Which pope commanded the artist to paint the ceiling

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.

Slide 28 Protestant Reformation By the early 1500s, many people in Western Europe were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Christian Church. Many found the Pope too involved with secular (worldly) matters, rather than with his flocks’ spiritual well-being. Lower church officials were poorly educated and broke vows by living richly and keeping mistresses. Some officials practiced simony or passing down their title as priest or bishop to their illegitimate sons. In keeping with the many social changes of the Renaissance, people began to boldly challenge the authority of the Christian Church. By 1500, the Church was very powerful (politically and spiritually) in Western Europe. But there were other political forces at work too. There was the Holy Roman Empire, the Italian city-states, England, as well as the increasingly unified nation states of France and Spain. The power of the rulers of these areas had increased in the previous century and many were anxious to take the opportunity offered by the Reformation to weaken the power of the papacy and increase their own power in relation to the Church in Rome and other rulers. Keep in mind too, that for some time the Church was seen as an institution plagued by internal power struggles. Popes and Cardinals often lived more like kings than spiritual leaders. Popes claimed temporal (political) as well as spiritual power. They commanded armies, made political alliances and enemies, and, sometimes, even waged war. Simony and nepotism were rampant. Clearly, if the Pope was concentrating on these worldly issues, there wasn't as much time left for caring for the souls of the faithful. The corruption of the Church was well known, and several attempts had been made to reform the Church, but none of these efforts successfully challenged Church practice until Martin Luther's actions in the early 1500s.

Slide 29 Martin Luther and his 95 Theses A German monk by the name of Martin Luther was particularly bothered by the selling of indulgences. An indulgence, a religious pardon that released a sinner from performing specific penalties, could be bought from a church official for various fees. Martin Luther was especially troubled because some church officials gave people the impression that they could buy their way into heaven. To express his growing concern of church corruption, Martin Luther wrote his famous 95 Theses, which called for a full reform of the Christian Church. In it, he stressed the following points:

Martin Luther was a German monk and Professor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg. Luther sparked the Reformation in 1517 by posting, at least according to tradition, his "95 Theses" on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany - these theses were a list of statements that expressed Luther's concerns about certain Church practices - largely the sale of indulgences, but they were based on Luther's deeper concerns with Church doctrine. The sale of indulgences was a practice where the church acknowledged a donation or other charitable work with a piece of paper (an indulgence), that certified that your soul would enter heaven more quickly by reducing your time in purgatory. If you committed no serious sins that guaranteed your place in hell, and you died before repenting and atoning for all your sins, then your soul went to Purgatory - a kind of way-station where you finished atoning for your sins before being allowed to enter heaven. Pope Leo X had granted indulgences to raise money for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. These indulgences were also being sold not far from Wittenberg. Luther was gravely concerned about the way in which getting into heaven was connected with a financial transaction. But the sale of indulgences was not Luther's only disagreement with the institution of the Church.

Slide 30 A few of the Theses: The Pope is a false authority. The bible is the one true authority. All people with faith in Christ are equal. People do not need priests and bishops to interpret the bible for them. They can read it themselves and make up their own minds. People can only win salvation by faith in God's forgiveness.

The Church taught that faith, along with good works is needed for salvation.

Luther and other reformers turned to the Bible as the only reliable source of instruction (as opposed to the teachings of the Church). The invention of the printing press in the middle of the 15th century together with the translation of the Bible into the vernacular meant that it was possible for those that could read to learn directly from Bible without having to rely on a priest or other church officials. Before this time, the Bible was only available in Latin. So, the invention of the printing press and the translation of the bible into the vernacular meant that for the first time in history, the Bible was available to those outside of the Church. And now, a direct relationship to God, unmediated by the institution of the Catholic Church, was possible.

Slide 31 Counter-Reformation St. Ignatius of Loyola – Society of Jesus

Counter-Reformation Art as propaganda Art as reinvigorator of belief/practice Spiritual ecstasy In 1545, the leaders of the Catholic Church gathered in the Northern Italian city of Trent for an emergency conference. Their aim was to reclaim the moral high ground, and the superiority of the Holy Mother Church, in the wake of the Protestant challenge. The stakes were high. They were playing for the survival of the Roman Catholic Church. After 20-years of debate, the Council of Trent established the basis for a Catholic counter-attack. Decrees were issued covering every aspect of Church authority, from the holding of multiple offices, to the chastity of priests, and monastic reform. Ignatius Loyola was charged with forming the Jesuits, a band of militant missionaries whose task was to reconvert the converted. The “Index of Forbidden Books” was published, naming and shaming 583 heretical texts, including most translations of the Bible and the works of Erasmus, Calvin, and Luther. New churches were ordered, with space for thousands of worshippers, and acoustics designed, for the first time, for vernacular sermons. The Catholic Church used the weapon of reform to entice back its disillusioned congregations. Taking its cue from a successful Spanish model, the Council of Trent formally established the Roman Inquisition to examine and try all evidence of heresy or dissent. No Catholic country was exempt. All crimes in the eyes of the Church would be handed to a local Inquisitor, equipped with all necessary means of persuasion. Guilt was always assumed, interrogation relentless, and torture deployed to squeeze the truth out of a witness.

Slide 32 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 origins, its beliefs, and its divinely-sanctioned authority. 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.

Slide 33 Paolo Veronese The painters of Verona between about 1510 and 1540 favored firm, regular volumes, strong colors that function largely in terms of contrasts, and conventionalized figures. Veronese combined these elements of the local High Renaissance style with Mannerist elements, including complex compositional schemes that often employ a “worm's-eye view” perspective.

Slide 34 Veronese's huge monumental painting of Christ in the House of Levi shows Christ seated with other figures (robed lords, their colorful retainers, clowns, dogs, and dwarfs) in a great open loggia framed by three monumental arches.

In 1573, Paolo Veronese, who was at the time forty-five years old, was awarded the commission to paint a depiction of the Last Supper for the rear wall of the refectory of the fourteenth century Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, sometimes known as the pantheon of dogs, as twenty-five of them have been buried there. This is one of Veronese’s most controversial paintings. It was intended to be a monumental work depicting the Last Supper but, Veronese, three months after its completion, had to hastily change the title of the painting.

Slide 35 Paolo Veronese. Christ in the House of Levi (detail) 1573 The Church’s displeasure of the completed work was not just that the depiction of the Last Supper, in the central background of the painting, seems almost to play a secondary and minor role in the work; it was that they were horrified by some of the numerous other characters who populated the work. Veronese’s inclusion of this assortment of characters into such a famous religious scene was looked upon by the Church as being irreverent, bordering on blasphemous. The Church was very wary about anything which could be perceived as mocking the Church and its values. So, when Veronese added a plethora of people, some of whom seemed to be drunk, as well as dogs, a cat, and midgets to the depiction of Christ at the Last Supper, the elders of the Church were horrified. Veronese was summoned to appear before the Inquisition on July 18th, 1573 which was sitting in the Chapel of S. Teodoro. Veronese never made any of the major changes to his painting that the Inquisition had demanded, but in deference to Ecclesiastical sensibilities and not wishing to push his luck, he added the inscription across the top of the pillars at the head of the staircases, the ones which also showed the date of completion. He then merely changed the title of the work from The Last Supper to Feast at the House of Levi.

Slide 36 The Last Supper Tintoretto This painting is uniquely different from other interpretations of the Last Supper. The table of the last supper is not symmetrical and is drawn at an angel, almost as if the end of the table is disappearing into the shadows. Although there are twelve known disciples, they cannot be pointed out in the painting and the image of Judas cannot be identified from the crowd. In this painting, Christ is not a static, stationary figure, nor is he the clear center of the composition; he stands about halfway down the table handing out bread. The viewer can point Jesus out from the rest due to his glowing halo. The representation also includes angels floating, animals, and servants, amid a dark room. This painting is important to Catholicism and represents the era and time of the piece. Catholics believe not only in Jesus, but also in saints and others of divine order. To bring closeness to the story and relate it with the times, the artist incorporated specific elements to the piece. He has added everyday events, like servants clearing away food and a cat looking into a basket. This normal scene makes the rest of the picture seem even more miraculous by contrast. The picture is generally dark, except for Jesus’ halo and the light surrounding the disciples. The complete darkness in the painting not only reflects the darkness of the evening, it also symbolizes the domination of ignorance in the human world.

Slide 37 Durer self-portrait In 1495 Dürer set up his own workshop in Nuremberg, specializing in the production of innovative, high quality prints and paintings. In this self-portrait, Dürer faces front and he stares directly and intensely at the viewer. His face, slightly elongated, is symmetrical; his long curly hair tumbles down onto a rich, velvety brown cloak, trimmed in fur. His right hand, his creative hand, extends upward, as if it may be about to gesture, perhaps give a blessing. The light falls unevenly on him, also highlighting his right side and enhancing the painting's realism. Above his left shoulder, he inscribed the painting: "Thus I, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremburg, painted myself with indelible colors at the age of 28 years." To viewers of his era, the image was unmistakably Christ-like. Durer accomplished several things in this picture. On one level, he portrayed the belief that God had literally created man in his likeness. More cheekily, at a time when artists were considered to be simply artisans, like goldsmiths or weavers, he suggested that his artistry was a gift from his Creator, thus lifting it out of the realm of craft onto the plane of genius. He reinforced that idea with his choice of clothing, wearing a nobleman's coat at a time when people followed strict dress codes that signaled their station in life. Further, he added a new self-revelatory genre to the artist's repertoire—virtually every artist since Dürer has made at least one self-portrait at one time or another.

Slide 38 Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (closed) Constructed and painted between 1512 and 1516, the enormous moveable altarpiece, essentially a box of statues covered by folding wings, was created to serve as the central object of devotion in an Isenheim hospital built by the Brothers of St. Anthony. Sculpted wooden altars were popular in Germany at the time. Grünewald’s painted panels come from a different world; visions of hell on earth, in which the physical and psychological torments that afflicted Christ and a host of saints are rendered as visions wrought in dissonant psychedelic color, and played out by distorted figures—men, women, angels and demons—lit by streaking strident light and placed in eerie other-worldly landscapes. The painted panels fold out to reveal three distinct ensembles. In its common, closed position the central panels close to depict a horrific, night-time Crucifixion. The macabre and distorted Christ is splayed on the cross, his hands writhing in agony, his body marked with livid spots of pox. The Virgin swoons into the waiting arms of the young St. John the Evangelist while John the Baptist, on the other side (not commonly depicted at the Crucifixion), gestures towards the suffering body at the center and holds a scroll which reads “he must increase, but I must decrease.” The emphatic physical suffering was intended to be miracle performing, a point of identification for the denizens of the hospital. The flanking panels depict St. Sebastian, long known as a plague saint because of his body pocked by arrows, and St. Anthony Abbot.

Slide 39 Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (second position)

The second position emphasizes this promise of resurrection. Its panels depict the Annunciation, the Virgin and Child with a host of musical angels, and the Resurrection. The progression from left to right is a highlight reel of Christ’s life. All three scenes are highly idiosyncratic and personal visions of Biblical interpretation; the musical angels, in their Gothic bandstand, are lit by an eerie orange-yellow light while the adjacent Madonna sits in a twilight landscape lit by flickering, fiery atmospheric clouds. The Resurrection panel is the strangest of these inner visions. Christ is wreathed in orange, red and yellow body haloes and rises like a streaking fireball, hovering over the sepulchre and the bodies of the sleeping soldiers, a combination of Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascension.

Grünewald’s mastery of medieval monstrosity echoes and evokes Hieronymus Bosch and has inspired artists ever since. The entire altarpiece is a paean to human suffering and an essay on faith and the hope for heaven in the troubled years before the Reformation.

Slide 40 Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (open) Grünewald saved his most esoteric visions for the fully open position of the altar, in the two inner panels that flank the central sculptures. On the left, St. Anthony is visited in the blasted-out wilderness by St. Paul — the two are about to be fed by the raven in the tree above, and Anthony will later be called upon to bury St. Paul. The meeting cured St. Anthony of the misperception that he was the first desert hermit and was therefore a lesson in humility. In the final panel, Grünewald lets his imagination run riot in the depiction of St. Anthony’s temptations in the desert; sublime hybrid demons torment Anthony’s waking and sleeping hours, bringing to life the saint’s torment and mirroring the physical and psychic suffering of the hospital patients. At the heart of the altarpiece, Nicolas of Hagenau’s central carved and gilded ensemble consists of rather staid, solid and unimaginative representations of three saints important to the Antonine order; a bearded and enthroned St. Anthony flanked by standing figures of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. Below, in the carved predella, usually covered by a painted panel, a carved Christ stands at the center of seated apostles, six to each side, grouped in separate groups of three. Hagenau’s interior ensemble is therefore symmetrical, rational, mathematical and replete with numerical perfections—one, three, four and twelve.

Slide 41 Sofonisba Anguissola Self-Portrait Sofonisba Anguissola was an artist who came from a noble family in northern Italy. She is well known for the paintings she made of herself and her family. In 1559, she became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Spain and continued to produce works while at the court of King Philip II until 1573. Interestingly, she painted at least twelve self-portraits at a time when this was not a particularly common subject for artists. Women in Renaissance Italy were generally barred from becoming apprentices to master artists. Female artists tended to come from families where a father (or sometimes a brother) was an artist. In this way they could receive training and bypass the apprenticeship system. Sofonisba is atypical in this respect—her father was not an artist. Instead, she studied with other artists who exposed her to the fundamentals of painting, such as the importance of drawing or design. The monogram of her father's name on the shield that she holds attests to her family's noble ancestry which traced its lineage back to Carthaginians. The inscription around the monogram attests to her virtue by explicitly identifying her as a virgin. The inscription also states that she made this image by her own hand from a mirror.

Slide 42 The Garden of Earthly Delights closed There is very little agreement as to the precise meaning of the work. It is a creation and damnation triptych, starting with Adam and Eve and ending with a highly imaginative through-the-looking glass kind of Hell. When the triptych is in the closed position, the outer panels, painted in monochrome, join to form a perfect sphere—a vision of a planet-shaped clear glass vessel half-filled with water. A tiny figure of God, holding an open book, is found in the uppermost left corner of the left panel, and the inscription that runs along the top of both panels can be translated to read “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm,” which is from Psalm 33.9. If one thinks of the outside panels as the end of the entire pictorial cycle, rather than its beginning, then this image could easily be a depiction of the Flood, sent by God to cleanse the earth after it was consumed by vice.