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ART 101 Art History

High Renaissance

Slide 1 High Renaissance 1500-1600 The early sixteenth century was dominated by the naturalism and idealism of the so-called Old Masters (Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo), but over the course of the century, artists would experiment with new styles and subjects. Some consider the fluctuating artistic styles as a reflection of the tumultuous social landscape–a period marked by intense political and religious unrest. For instance, in 1517 Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, sparking the Protestant Reformation and then, a decade later, troops under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V attacked and pillaged Rome. However, despite the changes caused by these events, some constants remained. For instance, the status of the artist continued to rise to new heights, at times even to the point of challenging powerful patrons as well as artistic norms.

Slide 2 High Renaissance Main centers: Rome and Venice. Combination of polytheistic architecture and Christian theme. Awe-inspiring projects emulated by Roman grandeur. Characteristics: balance, symmetry and ideal proportions. Triangular composition favored.

Slide 3 The High Renaissance The Beautiful, Spiritual, and Scientific in Italian Art. No singular style characterizes the High Renaissance, but the major artists of the period—Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian—exhibit a high level of technical and aesthetic mastery. These artists also enjoyed an elevated social status, while their art was raised to the status formerly only given to poetry.

Slide 4 Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci's wide-ranging interests and scientific investigations informed and enhanced his art. He studied the human body and considered the eyes the most vital organs and sight the most essential function. In 1482, Leonardo arrived in Milan. Leonardo flourished in this intellectual environment. He opened a studio, received numerous commissions, instructed students, and began to systematically record his scientific and artistic investigations in a series of notebooks. The archetypal “renaissance man,” Leonardo was an unrivaled painter, an accomplished architect, an engineer, mapmaker, and scientist. Joining the practical and the theoretical, Leonardo designed numerous mechanical devices for battle, including a submarine, and even experimented with designs for flight.

Slide 5 Last Supper after restoration, 1498 Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. The subject of the Last Supper is Christ’s final meal with his apostles before Judas identifies Christ to the authorities who arrest him. The Last Supper is remembered for two events: Christ says to his apostles “One of you will betray me,” and the apostles react, each according to his own personality. Christ says, “He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me” (Matthew 26). We see Christ and Judas simultaneously reaching toward a plate that lies between them, even as Judas defensively backs away. Leonardo’s Last Supper is dense with symbolic references. Attributes identify each apostle. For example, Judas is recognized both as he reaches to toward a plate beside Christ and because he clutches a purse containing his reward for identifying Christ to the authorities the following day. Peter, who sits beside Judas, holds a knife in his right hand, foreshadowing that Peter will sever the ear of a soldier as he attempts to protect Christ from arrest.

Slide 6 The balanced composition is anchored by an equilateral triangle formed by Christ’s body. He sits below an arching pediment that if completed, traces a circle. Leonardo rendered a verdant landscape beyond the windows. Often interpreted as paradise, it has been suggested that this heavenly sanctuary can only be reached through Christ. The twelve apostles are arranged as four groups of three and there are also three windows. The number three is a reference to the Holy Trinity. In contrast, the number four is important in the classical tradition (e.g. Plato’s four virtues).

Slide 7 Leonardo da Vinci Last Supper Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Experimental combination of painting: the paint began to peel off

Dramatic tension Real human emotions Unified architectural setting

Illusionistic room Icon The Last Supper is in terrible condition. Soon after the painting was completed on February 9, 1498 it began to deteriorate. Over the past five hundred years the painting’s condition has been seriously compromised by its location, the materials and techniques used, humidity, dust, and poor restoration efforts. Modern problems have included a bomb that hit the monastery destroying a large section of the refectory on August 16, 1943, severe air pollution in postwar Milan, and finally, the effects of crowding tourists. Because Leonardo sought a greater detail and luminosity than could be achieved with traditional fresco, he covered the wall with a double layer of dried plaster. Then, borrowing from panel painting, he added an undercoat of lead white to enhance the brightness of the oil and tempera that was applied on top. This experimental technique allowed for chromatic brilliance and extraordinary precision but because the painting is on a thin exterior wall, the effects of humidity were felt more keenly, and the paint failed to properly adhere to the wall.

Slide 8 Linear perspective

Slide 9 Mona Lisa Leonardo's famous portrait of Mona Lisa shows a half-length figure seated against the backdrop of a mysterious uninhabited landscape. Leonardo uses a smoky sfumato and atmospheric perspective to enhance the figure's ambiguous facial expression, which serves to conceal or mask her psychic identity from the viewer. In Mona Lisa, the face is nearly frontal, the shoulders are turned three-quarters toward the viewer, and the hands are included in the image.

Leonardo uses his characteristic sfumato—a smokey haziness, to soften outlines and create an atmospheric effect around the figure. When a figure is in profile, we have no real sense of who she is, and there is no sense of engagement. With the face turned toward us, however, we get a sense of the personality of the sitter.

Slide 10 Pieta In 1499, Michelangelo completed this Pieta for the Vatican. French cardinal Jean de Billheres, who served the church in Rome, wanted to be remembered long after he had died. To achieve this goal, he hired Michelangelo to make a memorial for his tomb that would capture a scene that was popular in Northern European art at the time: the tragic moment of the Virgin Mary taking Jesus down from the cross.

Slide 11 Michelangelo was only 23 when he carved this Pieta. Michelangelo carved it from a single slab of marble. Specifically, he used Carrara marble, a white and blue stone named for the Italian region where it is mined. It's been a favorite medium of sculptors since the days of Ancient Rome.

Slide 12 different views of the Pieta If you look closely, you can see that Mary's head is a bit too small for her very large body. When designing Mary's measurements, Michelangelo could not impose realistic proportions and have her cradle her adult son as he envisioned. So, he had to make her—the statue's support—oversized. To play down this poetic license on her form, Michelangelo carved out sheets of gentle draping garments, camouflaging Mary's true fullness.

Slide 13 David The detailed play of muscles over the figure's torso and limbs serves to enhance the mood and posture of tense expectation as David watches for the approach of Goliath. The pent-up energy of David's psychic and muscular tension is contrasted with his apparently casual pose. David is also represented as the defiant hero of the Florentine republic. Michelangelo’s David was originally intended for the top of the cathedral of Florence, and, therefore, the size of the hands and the protrusion of the hairline were exaggerated to be visible from the street. Another aspect of the project that limited Michelangelo’s work was that he was assigned a block of marble that had been started by another artist. Michelangelo was very selective with his blocks of marble, believing that the spirit of the sculpture resided within the stone and his artistic intuition was necessary for selecting the right portion of marble from the quarry. That he was still able to achieve his ideal form is evident when one compares the male nude of Adam from the Sistine Ceiling and his sculpture of David. These forms clearly convey a sense of Michelangelo’s idealized heroic nude, which was clearly inspired by examples from classical antiquity.

Slide 14 David front and back Rather than follow the story as closely as Donatello did with his David, Michelangelo did not represent David as a youthful, weak figure. Michelangelo gave David a strong, confident pose and a physique that could challenge the strength of the mighty Goliath. Whereas Donatello made it clear that David owed his victory to God’s divine intervention, Michelangelo gave us a sculpture of a man who is powerful, heroic, and even intellectual or strategic (in the sense that his expression suggests he may be planning his attack). This view of the individual is something that would have certainly resonated with the artist’s humanistic view and the High Renaissance ideal more generally.

Slide 15 Davis head and hand It is the twisting of the wrist, the agility of the joints, the movement of the head, the concentration of the look that pulls the features towards us.

Slide 16 Sistine Chapel In less than four years, (1508-1512) Michelangelo painted a monumental fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel organized around a sequence of narrative panels describing the Creation as recorded in the biblical book Genesis. Michelangelo began to work on the frescoes for Pope Julius II in 1508, replacing a blue ceiling dotted with stars. Originally, the pope asked Michelangelo to paint the ceiling with a geometric ornament and place the twelve apostles in spandrels around the decoration. Michelangelo proposed instead to paint the Old Testament scenes now found on the vault, divided by the fictive architecture that he uses to organize the composition. The narrative begins at the altar and is divided into three sections. In the first three paintings, Michelangelo tells the story of The Creation of the Heavens and Earth; this is followed by The Creation of Adam and Eve and the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden; finally, is the story of Noah and the Great Flood.

Ignudi, or nude youths, sit in fictive architecture around these frescoes, and they are accompanied by prophets and sibyls (ancient seers who, according to tradition, foretold the coming of Christ) in the spandrels. In the four corners of the room, in the pendentives, one finds scenes depicting the Salvation of Israel.

Slide 17 Diagram

Slide 18 The Last Judgement This is the end of time, the beginning of eternity when the mortal becomes immortal, when the elect join Christ in his heavenly kingdom and the damned are cast into the unending torments of hell. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is among the most powerful renditions of this moment in the history of Christian art. Over 300 muscular figures, in an infinite variety of dynamic poses, fill the wall to its edges. It is all encompassing and expands beyond the viewer’s field of vision. Unlike other sacred narratives, which portray events of the past, this one implicates the viewer. It has yet to happen and when it does, the viewer will be among those whose fate is determined. Despite the density of figures, the composition is clearly organized into tiers and quadrants, with subgroups and meaningful pairings that facilitate the fresco’s legibility. It rises on the left and descends on the right, recalling the scales used for the weighing of souls in many depictions of the Last Judgment. Christ is the fulcrum of this complex composition. A powerful, muscular figure, he steps forward in a twisting gesture that sets in motion the final sorting of souls (the damned on his left, and the blessed on his right). Nestled under his raised arm is the Virgin Mary. Michelangelo made her pose as one of acquiescence to Christ’s judgment. The time for intercession is over. Judgment has been passed.

Slide 19 Raphael Santi (1483-1520) In 1504, Raphael moved to Florence, where he remained until 1508. These years were very important for his development. He studied works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo there, by which he was greatly influenced. Yet he proved, that his ability to adapt from others what was necessary to his own vision and to reject what was incompatible with it was faultless. Born in Urbino in 1483, Raphael trained with his father and then the Umbrian artist, Perugino. From 1504/5 he worked in Florence where he was much influenced by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. As a highly successful artist he had many assistants who helped him on major altarpieces and frescoes. He died young in Rome, in 1520. With Leonardo and Michelangelo, Raphael is considered the third great artist of the Italian High Renaissance. His figures have a grace and classical beauty that was imitated by many later artists. The serene figures of his altarpieces, frescoes, and cartoons are composed with balance and harmony.

Slide 20 Madonna of the Goldfinch The Madonna of the Goldfinch shows the Virgin Mary (referred to as the Madonna), Jesus, and Saint John. Mary is sitting on a rock and wears a red dress with a blue mantle on top of it. She protectively watches the two children. Saint John, the boy on the left with the gold curly hair, is dressed in animal skins. He holds a goldfinch bird in his hand. He wants to give the goldfinch to Jesus who is touching its head. Jesus is close to his mother and places his foot affectionately on his mother’s. The three figures in this painting are shown in a pyramidal form, the so-called Renaissance triangle, a popular composition in the early Renaissance to represent symmetry in a painting. In the background, you can see a blue and green landscape with bushes, trees, hills, a river, a bridge, a castle, and some houses. Backstory: Raphael created this work for his very good friend Lorenzo Nasi, a wealthy wool merchant from Florence. The painting shows the meeting between Saint John, Jesus, and Mary.

Slide 21 School of Athens The School of Athens represents all the greatest mathematicians, philosophers and scientists from classical antiquity gathered together sharing their ideas and learning from each other. These figures all lived at different times, but here they are gathered together under one roof.

Slide 22 The School of Athens detail Plato and Aristotle are standing in the center of the picture at the head of the steps. The two thinkers in the very center, Aristotle (on the right) and Plato (on the left, pointing up) have been enormously important to Western thinking generally, and in different ways, their different philosophies were incorporated into Christianity. Plato points up because in his philosophy the changing world that we see around us is just a shadow of a higher, truer reality that is eternal and unchanging (and include things like goodness and beauty). For Plato, this otherworldly reality is the ultimate reality, and the seat of all truth, beauty, justice, and wisdom. Plato holds his book called the Timaeus. Aristotle holds his hand down, because in his philosophy, the only reality is the one that we can see and experience by sight and touch (exactly the reality dismissed by Plato). Aristotle's Ethics (the book that he holds) emphasized the relationships, justice, friendship, and government of the human world and the need to study it.

Slide 23 This detail represents Heraclitus with the features of Michelangelo.

Pythagoras (lower left) believed that the world (including the movement of the planets and stars) operated according to mathematical laws. These mathematical laws were related to ideas of musical and cosmic harmony, and thus (for the Christians who interpreted him in the Renaissance) to God. Pythagoras taught that each of the planets produced a note as it moved, based on its distance from the earth. Together, the movement of all the planets was perfect harmony -- "the harmony of the spheres."

Slide 24 This detail shows the portraits of Raphael and Sodoma. Ptolemy (he has his back to us on the lower right), holds a sphere of the earth, next to him is Zaroaster who holds a celestial sphere. Ptolemy tried to mathematically explain the movements of the planets (which was not easy since some of them appear to move backwards!). His theory of how they all moved around the earth remained the authority until Copernicus and Kepler figured out (in the late 16th century) that the earth was not at the center of the universe, and that the planets moved in orbits the shape of ellipses not in circles. Raphael included a self-portrait of himself, standing next to Ptolemy. He looks right out at us.

Slide 25 Titian Titian trained with both Bellini and Giorgione before establishing his own workshopGiorgione had such a lasting influence on the young Titian to such a degree, that some works which are now thought to have been painted by Titian used to be attributed to Giorgione, and vice versa.

Slide 26 Titian's Madonna of the Pesaro Family (1519-26) Titian’s altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child is in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. The painting shows both figures near the top of a stepped platform; the Virgin wears a beautifully-colored red robe covered with a blue garment and a white mantle, under which the Christ Child playfully appears. The Virgin looks down to the figures on the left side of the canvas, while Christ looks to the right side. Since the church of the Frari is operated by the Franciscan order, Titian has placed the order’s patron, St. Francis of Assisi, in a prominent spot in the painting next to the Christ Child. St. Francis is identifiable not only by the brown cassock which is typically worn by Franciscans, but also by his tonsured head and the presence of the stigmata on his hands. Below St. Francis, several members of the Pesaro family kneel in adoration. On the left side of the Virgin and Child we see a prominent figure dressed in a blue robe, with a marvelous yellow garment draped over him. This is the important apostle of Christ, St. Peter, who is identifiable because of the key which is attached to his ankle. With one hand in the book, Peter looks to the bottom left at another figural grouping. The group to the left of Peter includes Jacopo Pesaro, a military leader who led forces that defeated a Turkish force, as well as a man wearing a turban who is meant to symbolize the Turks. The message here is that Pesaro is bringing the Turk to Christianity and to the Catholic Church.

This composition is different than the traditional Virgin and Child altarpieces which were produced in Italy before this time. The figures are not in the center, and they appear to be at the apex of a triangle. The perspective is also off-center. If we follow the orthogonal lines of the steps, we can see how they would intersect at a vanishing point to the left of the canvas. This is quite different from other earlier Renaissance works, such as Masaccio’s Tribute Money or Leonardo’s Last Supper , in which the vanishing point lies at the center of the painting in an area of primary visual importance. Overall, this painting shows that while Titian does not have a name as famous as those of some of his contemporaries, he similarly combined both innovation and technical skill to continually push forward the world of art.

Slide 27 Venus of Urbino 1538 Oil on canvas. This work was completed in 1538 for the Duke of Urbino. It was a gift from the Duke to his young wife. This goddess clearly celebrates a different set of values, and her function, more social than poetic, is articulated by her surrounding attributes. She holds a bunch of roses, and on the window ledge in the background a myrtle plant, in perpetual bloom, is pointedly silhouetted against the glowing sky. These floral symbols, traditionally associated with Venus, define the very special kind of love she here represents: not merely carnal desire, but the more fruitful passion of licit love; not the quickly sated lust of the body, but the permanent bond of marital affection. The little dog curled up at her feet in contented slumber overtly symbolizes that ideal fidelity. Adding a naturalistic anecdotal dimension to the sensuous symbolism of the main motif, the background scene of maids at an open cassone, or marriage chest, confirms the social significance of the image.