the right to participate in the government (this must have been very different than living in the Duchy of Milan, for example, which was ruled by a succession of Dukes with absolute power). In 1400 Florence was engaged in a struggle with the Duke of Milan. The Florentine people feared the loss of liberty and respect for individuals that was the pride of their Republic. The Florentine people were very proud of their form of government in the early 15th century. A republic is, after all, a place that respects the opinions of individuals, individualism was a critical part of the Humanism that thrived in Florence in the 15th century.

Slide 21 When Donatello made the statue is unknown, but it was first recorded in 1469 in the Medici courtyard. Although the statue clearly draws on the classical tradition of heroic nudity, this adolescent boy is wavering between childish interests and adult responsibility which makes him seem all the braver for having attacked Goliath. Donatello influenced artists both inside and outside of Florence. The subject of this sculpture is David and Goliath, from the Old Testament. According to the story, Israel is threatened by Goliath. Goliath threatened the Israelites and demanded that they send someone brave enough to fight him. But the entire Israelite army is frightened of him. David, a young shepherd boy, asserts that he is going to fight the giant. They try to put armor on David for the fight, but he takes it off. David kills Goliath with one stone thrown from his sling into Goliath's forehead. Then he beheads Goliath. Florence saw itself as the ideal city state, a place where the freedom of the individual was guaranteed, and where many citizens had the right to participate in the government (this must have been very different than living in the Duchy of Milan, for example, which was ruled by a succession of Dukes with absolute power). In 1400 Florence was engaged in a struggle with the Duke of Milan. The Florentine people feared the loss of liberty and respect for individuals that was the pride of their Republic.

Luckily for Florence, the Duke of Milan caught the plague and died in 1402. Then, between 1408 and 1414 Florence was threatened once again, this time by the King of Naples, who also died before he could successfully conquer Florence. And in 1423 the Florentine people prepared for war against the son of the Duke of Milan who had threatened them earlier. Again, luckily for Florence, the Duke was defeated in 1425. The Florentine citizens interpreted these military "victories" as signs of God's favor and protection. They imagined themselves as the "New Rome" -- in other words, as the heirs to the Ancient Roman Republic, prepared to sacrifice for the cause of freedom and liberty. The people of Florence identified themselves with David—they believed that (like him) they defeated their enemy (the Duke of Milan) with the help of God.

Slide 22 Donatello’s statue of David is the earliest known life-sized free-standing bronze nude in Europe since antiquity.

Slide 23 Overall gilding unifies ten large square reliefs. The space in each square is organized with linear perspective. In some panels, the architecture suggests ancient Roman architecture. Overall, the low-relief settings seem closer to painting than to sculpture. Video 8:31

Slide 24 Linear Perspective The sculptor and architect Filippo Brunelleschi first demonstrated the system around 1420. With a viewer standing dead center at a prescribed distance from a work of art, everything would appear to recede into the distance at the same rate, following imaginary lines called orthogonals that met at a single vanishing point on the horizon.

Slide 25 The Trinity fresco was meant to give the illusion of a stone funerary monument and altar table set in a deep niche in the wall. He accomplished this by using exacting linear perspective and having the vanishing point just at eye level of an adult viewer. Masaccio was the first painter in the Renaissance to incorporate Brunelleschi's discovery in his art. He did this in his fresco the Holy Trinity, in Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. Have a close look at the painting and at this perspective diagram. The orthogonals can be seen in the edges of the coffers in the ceiling (look for diagonal lines that appear to recede into the distance). Because Masaccio painted from a low viewpoint, as though we were looking up at Christ, we see the orthogonals in the ceiling, and if we traced all of the orthogonals, we would see that the vanishing point is on the ledge that the donors kneel on.

Slide 26 In Masacchio’s painting, God the Father holds the cross on which Jesus hangs, the dove of the Holy Spirit is above Jesus’ head, Mary and Saint John the Evangelist stand at the foot of the cross. The donors kneel just outside the niche.

God is standing in this painting. Doesn't that strike you as odd just a little bit? This may not strike you all that much when you first think about it because our idea of God, our picture of God in our minds eye—as an old man with a beard—is very much based on Renaissance images of God. So, here Masaccio imagines God as a man. Not a force or a power, or something abstract, but as a man. A man who stands—his feet are foreshortened, and he has mass. In medieval art, God was often represented by a hand, as though God was an abstract force or power in our lives, but here he seems so much like a flesh and blood man. This is a good indication of Humanism in the Renaissance.

Slide 27 Masacchio’s brief career reached its height when he and another painter decorated the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. The chapel was originally dedicated to Saint Peter, and the frescoes illustrate events in Peter’s life.

Slide 28 Masacchio’s use of both linear and atmospheric perspective help the frescoes to be believable visually. The cleaning of these frescoes revealed that Tribute Money had been done in 32 sections. The Tribute Money is one of many frescoes painted by Masaccio in the Brancacci chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence—when you walk into the chapel, the fresco is on your upper left. All the frescos in the chapel tell the story of the life of St. Peter. The story of the Tribute Money is told in three separate scenes within the same fresco. This way of telling an entire story in one painting is called a continuous narrative. In the central, first scene, the tax collector points down with his right hand, and holds his left palm open, impatiently insisting on the money from Christ and the apostles. He stands with his back to us, which helps to create an illusion of three-dimensional space in the image. He stands naturally, in contrapposto, with his weight on his left leg, and his right knee bent. The apostles (Christ's followers) look worried and anxiously watch to see what will happen. St. Peter (wearing a large deep orange colored toga draped over a blue shirt) is confused, as he seems to be questioning Christ and pointing over to the river, but he also looks like he is willing to believe Christ.

Slide 29 On the far left (scene 2), we see Peter kneeling down and retrieving the money from the mouth of a fish, and on the far right (scene 3), St. Peter pays the tax collector. In the fresco, the tax collector appears twice, and St. Peter appears three times (you can find them easily if you look for their clothing). We are so used to one moment appearing in one frame (think of a comic book, for example) that the unfolding of the story within one image (and out of order!) seems very strange to us. But with this technique (a continuous narrative)—which was also used by the ancient Romans—Masaccio can make an entire drama unfold on the wall of the Brancacci chapel.

Slide 30 The head of Jesus is placed where the vanishing point is in the linear perspective. The trees get smaller as they recede and Peter by the lake is smaller than Peter at the front of the painting. Atmospheric perspective is used on the mountains and in the sky. The colors are darker the closer they are to us (or earth) and fade as they recede into the distance.

Slide 31 Masaccio understands how a light source works. All the figures cast dark shadows on the ground to the left, suggesting that the light source is the window in the chapel. He also used a sophisticated shading technique, using contrasting colors for shading. For example, Andrew’s green robe is shaded with red instead of darker green.

Slide 32 At the top of the stairs in the monastery, Fra Angelico painted a scene of the Annunciation. Here, the monks were to pause for prayer before going to their individual cells. This is a painting of that key moment in the Christian story when the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and announces that she will give birth to a son by miraculous means. The fresco can still be seen on the first floor of the monastery, at the top of the staircase, where Fra Angelico painted it. It is the first image that you see as you ascend the stairs to the dormitory level, and its position is perfectly calculated to make an overwhelming emotional impact upon the visitor. These two beings, one human, the other angelic, seem set apart from the world. Something important is happening, but the angel looks modest and confiding, as if he is engaging in a private conversation. They incline towards each other as if exchanging confidences. There are no trumpet blasts here, no immediate sense that this angel, is the emissary of the Creator. The painting – unlike many of the versions by other painters – also lacks the range of symbolic objects that would have reminded onlookers of Mary's chastity. Instead, we have a plain wooden fence marking the boundary of a garden in which small spring flowers seem to be growing. There is no holy book on Mary's lap. Instead, she and the angel have their arms folded modestly, one mirroring the other, over their chests in the sign of the cross. Mary sits on a plain-looking wooden stool. There is a strange stillness about the scene. They look into each other's eyes. They do not seem about to speak. There is nothing more than that. Yet that seems to be sufficient. Mary does not seem to be troubled. If anything, she looks serenely accepting. The color of their clothing – the extremely delicate pale pink of the angel's robe matches the garment on Mary's upper half – once again lacks the kind of fanfare that give to so many religious paintings of these times their atmosphere of almost otherworldly opulence. The figures are painted shallowly, harking back to pre-Renaissance painters. This lack of depth contributes to the simplicity of the scene. The whole scene is a masterpiece of quiet understatement.

Slide 33 Careful linear perspective gives the illusion of space and seems to extend the monks stairway into Mary’s home and garden. The natural light comes from the left, and models their forms, casting an almost supernatural glow over their faces and hands.

Slide 34 Renaissance in Ubino, Mantua, and Rome In the second half of the fifteenth century, the ideals of Florentine Renaissance artists like Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio began to spread from Florence to the rest of Italy as artists who had trained or worked in Florence traveled to other cities to work, carrying the Renaissance style with them. Northern Italy embraced the new Classical ideas swiftly, especially in the ducal courts at Urbino and Mantua, and Venice and Rome also emerged as innovative art centers.

Slide 35 Fluid, linear grace was the main characteristic of the work of Sandro Botticelli. His best-known works are of mythological subjects, among them, the Birth of Venus. The Birth of Venus is probably Botticelli's most famous painting. The picture hung in the country villa of the Medici, indicating that the work was commissioned by the Medici family. Venus rises from the sea, looking like a classical statue and floating on a seashell. On Venus' right is Zephyrus, God of Winds, he carries with him the gentle breeze Aura and together they blow the Goddess of Love ashore. The Horae, Goddess of the Seasons, waits to receive Venus and spreads out a flower covered robe in readiness for the Love Goddess' arrival.

Slide 36 This painting was probably done for the private collection of Lorenzo de Medici who had become ruler of Florence in 1469. The central image is a type known as the modest Venus, based on the antique statue in the Medici collection.

As the title suggests, the Birth of Venus represents the moment when the goddess was born. According to Classical mythology, Venus emerged, fully grown, from the sea. And while Botticelli took his inspiration from this part of the myth, the artist also added his own embellishments. Venus appears on an enormous shell that serves as a platform. She stands demurely in the center of the painting, modestly covering her nude body with elegant hands and masses of golden hair. A gentle breeze, which is personified as a wind god, lifts the hair of Venus. The wind also causes draperies to flutter attractively, and a myriad of pink rose blossoms also float on the soft current of air. This wind-blown effect simultaneously activates the painting and captures the moment of birth beautifully. Venus is flanked by two groups of figures - on the left, the wind god Zephyrus and his female companion, and on the right, a female figure who is identified as one of the Hours (who were also known as the Horae, or Seasons, in Greek mythology).

Slide 37 Battista Sforza and Frederico Da Montefel This diptych came to Florence in 1637 through the marriage of Ferdinando II de’ Medici and Vittoria della Rovere, who was the inheritor of the Duke of Urbino’s estate since 1631. The work consists of two panels, painted on both sides, which we must imagine at one time were hinged to form a sort of book. The inner sides showed the facing portraits of the Duke and Duchess, while on the covers were their respective triumphs. The Duke and Duchess are shown in profile in accordance with the portrait tradition of the time, borrowed from the precepts of contemporaneous numismatics. This choice made it possible for the artist not to show the disfigured side of Federico’s face. Attention to minuscule details derived from Flemish painting is combined with delicate treatment of the volumes of the faces through the skillful modulation of light. Imposing themselves against the background landscape in which nature has been harmoniously arranged through the labor of man, the monumental figures of the Duke and Duchess stand out in the most effective representation of humanist values.

Slide 38 Mantegna’s mature style is demonstrated in the frescoes of the Camera Picta (Painted Room) in the Duke’s palace in Mantua.

The room appears to be open to a cloud filled sky through an oculus. This style began a long tradition of illusionistic ceiling painting.

VIDEO 6:30

Slide 39 Close up

Slide 40 St. Francis in Ecstasy Many a nonbeliever has been struck dumb by the spiritual force of this painting, which may well be Giovanni Bellini’s masterpiece. The artist has portrayed St. Francis of Assisi alone in a stony wilderness, stepping forward from his simple shelter into a golden light that seems to transfigure him spiritually. Perhaps he is receiving the stigmata—the wounds of Christ’s crucifixion—as it is believed he did in 1224 during a retreat. While this subject was frequently represented in the late fifteenth century, it usually included a small seraphic crucifix emitting rays. Here, however, the miracle is implicit in the transcendental light that originates at the upper left, brightens the walls of the rock formation, and, in the right foreground, casts deep shadows behind the saint and the tree limbs that screen his workspace. Reinforcing the effect, the laurel tree at the upper left glows and bends, as if compelled to move toward a supernatural force. The landscape is filled with richly observed details—animals, birds, plants, castles, objects such as the skull and sandals, even a bell and cord to ring the canonical hours. The scrap of paper blown against some branches at lower left bears the pproud signature of the artist.