Art of the Renaissance

The Collapse of
Rome
For almost a thousand
years, Rome was the most
politically important, richest and
largest city in Europe.
Around AD 100, it had a population
of about 450,000.
Its population declined to a mere
20,000 during the Early Middle
Ages, reducing the sprawling city to
groups of inhabited buildings
interspersed among large areas of
ruins and vegetation.
The
Romanesque
11th and 12th centuries
Aimed to spread religion and bring
people closer to God.
The main source of knowledge,
power, and economy was first, the
monasteries, and later, a union
between the Church and king.
Only the Church commissioned art.
Artists were anonymous craftsmen.
The use of symbols was very
important.
 The Gothic
12th to 14th centuries
Economic changes, peace, the end of
epidemics…
Is related to a growth and urbanism in cities.
The Crusades and feudalism had brought
wealth and had created a classes of nobles,
merchants and traders.
As a result, not only the Church
commissioned art but also noblemen and
rich merchants built palaces and patronized
artisans.
Portraits were very important.
Artists began to become known for their
works.
Urban Culture

Increasing growth in cities and

urban life.
Boom in architecture.
Nobles and the Church
commissioned works of art.
Religious orders now decided to
create their monasteries or
convents in the cities.
Urban Culture
The architecture showed the power
and wealth of cities.
The most representative building
was the Cathedral.
The Cathedral was always built in
the center of the city.
Cities competed with each other to
build the biggest or tallest
Cathedral.
Religious services were held there.
But they had other civil functions
before town halls were built.
Guilds and municipal councils met
there.
The Creation of
Universities

The kings wanted educated people

for their courts.
Schools in the cities were either
controlled by the church or by the
town council.
Universities started with the desire
of independence, not to depend on
the Church.
Gothic Art

The term International Gothic

(gotico internationale) describes a
style of late medieval art (painting,
sculpture and decorative art) that
extended across western Europe
during the last quarter of the 14th-
and the first quarter of the 15th-
century, acting in effect as a bridge
between Gothic
art and Renaissance art.
Gothic Art

In the International Gothic style

(also known as the "beautiful style"
or the "soft style") the oddities of
natural forms are smoothed away,
leaving behind an elegant, delicate
realism, which perfectly suited the
decorative needs of the royal
courts which gave birth to it.
Gothic Art

Marked by a feeling of secular

chivalry - no matter how devotional
or religious the subject - its
elegance reflects the sophisticated,
cosmopolitan nature and
pageantry of courtly life.
Gothic Art

Although it combines elements

from northern Europe and Italy,
International Gothic art reflects
Italian traditions, notably that of
the Sienese school.
Gothic Art

Major artists associated with the

International Gothic style included
the sculptors Andre Beauneveu
(c.1335-1400) and Claus Sluter
(c.1340-1406); the wood-carvers
Veit Stoss (1450-1533) and Tilman
Riemenschneider (1460-1531);
Gothic Art

and the painters Gentile da

Fabriano (c.1370-1427), Antonio
Pisanello (1394-1455), as well as the
Limbourg Brothers, Herman, Jean
and Pol, all of whom died of the
plague in 1416.
Gothic Art

The style exerted a strong influence

on Early Renaissance art, especially
the works of Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1378-1455), Donatello (1386-1466),
Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) and Fra
Angelico (c.1400-55).
The Roots of the
Renaissance
The Renaissance is a period in
Europe, from the 14th to the 17th
century, regarded as the cultural
bridge between the Middle
Ages and modern history.
It started as a cultural
movement in Italy in the Late
Medieval period and later spread to
the rest of Europe, marking the
beginning of the Early Modern Age.
The Roots of the
Renaissance

The intellectual basis of the

Renaissance was its own invented
version of humanism, derived from
the rediscovery of classical Greek
philosophy, such as that
of Protagoras, who said that "Man
is the measure of all things."
This new thinking became manifest
in art, architecture, politics, science
and literature.
The Roots of the
Renaissance
Early examples were the
development of perspective in oil
painting and the recycled
knowledge of how to
make concrete.
Although the invention of metal
movable type sped the
dissemination of ideas from the
later 15th century, the changes of
the Renaissance were not
uniformly experienced across
Europe.
The Roots of the
Renaissance
As a cultural movement, the
Renaissance encompassed
innovative flowering of Latin and
vernacular literatures, beginning
with the 14th-century resurgence
of learning based on classical
sources, the development of linear
perspective and other techniques
of rendering a more natural reality
in painting; and gradual but
widespread educational reform.
The Roots of the
Renaissance

In politics, the Renaissance

contributed to the development of
the customs and conventions
of diplomacy, and in science to an
increased reliance on observation
and inductive reasoning.
The Roots of the
Renaissance
Although the Renaissance saw
revolutions in many intellectual
pursuits, as well as social and
political upheaval, it is perhaps best
known for its artistic developments
and the contributions of
such polymaths as Leonardo da
Vinci and Michelangelo, who
inspired the term "Renaissance
man".
The Roots of the
Renaissance
There is a consensus that the
Renaissance began in Florence, in
the 14th century.
Various theories have been
proposed to account for its origins
and characteristics, focusing on a
variety of factors including the
social and civic peculiarities of
Florence at the time:
The Roots of the
Renaissance

its political structure; the patronage

of its dominant family, the Medici,
including the beginning of banking
in Florence.
The Roots of the
Renaissance

the migration of Greek scholars and

texts to Italy following the Fall of
Constantinople to the Ottoman
Turks,
The Roots of the
Renaissance

and the discovery of new sea routes

for trading and the discovery of
new continents.
The Roots of the
Renaissance

Other major centres were

northern Italian city-states such
as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna,
and finally Rome during
the Renaissance Papacy.
The Roots of the
Renaissance
Some observers have called into
question whether the Renaissance
was a cultural "advance" from the
Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a
period of pessimism
and nostalgia for classical
antiquity, while social and
economic historians, have instead
focused on the continuity between
the two eras, which are linked, as
Panofsky observed, "by a thousand
ties".
The Roots of the
Renaissance
It is in Florence that the new
architectural style had its
beginning, not slowly evolving in
the way that Gothic grew out of
Romanesque, but consciously
brought to being by particular
architects who sought to revive the
order of a past “Golden Age".
The scholarly approach to the
architecture of the ancient
coincided with the general revival
of learning.
The Renaissance

Historians often use the following

designations:

 Renaissance (ca. 1400–1500); also

known as the Quattrocento and
sometimes Early Renaissance
 High Renaissance (ca.1500–1525)
 Mannerism (ca. 1520–1600)
The Philosophy
of Humanism
Above all, Renaissance art was
driven by the new notion of
"Humanism," a philosophy which
had been the foundation for many
of the achievements (eg.
democracy) of pagan ancient
Greece.
Humanism downplayed religious
and secular dogma and instead
attached the greatest importance
to the dignity and worth of the
individual.
Humanism
and Art
In the visual arts, humanism stood for
 The emergence of the individual
figure, in place of stereotyped, or
symbolic figures.
 Greater realism and consequent
attention to detail, as reflected in
the development of linear
perspective and the increasing
realism of human faces and bodies;
this new approach helps to explain
why classical sculpture was so
revered, and why Byzantine art fell
out of fashion.
Humanism
and Art

• An emphasis on and promotion of

virtuous action: an approach
echoed by the leading art theorist
of the Renaissance Leon Battista
Alberti (1404-72) when he declared,
"happiness cannot be gained
without good works and just and
righteous deeds".
Humanism
and Art
The promotion of virtuous action
reflected the growing idea that
man, not fate or God, controlled
human destiny, and was a key
reason why history painting (that is,
pictures with uplifting 'messages')
became regarded as the highest
form of painting.
Of course, the exploration of virtue
in the visual arts also involved an
examination of vice and human
evil.
Humanism
and Art
In the early quattrocento, painters
such as Masaccio emphasized
exclusively the human angle in their
paintings, rather than the
theological one.
Also, they begin to focus far more
on the human relations between
the figures than with the purely
devotional aspects of the
composition.
Humanism
and Art
Similarly, the Renaissance painter
became more and more concerned
with the relations between the
painting and the observer.
This particular aspect relied heavily
on the invention of the one-
point linear perspective system,
which in turn derived from new
learning and a new vision of the
world.
Humanism
and Art
The empirical system devised
through mathematical studies by
the architect Filippo
Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was given
theoretical form and universal
application by Leon Battista
Alberti (1404-72) in his treatise
on fine art painting, called Della
Pittura.
Alberti also wrote a treatise on
architecture, Della Architectura,
both of which remained influential
for centuries.
WHY DID THE RENAISSANCE BEGIN IN ITALY?
The Italian
Renaissance
Italian Renaissance artists and
architects based their theories and
practices on Classical Roman
examples.

The Renaissance revival of Classical

Rome was as important in all the arts.
A Pilgrimage to Rome to study the
ancient buildings and ruins, especially
the Colosseum and Pantheon, was
considered essential to an creative
training.
The Italian
Renaissance
Examples of Roman
architecture were found in almost
every town and city, and Roman
sculpture, including copies of lost
sculptures from ancient Greece,
had been familiar for centuries.
Vitruvius’s writings on architecture
also influenced the Renaissance
definition of beauty in architecture.
The Italian
Renaissance

As in the Classical world,

Renaissance art and architecture is
characterized by harmonious form,
mathematical proportion, and a
unit of measurement based on
the human scale.
Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli was one of the

great artists patronized by
the Medici Family in Florence.
In his early work, he shows an
interest in moving figures, a feeling
of movement across the surface of
the painting, and landscape.
Sandro Botticelli

In his celebrated work La

Primavera (1482-3, Uffizi) he uses
line in depicting hair, billowing
drapery, and the contour of an arm
in order to suggest the movement
of the figures.
At the same time the flow of the
figures created a rising and falling
linear movement across the picture
surface.
Sandro Botticelli

Botticelli's well-known Madonna and

Child paintings reveal a sweetness
and sense of grace.
Sandro Botticelli
These effects of movement are
evident in his other masterpiece The
Birth of Venus (1484-6) Uffizi,
Florence).
Sadly, following the terror and chaos
instigated by the fanatical religious
reformer Girolamo Savonarola,
Botticelli allegedly suffered a
breakdown: an event which led him to
adopt a more emotional and overtly
devout style of painting which
effectively denied almost all of the
aesthetics of Renaissance art.
Filippo Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 – 1446)
was an Italian designer and a key
figure in architecture, recognised to
be the first modern engineer,
planner and sole construction
supervisor. He was one of the
founding fathers of
the Renaissance.
His accomplishments also include
other architectural works,
sculpture, mathematics,
engineering, and ship design. His
principal surviving works are to be
found in Florence, Italy.
Filippo Brunelleschi
He is generally well known for
developing a technique for linear
perspective in art and for building
the dome of the Florence
Cathedral.
Heavily dependent on mirrors and
geometry, to "reinforce Christian
spiritual reality", his formulation of
linear perspective governed
pictorial depiction of space until the
late 19th century.
Lorenzo Ghiberti
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 – 1455), was
a Florentine Italian artist of
the Early Renaissance best known
as the creator of the bronze doors
of the Florence Baptistery, called
by Michelangelo the Gates of
Paradise.
Trained as a goldsmith and sculptor,
he established an important
workshop for sculpture in metal.
His book of Commentari contains
important writing on art, as well as
what may be the earliest
surviving autobiography by any
artist.
 Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 –
April 6, 1520), was an
Italian painter and architect of
the High Renaissance.
His work is admired for its clarity of
form, ease of composition, and
visual achievement of
the Neoplatonic ideal of human
grandeur.
Together
with Michelangelo and Leonardo
da Vinci, he forms the traditional
trinity of great masters of that
period.
 Raphael
Raphael was enormously
productive, running an unusually
large workshop and, despite his
death at 37, leaving a large body of
work.
Many of his works are found in
the Vatican Palace, where the
frescoed Raphael Rooms were the
central, and the largest, work of his
career.
His best known work is The School
of Athens in the Vatican Stanza
della Segnatura.
 Raphael

After his early years in Rome much of

his work was executed by his
workshop from his drawings, with
considerable loss of quality.

He was extremely influential in his

lifetime, though outside Rome his
work was mostly known from his
collaborative printmaking.
 Raphael

After his death, the influence of his

great rival Michelangelo was more
widespread until the 18th and 19th
centuries, when Raphael's more
serene and harmonious qualities were
again regarded as the highest models.
 Raphael
His career falls naturally into three
phases and three styles:
his early years in Umbria, then a
period of about four years (1504–
1508) absorbing the artistic
traditions of Florence, followed by
his last hectic and triumphant
twelve years in Rome, working for
two Popes and their close
associates.
 Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico
Buonarroti Simoni (1475 – 1564)
was an Italian sculptor, painter,
architect and poet of the High
Renaissance born in the Republic of
Florence, who exerted an
unparalleled influence on the
development of Western art.
 Michelangelo
Considered the greatest living artist
during his lifetime, he has since
been described as one of the
greatest artists of all time.
Despite making few forays beyond
the arts, his artistic versatility was
of such a high order that he is often
considered a contender for the title
of the archetypal Renaissance man,
along with his rival and
fellow Florentine Medici client,
Leonardo da Vinci.
 Michelangelo
A number of Michelangelo's works
of painting, sculpture and
architecture rank among the most
famous in existence.
His output in these fields was
prodigious; given the sheer volume
of surviving correspondence,
sketches and reminiscences, he is
the best-documented artist of the
16th century.
He sculpted two of his best-known
works, the Pietà and David, before
the age of thirty.
 Michelangelo

Despite holding a low opinion of

painting, he also created two of the
most influential frescoes in the
history of Western art:
the scenes from Genesis on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in
Rome, and The Last Judgment on its
altar wall.
 Michelangelo

His design of the Laurentian Library

pioneered Mannerist architecture.
 Michelangelo

At the age of 74, he

succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger as the architect of St.
Peter's Basilica.
He transformed the plan so that the
western end was finished to his
design, as was the dome, with
some modification, after his death.
 Michelangelo

Michelangelo was the first Western

artist whose biography was
published while he was alive. In
fact, two biographies were
published during his lifetime.
In his lifetime, Michelangelo was
often called Il Divino ("the divine
one"). His contemporaries often
admired his terribilità—his ability to
install a sense of awe.
 Michelangelo

Attempts by subsequent artists to

imitate Michelangelo's impassioned,
highly personal style resulted
in Mannerism, the next major
movement in Western art after the
High Renaissance.
 Leonardo
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452 –
2 1519) was an Italian Renaissance
polymath whose areas of interest
included invention, painting, sculpting,
architecture, science, music,
mathematics, engineering, literature,
anatomy, geology, astronomy,
botany, writing, history, and
cartography.
 Leonardo

He has been variously called the

father of palaeontology, ichnology,
and architecture, and is widely
considered one of the greatest
painters of all time.
Sometimes credited with the
inventions of the parachute,
helicopter, and tank, he epitomised
the Renaissance humanist ideal.
 Leonardo
Many historians and scholars
regard Leonardo as the prime
exemplar of the "Universal Genius"
or "Renaissance Man", an individual
of "unquenchable curiosity" and
"feverishly inventive
imagination", and he is widely
considered one of the most
diversely talented individuals ever
to have lived.
According to art historian Helen
Gardner, the scope and depth of his
interests were without precedent in
recorded history, and "his mind and
personality seem to us
superhuman, while the man
himself mysterious and remote".
 Leonardo
Born out of wedlock to a notary,
Piero da Vinci, and a peasant
woman, Caterina, in Vinci in the
region of Florence, Leonardo was
educated in the studio of the
renowned Florentine
painter Andrea del Verrocchio.
Much of his earlier working life was
spent in the service of Ludovico il
Moro in Milan. He later worked in
Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he
spent his last years in France at the
home awarded to him by Francis I
of France.
 Leonardo

Leonardo was, and is, renowned

primarily as a painter.
Among his works, the Mona Lisa is
the most famous and most
parodied portrait and The Last
Supper the most reproduced
religious painting of all time.
 Leonardo

Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian

Man is also regarded as a cultural
icon, being reproduced on items as
varied as the euro coin, textbooks,
and T-shirts.
 Leonardo
A painting by Leonardo, Salvator
Mundi, sold for a world record $450.3
million at a Christie's auction in New
York, 15 November 2017, the highest
price ever paid for a work of art.

Perhaps fifteen of his paintings have

survived.
 Leonardo
Nevertheless, these few works,
together with his notebooks, which
contain drawings, scientific diagrams,
and his thoughts on the nature of
painting, compose a contribution to
later generations of artists rivalled
only by that of his contemporary,
Michelangelo.
The Renaissance in Europe and Beyond!