Module 6 Art Discussion--Due Friday Nov 5, 2021

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Chapter 26: Renaissance and Baroque Europe The Renaissance really gets going in the early years of the fifteenth 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 its own government (some were ruled by despots, and others were republics).

Why did the Renaissance begin in Florence?

There are several answers to that question: Extraordinary wealth accumulated in Florence during this period among a growing middle and upper class of merchants and bankers. With the accumulation of wealth often comes a desire to use it to enjoy the pleasures of life—and not an exclusive focus on the hereafter. Florence saw itself as the ideal city state, a place where the freedom of the individual was

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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 Florentine people were very proud of their form of government in the early fifteenth 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 fifteenth century.

The Early Renaissance

A new style emerges

During the late thirteenth century, artists in a handful of Italian cities began to move away from the Italo-Byzantine style. The Roman artist Pietro Cavallini created frescoes and mosaics featuring solid, monumentalizing figures; the sculptor Nicola Pisano studied ancient Roman sculpture; Sienese artists seem to have broken new ground in exploring perspective.

Cimabue, Santa Trinita Madonna (Madonna and Child Enthroned), 1280-90, tempera on panel (Galleria degli Uffizi,

Florence)

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Meanwhile, back in Florence, Cimabue’s paintings showed more interest in depicting space and modeling figures with gradations of light and shade. These ideas spread as artists travelled throughout Italy and southern France in search of work, creating a network of artistic centers that all exerted influence on one another.

Giotto

As the new century opened, the painter Giotto di Bondone observed many of these currents and forged them into something distinctively Florentine and enormously influential.

Giotto di Bondone, The Ognissanti Madonna, 1306-10, tempera on panel, 128 x 80 1/4″ or 325 x 204 cm (Galleria

degli Uffizi, Florence)

Where earlier works of art engage us with the embellished splendor of the heavenly, Giotto’s paintings capture our attention by representing holy figures and stories as if in a majestic but earthly realm. Bold modeling of draperies and the bodies beneath them gives his figures greater volume and a sense of sculptural relief. Clever kinds of perspective create the illusion that a space is opening up in front of the viewer, as if we might be peering onto a stage.

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Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, c. 1305 (Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel, Padua)

Perhaps just as importantly, Giotto was a master of visual storytelling—a skill evident in his most important surviving project, the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua (c. 1305). Here the monumentality of the figures, the quiet dignity of their movements, and the way architectural and landscape settings seem to echo the action all conjure up a solemn aura of the sacred. Like many of the narrative paintings attributed to Giotto, the scenes use closely observed human gestures and careful composition to enhance the drama and emotion of the moment depicted.

The High Renaissance

When you think of the Renaissance, the names that come to mind are probably the artists of this period (the High Renaissance): Leonardo and Michelangelo, for instance. And when you think of the greatest work of art in the western world, Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling might come to mind. This is a period of big, ambitious projects.

How is the High Renaissance different from the Early Renaissance?

As the Humanism of the Early Renaissance develops, a problem arises. Have a look at Fra Filippo Lippi’s Madonna and Child with Angels. We see a Madonna and Christ Child that have become so real—the figures appear so human—that in some ways we can hardly tell that these are divine figures (except perhaps for the faint outline of a halo, and Mary’s sorrowful expression and hands clasped in prayer). On the other hand, in the Middle Ages, the need to create transcendent spiritual figures, meant a move toward abstraction—toward flatness and elongation.

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Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Two Angels, ca. 1455 – 1466, tempera on wood (Galleria degli Uffizi,

Florence)

In the Early Renaissance then, a tension arises. To create spiritual figures, your image can’t look very real, and if you want your image to appear real, then you sacrifice some spirituality. In the late 15th century though, Leonardo da Vinci creates figures who are physical and real (just as real as Lippi’s or Masaccio’s figures) and yet they have an undeniable and intense spirituality. We could say that Leonardo unites the real and spiritual, or soul and substance.

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Andrea del Verrocchio (with Leonardo), Baptism of Christ, 1470-75, oil and tempera on panel, 70 3/4 x 59 3/4″ / 180

x 152 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)

The best way to see this is in this painting by Verrocchio—an important Early Renaissance artist who Leonardo was apprenticed to when he was young. Verocchio asked Leonardo to paint one of the angels in his painting of the Baptism of Christ (above). Can you tell which angel is Leonardo’s? One angel should look more like a boy—that’s the Early Renaissance angel (the one painted by Verrocchio) and the other angel should look like truly divine, sent by God from heaven (that’s Leonardo’s angel).

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Andrea del Verrocchio (with Leonardo), Baptism of Christ, 1470-75, oil and tempera on panel, 70 3/4 x 59 3/4″ / 180

x 152 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)

The angel on the left is Leonardo’s. Leonardo’s angel is ideally beautiful and moves in a graceful and complex way, twisting her upper body to the left but raising her head up and to the right. Figures that move elegantly and that are ideally beautiful are typical of the High Renaissance.

Leonardo, Mona Lisa

The most recognized painting in the world

The Mona Lisa has become an icon of the Renaissance—perhaps the most recognized painting in the world. The Mona Lisa is likely a portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant. For some reason however, the portrait was never delivered to its patron, and Leonardo kept it with him when he went to work for Francis I, the King of France.

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Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Lisa Gherardini (known as the Mona Lisa), c. 1503–19, oil on poplar panel, 77 x 53 cm

(Musée du Louvre)

The Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile has inspired many writers, singers, and painters. Here’s a passage about the Mona Lisa, written by the Victorian-era writer Walter Pater:

We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in that circle of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least. The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all “the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed!

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A recent discovery

An important copy of the Mona Lisa was recently discovered in the collection of the Prado in Madrid. The background had been painted over, but when the painting was cleaned, scientific analysis revealed that the copy was likely painted by another artist who sat beside Leonardo and copied his work, brushstroke by brushstroke. The copy gives us an idea of what the Mona Lisa might look like if layers of yellowed varnish were removed.

Left: Unknown, Mona Lisa, c. 1503-05, oil on panel (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid); right: Leonardo da Vinci,

Mona Lisa, c. 1503-19, oil on panel 30-1/4 x 21″ (Musée du Louvre)

Michelangelo: sculptor, painter, architect, and poet

For the 16th century, Michelangelo (1475-1564) lived a very long life (he lived to be 89), and therefore left us an incredible breadth of work in painting, sculpture, architecture, and poetry.

Sculpture

When Michelangelo was in his late 20s, he sculpted the 17-foot tall David for Florence. This colossus seemed to his contemporaries to rival or even surpass ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. David—and his later sculptures such as Moses and the two sculptures known as the Bound Slave and Dying Slave—demonstrated Michelangelo’s astounding ability to make marble seem like living flesh and blood. So much so, it is difficult to imagine that these were created with a hammer and chisel. But it wasn’t simply fidelity to the body, Michelangelo conveyed through his painting and sculpture humanity’s nobility, dissolving the distinction between our earthly realm and the divine.

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Michelangelo, David, marble, 1501-04 (Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Painting

In painting, if we look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome, with its elegant nudes and powerful seated figures, and the now-iconic image of the Creation of Adam, Michelangelo set a new standard for painting the human figure, one in which the body was not just an actor in a narrative, but emotionally and spiritually expressive on its own.

Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 1508-1512, fresco (Vatican City, Rome)

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Architecture

And then there is his architecture, where Michelangelo reordered ancient forms in entirely new and dramatic ways. It is no wonder that Giorgio Vasari, who knew Michelangelo, wrote how Michelangelo excelled in all three arts: painting, sculpture and architecture:

the great Ruler of Heaven looked down and…resolved…to send to earth a genius universal in each art…He further endowed him with true moral philosophy and a sweet poetic spirit, so that the world should marvel at the singular eminence of his life and works and all his actions, seeming rather divine than earthy. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors & Architects, translated by Gaston Du C. de Vere

Michelangelo, Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, 1526-33, marble, 630 x 420 cm (Sagrestia Nuova, San Lorenzo,

Florence, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Michelangelo was also a poet. In the poem below, Michelangelo gives us a sense of the co- existence in his art of a love of both the human (particularly male) body and God.

Sculpture, the first of arts, delights a taste Still strong and sound: each act, each limb, each bone Are given life and, lo, man’s body is raised, Breathing alive, in wax or clay or stone. But oh, if time’s inclement rage should waste, Or maim, the statue that man builds alone, Its beauty still remains, and can be traced Back to the source that claims it as its own.

from The Complete Poems of Michelangelo, translated by J. Tusiani (1960)

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Raphael, School of Athens

Discover more about the artist Raphael and his painting School of Athens by watching the following video: https://smarthistory.org/raphael-school-of-athens/

The Northern Renaissance

Traditional accounts of the Renaissance favor a narrative that places the birth of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. In this narrative, Italian art and ideas migrate North from Italy (largely because of the travels of the great German artist Albrecht Dϋrer who studied, admired, and was inspired by Italy, and he carried his Italian experiences back to Germany). However, so much changed in northern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that the era deserves to be evaluated on its own terms. So, we use the term “Northern Renaissance” to refer to the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps. Some of the most important changes in northern Europe include the:

• invention of the printing press, c. 1450

• advent of mechanically reproducible media such as woodcuts and engravings

• formation of a merchant class of art patrons that purchased works in oil on panel

• Protestant Reformation and the translation of the Bible from the original languages into the vernacular or common languages such as German and French

• international trade in urban centers

The fifteenth century: van Eyck

In the fifteenth century, northern artists such as Jan van Eyck introduced powerful and influential changes, such as the perfection of oil paint and almost impossible representation of minute detail, practices that clearly distinguish Northern art from Italian art as well as art from the preceding centuries. Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, 1432 (Church of Saint Bavo, Ghent) exemplifies the grand scale and minute detail of Northern painting.

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Jan (and Hubert?) Van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece or The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, 1432, tempera and oil on

panel, 11′ 5″ x 7′ 3″ (open) (Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Ghent, Belgium)

This public, religious picture has an opened and closed position. On the interior (above) we see such holy figures as the Virgin, Christ, saints and angels. It also showcases the largesse of the donors (below), depicted kneeling on the lowest corners of the exterior, who employed the van Eyck brothers to immortalize them in this very public work of art.

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Jan (and Hubert?) Van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece or The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, 1432, tempera and oil on

panel, 11′ 5″ x 7′ 3″ (closed) (Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Ghent, Belgium)

Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Double Portrait (1434) shows a well-to-do couple in a tasteful, bourgeois interior. The text in the back of the image identifies the date and Jan van Eyck as the artist. Art historians disagree about what is actually happening in the image, whether this is a betrothal or a marriage, or perhaps something else entirely. One of the most important aspects of this painting is the symbolic meanings of the objects, for instance that the dog may symbolize fidelity (“Fido”) or that the fruit on the windowsill may signify either wealth or temptation. This painting is a touchstone for the study of iconography, a method of interpreting works of art by deciphering symbolic meaning.

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Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, tempera and oil on wood, 1434, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London)

Though Jan van Eyck did not invent oil paint, he used the medium to greater effect than any other artist to date. Oil would become a predominant medium for painting for centuries, favored in art academies into the nineteenth century and beyond. The Arnolfinis counted as middle class because their wealth came from trade rather than inherited titles and land. The power of the merchant-class patrons of northern Europe cultivated a taste for art made for domestic display. Decorating one’s home is still a powerful motivation for art patrons. Museum visitors repeatedly comment, “well, I wouldn’t want it in my living room.”

Baroque Art

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini, View to Cathedra Petri (or Chair of St. Peter), 1647-53, gilded bronze, gold, wood, stained

glass (Apse of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Rome) (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Rome: From the “Whore of Babylon” to the resplendent bride of Christ

When Martin Luther tacked his 95 theses to the doors of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517 protesting the Catholic Church’s corruption, he initiated a movement that would transform the religious, political, and artistic landscape of Europe. For the next century, Europe would be in turmoil as new political and religious boundaries were determined, often through bloody military conflicts. Only in 1648, with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, did the conflicts between Protestants and Catholics subside in continental Europe. Martin Luther focused his critique on what he saw as the Church’s greed and abuse of power. He called Rome, the seat of papal power, “the whore of Babylon” decked out in finery of expensive art, grand architecture, and sumptuous banquets. The Church responded to the crisis in two ways: by internally addressing issues of corruption and by defending the doctrines rejected by the Protestants. Thus, while the first two decades of the 16th century were a period of lavish spending for the Papacy, the middle decades were a period of austerity. As one visitor to Rome noted in the 1560s, the entire city had become a convent. Piety and asceticism ruled the day. By the end of the 16th century, the Catholic Church was once again feeling optimistic, even triumphant. It had emerged from the crisis with renewed vigor and clarity of purpose. Shepherding the faithful—instructing them on Catholic doctrines and inspiring virtuous behavior—took center stage. Keen to rebuild Rome’s reputation as a holy city, the Papacy embarked on extensive building and decoration campaigns aimed at highlighting its ancient

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origins, its beliefs, and its divinely sanctioned authority. In the eyes of faithful Catholics, Rome was not an unfaithful whore, but a pure bride, beautifully adorned for her union with her divine spouse.

The art of persuasion: To instruct, to delight, to move

While the Protestants harshly criticized the cult of images, the Catholic Church ardently embraced the religious power of art. The visual arts, the Church argued, played a key role in guiding the faithful. They were certainly as important as the written and spoken word, and perhaps even more important, since they were accessible to the learned and the unlearned alike. In order to be effective in its pastoral role, religious art had to be clear, persuasive, and powerful. Not only did it have to instruct, it had to inspire. It had to move the faithful to feel the reality of Christ’s sacrifice, the suffering of the martyrs, the visions of the saints.

Caravaggio, The Crowning with Thorns, 1602-04, oil on canvas, 165.5 x 127 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum,

Vienna)

The Church’s emphasis on art’s pastoral role prompted artists to experiment with new and more direct means of engaging the viewer. Artists like Caravaggio turned to a powerful and dramatic realism, accentuated by bold contrasts of light and dark, and tightly-cropped compositions that enhance the physical and emotional immediacy of the depicted narrative.

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View of the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome with Annibale Carracci’s altarpiece, The Assumption of the Virgin, 1600-01, oil on canvas, 96 × 61″, and paintings by Caravaggio on the side walls (The Crucifixion of St.

Peter on the left, and The Conversion of Paul on the right)

Other artists, like Annibale Carracci (who also experimented with realism), ultimately settled on a more classical visual language, inspired by the vibrant palette, idealized forms, and balanced compositions of the High Renaissance (see image above). Still others, like Giovanni Battista Gaulli, turned to daring feats of illusionism that blurred not only the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture, but also those between the real and depicted worlds. In so doing, the divine was made physically present and palpable. Whether through shocking realism, dynamic movement, or exuberant ornamentation, seventeenth-century art is meant to impress. It aims to convince the viewer of the truth of its message by impacting the senses, awakening the emotions, and activating, even sharing the viewer’s space.

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Giovanni Battista Gaulli, also known as il Baciccio, The Triumph of the Name of Jesus, 1672-1685, Il Gesù ceiling

fresco (Rome, Italy)

The Catholic monarchs and their territories

The monarchs of Spain, Portugal, and France also embraced the more ornate elements of seventeenth century art to celebrate Catholicism. In Spain and its colonies, rulers invested vast resources on elaborate church facades, stunning, gold-covered chapels and tabernacles, and strikingly-realistic polychrome sculpture. In the Spanish Netherlands, where sacred art had suffered terribly as a result of the Protestant iconoclasm (the destruction of art), civic and religious leaders prioritized the adornment of churches as the region reclaimed its Catholic identity. Refurnishing the altars of Antwerp’s churches kept Peter Paul Rubens’ workshop busy for many years. Europe’s monarchs also adopted this artistic vocabulary to proclaim their own power and status. Louis XIV, for example, commissioned the splendid buildings and gardens of Versailles as a visual expression of his divine right to rule.

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Peter Paul Rubens, Elevation of the Cross, 1610, oil on wood, 15′ 1-7/8″ x 11′ 1-1/2″ (originally for Saint Walpurgis,

Antwerp (destroyed), now in Antwerp Cathedral)

The Protestant North

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In the Protestant countries, and especially in the newly-independent Dutch Republic (modern- day Holland), the artistic climate changed radically in the aftermath of the Reformation. Two of the wealthiest sources of patronage—the monarchy and the Church—were now gone. In their stead arose an increasingly prosperous middle class eager to express its status, and its new sense of national pride, through the purchase of art. By the middle of the 17th century a new market had emerged to meet the artistic tastes of this class. The demand was now for smaller scale paintings suitable for display in private homes. These paintings included religious subjects for private contemplation, as seen in Rembrandt’s poignant paintings and prints of biblical narratives, as well as portraits documenting individual likenesses.

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn), Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves: The Three Crosses, 1653, Drypoint

printed on vellum. This image is in the Public Domain

But, the greatest change in the market was the dramatic increase in the popularity of landscapes, still-lifes, and scenes of everyday life (known as genre painting). Indeed, the proliferation of these subjects as independent artistic genres was one of the 17th century’s most

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significant contributions to the history of Western art.

Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait, c. 1630, oil on canvas, 651 x 746 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

In all of these genres, artists revealed a keen interest in replicating observed reality—whether it be the light on the Dutch landscape, the momentary expression on a face, or the varied textures and materials of the objects the Dutch collected as they reaped the benefits of their expanding mercantile empire. These works demonstrated as much artistic virtuosity and physical immediacy as the grand decorations of the palaces and churches of Catholic Europe. In the context of European history, the period from c. 1585 to c. 1700/1730 is often called the Baroque era. The word “baroque” derives from the Portuguese and Spanish words for a large, irregularly-shaped pearl (“barroco” and “barrueco,” respectively). Eighteenth century critics were the first to apply the term to the art of the 17th century. It was not a term of praise. To the eyes of these critics, who favored the restraint and order of Neoclassicism, the works of Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona appeared bizarre, absurd, even diseased—in other words, misshapen, like an imperfect pearl.

Rococo Art

The beginnings of Rococo

In the early years of the 1700s, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV (who dies in 1715), there was a shift away from the classicism and “Grand Manner” (based on the art of Poussin) that had governed the art of the preceding 50 years in France, toward a new style that we call Rococo. The Palace of Versailles (a royal chateau that was the center of political power) was abandoned

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by the aristocracy, who once again took up residence in Paris. A shift away from the monarchy, toward the aristocracy characterizes the art of this period.

Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV, 1701, oil on canvas, 114 x 62 5/8 in (The J. Paul Getty Museum)

What kind of lifestyle did the aristocracy lead? Remember that the aristocracy had enormous political power as well as enormous wealth. Many chose leisure as a pursuit and became involved themselves in romantic intrigues. Indeed, they created a culture of luxury and excess that formed a stark contrast to the lives of most people in France. The aristocracy—only a small percentage of the population of France—owned over 90% of its wealth. A small but growing middle class will not sit still with this for long (remember the French Revolution of 1789).

Fragonard’s The Swing

As with most Rococo paintings, the subject of Fragonard’s The Swing is not very complicated. Two lovers have conspired to get an older fellow to push the young lady in the swing while her lover hides in the bushes. Their idea is that—as she goes up in the swing, she can part her legs, and her lover can get a tantalizing view up her skirt.

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Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1767, oil on canvas, 81 x 64.2 cm (Wallace Collection, London)

The figures are surrounded by a lush, overgrown garden. A sculptured figure to the left puts his fingers to his mouth, as though saying “hush,” while another sculpture in the background shows two cupid figures cuddled together. The colors are pastel pale pinks and greens, and although we have a sense of movement and a prominent diagonal line—the painting lacks the seriousness of a baroque painting. If you look closely you can see the loose brushstrokes in the pink silk dress—and as she opens her legs, we get a glimpse of her stockings and garter belt. It was precisely this kind of painting that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were soon to condemn. They demanded a new style of art, one that showed an example of moral behavior, of human beings at their most noble.

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Female figure (detail), Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1767, oil on canvas, 81 x 64.2 cm (Wallace Collection,

London)

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