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The Renaissance, the Rebirth of Science, Culture, & Art…
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Middle Ages was about to end, which was lasted about a thousand years after the fall of Rome, and Renaissance, one of the greatest cultural movements of history was changing the situation in Italy and consequently in the whole of Europe. The Renaissance spanned from 14th^ to 16^ th^ centuries, spreading across European countries from its birthplace in Italy. However, the changes that we associate with the Renaissance first occurred in the Italian city of Florence and continued to be more influential and entrenched there than anywhere else. It was the economic growth of individuals and groups that led to the creativity of artists and scholars. However, the creativity and extraordinary production of art, were not the result of investment for more profit, but virtue, honor, and pleasure. Todays’ world is influenced by those changes and activities, because the Renaissance has established the economic, political, artistic and scientific foundations of the present-day Western civilizations.
On one hand the city’s great economic conditions and on the other hand its writers, painters, architects, and philosophers all made Florence a model of Renaissance culture. In 1425 the city had a population of 60,000 and was a self-governed, independent city-state. Because Florence was not a port city like Venice, sea trade was not a primary source of its income. Banking, however, was. Many families of Florence, beginning in the thirteenth century, were successful bankers. The Florentine gold coin known as the florin was of such reliable purity that it was the standard coinage throughout Europe. Florentine bankers were known throughout Europe as well, for they established banking houses in other important cities such as London, Geneva, and Bruges (Belgium). Apart from that, as a center of European wool trade, the political power of the city rested primarily in the hands of the wealthy merchants who dominated the industry. These merchants built enormous gilded mansions in the city, villas in the country, and contributed to the construction of grand cathedrals, spawning the physical rebirth of the city. As a result, a spirit of competition developed between the rich merchants, who often competed with each other to see who could commission the grandest buildings and the finest works of art. The Medici family, which controlled Florence throughout much of the Renaissance, played a large part in the protection of the arts and the political development of the city.
Renaissance Art
Between 1400 and 1600, Europe witnessed an astonishing revival of drawing, fine art painting, sculpture, and architecture centered on Italy, which we now refer to as the Renaissance. The origins of Renaissance art can be traced to Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. During this so-called “Proto-Renaissance” period (1280-1400), Italian scholars and artists saw themselves as reawakening to the ideals and achievements of classical Roman culture. Italian artists and thinkers became inspired by the ideas and forms of ancient Greece and Rome. This was perfectly in tune with their desire to create a universal, even noble, form of art which could express the new and more confident mood of the times. During this time people are becoming more and more humanist. Emotion and Beauty, two important characteristics of Humanism created a huge difference in the art subjects of that time with more emotion being portrayed in the artworks, and more emphasis on beauty. However, this is still a transitory stage, from the medieval times, to Renaissance times. It was also during this time that people began to study and emulate the classics, ancient Greek and Roman art and thinking, leading to a massive change in
thought and standards. The Italians had a particularly easy time in studying these classics because they were located right where they lived.
Early Renaissance Art
In the later 14th century, the Proto-Renaissance was stifled by plague and war, and its influences did not emerge again until the first years of the next century. In 1401, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378-1455) won a major competition to design a new set of bronze doors for the Baptistery of the cathedral of Florence, beating out contemporaries such as the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and the young Donatello (c. 1386- 1466), who would later emerge as the masters of the early Renaissance sculpture.
The other major artist working during this period was the painter Masaccio (1401-1428), known for his frescoes of the Trinity in the Church of Santa Maria Novella (c. 1426) and in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine (c. 1427), both in Florence. Masaccio painted for less than six years but was highly influential in the early Renaissance for the intellectual nature of his work, as well as its degree of naturalism. From Florence the early Renaissance style spread gradually over Italy, becoming prevalent in the second half of the 15th century.
Florentine artists active towards the end of the 15th century include Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), best known as the master of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Perugino (1445-1523), noted for his Sistine Chapel fresco Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter (1482). There was in addition Filippo Lippi's son Filippino Lippi (1457-1504), who became a pupil of Botticelli's after the death of his father. Filippino Lippi was responsible for a group of Madonnas that are easily mistaken for Botticelli's own work. By 1485, however, he had developed a rather agitated style of painting as shown in his masterpiece, the expressive Vision of St. Bernard in the Badia, Florence. His later works like the series of frescoes in Santa Maria Novella (1502) are marked by a color and distortion of form that may have influenced the development of Mannerism some two decades later. Another figure active in Florence in the final decades of the 15th century was Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94), the prolific and popular fresco painter, whose artistic career was spent as a chronicler of life in Florence. His paintings on the subject of the Life of the Virgin in Santa Maria Novella (c.1485-90) can be understood as the life of a young Florentine girl as well as a religious narrative. His art, though already old-fashioned, helped to train a large number of Florentine artists.
High Renaissance Art
The High Renaissance in Italy is generally described as the period from around 1500, although like the starting date of the Renaissance itself the dates are not set in stone. Works from ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and buildings had been admired and studied by generations of artists and the explosion in art and creativity reached its pinnacle in quite a narrow timescale, up to about 1530. During this period the classical arts of antiquity had been fully recaptured and the accumulation of knowledge that started with Giotto was fully expressed in the work of the Great masters. Ever since Giotto abandoned medieval hieratic art in favor of depicting nature, his successors from the quattrocento managed to find more and more ways to improve their portrayal of the real world. Techniques involving linear perspective and vanishing points were
going out, as they say, not with a bang but, rather, a (relative) whimper. Another new development at this time was rudimentary archaeology. The Mannerist artists now had actual works, from antiquity, to study. No longer did they need to use their respective imagination when it came to Classical stylization. That said, they (the Mannerist artists) almost seemed determined to use their powers for evil. Where High Renaissance art was natural, graceful, balanced and harmonious, the art of Mannerism was quite different. While technically masterful, Mannerist compositions were full of clashing colors, disquieting figures with abnormally elongated limbs, (often torturous-looking) emotion and bizarre themes that combined Classicism, Christianity, and mythology. The nude, which had been rediscovered during the Early Renaissance, was still present during the Late but, heavens - the poses in which it found itself! Leaving compositional instability out of the picture (pun intended), no human could have maintained positions such as those depicted - clothed or otherwise. Landscapes suffered a similar fate. If the sky in any given scene wasn't a menacing color, it was filled with flying animals, malevolent putti, Grecian columns or some other busy-ness.
Among the finest Mannerist Artists were: Michelangelo (1475-1564) noted for his Sistine Chapel frescoes such as The Last Judgement (1536-41); Correggio (1489-1534) known for his sentimental narrative paintings and the first to portray light radiating from the child Christ; Andrea del Sarto's two pupils Jacopo da Pontormo (1494-1556) and Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540); Parmigianino (1503-40) the influential master draftsman and portraitist from Parma; Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72), noted for his allegorical masterpiece known as An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (1540-50); the Venetian Jacopo Bassano (1515-92), Tintoretto (1518-94) one of the great drawing experts and a prolific composer of large religious paintings executed in the grand manner verging on the Baroque; Federico Barocci (1526-1612) the pious religious painter active in Urbino and central Italy; Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-93) known for his bizarre fruit and vegetable portraits and Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), also from Bologna, noted for his historical Farnese Gallery frescoes (1597-1608).
More than any artists before them, Mannerist painters stressed the individual way of painting, the personal vision and pictorial understanding of things. They discovered the symbolic content of visual structure, the expressive element of painting. They consistently resisted equilibrium. So the circular and pyramidal compositions typical of the Renaissance disappeared. Classical compositional patterns were unbalanced by surprising asymmetrical effects. Painters abandoned the basic structural model that stabilized the painting.
Pontormo – Late Renaissance
Jacopo Carucci (May 24, 1494 – January 2, 1557), usually known as Jacopo da Pontormo, Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo, was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine School. His work represents a profound stylistic shift from the calm perspectival regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine Renaissance. He is famous for his use of twining poses, coupled with ambiguous perspective; his figures often seem to float in an uncertain environment, unhampered by the forces of gravity. Pontormo combined the influences of his teachers Andrea del Sarto and Leonardo da Vinci with impulses from Raphael's late work, as well as the painting of Michelangelo, arriving at a pictorial language which, for all its realism, still seems other-worldly. The large altarpiece canvas for the Brunelleschi-designed Capponi
Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita, Florence, portraying The Deposition from the Cross , is considered by many, Pontormo's surviving masterpiece (1528). The Florentine artist Jacopo da Pontormo was among the earliest exponents of Italian Mannerism. He worked for the Medici, Borgherini and other patrons of Renaissance art in Florence, making his initial reputation with fresco works at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano. Like other Mannerist artists, Pontormo's compositional design took precedence over naturalism and perspective. Thus, where High Renaissance painters sought harmony, Pontormo looked for drama and special effect. His angular style of cinquecento draughtsman-ship (evident in The Story of Joseph) owed a great deal to works by Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), although his sense of color was entirely his own. Pontormo is famous for two outstanding works: The Deposition (1526-8), painted for the altarpiece of S.Felicita; and a cycle of frescoes in the Church of S.Lorenzo (1546-56). In addition, his Portrait of Cosimo de'Medici Il Vecchio (1518-19, Uffizi, Florence) is one of the most richly colored paintings of the Mannerist period.
Pontormo was an isolated figure among the artists of his day. He had some imitators, such as Naldini and Morandini, and El Greco, but few pupils, with the exception of Bronzino, whose mannered techniques prolonged the maniera fiorentina well into the 16th century. Certain works of Jacopino del Conte, Vasari and Salviati, with their echoes of Pontormo's style, only serve to emphasize the level of his achievements. Paintings by Jacopo Pontormo can be seen in many of the best art museums throughout the world, notably the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
The Deposition – Pontormo
The Deposition from the Cross is an altarpiece, completed in 1528, depicting the Deposition of Christ by the Italian Renaissance painter Jacopo Pontormo. It is broadly considered to be the artist's surviving masterpiece. Painted in oil on wood, at this time the painting is located in the cinquecento exhibition. From 21 September 2017 to 21 January 2018 Palazzo Strozzi will be hosting The Cinquecento in Florence.
The structure of the panel and the composition chosen by Pontormo for this painting imbue the scene with a strongly vertical feel, with the painting devised and conceived to be seen from the viewpoint of an observer gazing upwards. Some people believe it is not clear whether Christ is being carried to the Virgin or being carried away, but in any event one's attention is captured by the swooning Virgin; in fact virtually every figure in the composition is emotionally involved in her malaise. Seeming indifference to her predicament is displayed only by the two characters looking directly at the observer, in other words the supposed self-portrait of the artist (sporting a turban and a simple scarf) and the angel with curly hair supporting the body of Christ in the foreground. The painting appears to represent the moment in which the body of Christ, having been taken down from the cross, has just been removed from the mother's lap. The Virgin, visibly distraught, and perhaps on the point of fainting, still glazes longingly towards her Son, and gestures with her right arm in the same direction. Some other people believe in the center of the painting, the moment of the separation is underlined by the subtle contact of Mary's legs with those of Christ, now freed from his Mother's last pathetic embrace. The twisted body of Christ is reminiscent of Michelangelo's Vatican Pietà (1498). Some scholars have interpreted the two young figures holding up the deceased's body as angels in the act of drawing Christ away from the main group and leading him finally into the arms of his Father. The general direction of the
Further distortion can be seen in the curved bodies of Christ and the figure supporting him. Both have an elongated proportion and a serpentine, almost effeminate, curve that counterbalance each other. Another strangeness is how so many hands meet at the center of the painting. Who does each arm and hand belong to? It’s hard to tell when you really start looking. Why would Pontormo create this confusion? Is this a reflection on the complexity of life? Most paintings depicting the descent from the cross include at least some hint of the cross. Although a ladder was indicated in the preparatory drawing, all that remains is that one wee cloud in the corner. Does it represent the idea of heaven, of redemption, or does it indicate the presence of the Holy Spirit? In the following drawing you can see the ladder that would be leaning against the cross and also the hint of another figure beside it. (In the drawing, you can also see how Pontormo drew the nude figures and then in the painting, added color to make it seem as if they are wearing clothes!) The ladder brought in the harshness of straight lines and would have spoilt the curving choreography of figures.
Even though there’s no cross indicated, by the way Pontormo positioned the figures, we still have the echo of one.
I believe the three figures holding Christ (including the woman who holds his head towards us as if to say, ‘Look upon his face’) all look out beyond the picture plane to our world. Most of the remaining figures are focused on Mary. This sets up a tension in the painting. The figures with Christ seem to be pulling him away to the left, while the other figures circle and block Mary who almost leans away to the right. This is the moment of separation when a mother gives up her son.
There’s a figure on the right who also looks out. The drab colors he wears look out of place in this Technicolor tableau. It’s a self-portrait. By including himself, Pontormo bears witness to the event, confirming for us that this is not a realistic depiction of the event but a representation of emotion and faith.
Adding to the sense of this being an aesthetic experience rather than a depiction of reality is the lightness of the figures. This is particularly true of Christ. If you look at the figures supporting his body you don’t see any evidence of Christ’s weight. They don’t seem burdened at all so much.
Another giveaway that this isn’t the real thing is that we get a cleaned up version of the scene. There’s no blood, no crown of thorns, no dirt, no sweat, only clean, clear colors and sharply defined shapes. Death hardly has affected Christ and it is only his limp body and the grey pallor around his eyes and lips that gives the situation away.
This particular painting is a reflection of the mannerism style as it contains many features and characteristics of the late renaissance artworks.
Raffaello Sanzio – High Renaissance
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, 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's methods as a painter were remarkably consistent. A compositional study for the early St Nicholas of Tolentino altarpiece shows his concern for underlying geometric structure in composition and his practice of studying each figure separately from a living model. Raphael synthesized classicism, idealization, and naturalism to create a consummate Renaissance style.
From 1504 to 1508 Raphael lived in Florence; this experience would prove decisive in the maturation of his career, as exposure to the art of Leonardo and Michelangelo led him to develop a powerful approach. Still very young, Raphael received no significant public commissions in Florence. Instead Raphael concentrated on relatively small private paintings (paintings of the Madonna and Child and portrait paintings) to explore a variety of artistic ideas. paintings such as the Madonna of the Meadow (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, c. 1505), the Madonna of the Goldfinch (Florence, Uffizi, c. 1506) and Maddalena Doni (Florence, Pitti Palace, c. 1507), reveal him working out how to use geometry, balance, ideal form, and naturalism to create impressive, moving, believable images, which were the basic fundamentals of the High Renaissance paintings.
The Deposition – Raffaello
In 16th century Italy, violence among gangs or factions of Italians was fairly common. On July 3, 1500, the Italian Grifonetto Baglioni was murdered by Gian Paolo Baglioni in one of these gang- related incidents. His mother commissioned Raphael, who would afterwards become a famous Italian Renaissance painter, to create a commemoration to Grifonetto. Raphael spent the next two years designing an altarpiece that would honor Grifonetto in the family’s chapel. Raphael took the project very seriously and made a number of preparatory drafts for his idea. He wanted to
there is no more space for the background. I think Pontormo’s entombment or deposition is a result of the fact that Pontormo has taken out many of the symbols that we would expect in this painting. The cross is gone and the tomb is not apparent, what is here instead, is a very spare image of figures, and really nothing but figures, with the exception, perhaps, of a little bit of ground and some clouds above.
I also think about the High Renaissance in terms of a pyramid composition and of stability and balance. In Pontormo’s painting there is a sense almost of things moving in lots of different directions at once. With this painting, it feels like there is really no place for our eyes to rest. To my eye this is a composition full of constant movement.
In Pontormo’s masterpiece Mary looks like she is about to faint. It seems to me that these are not so much the emotions of a person, but symbols of emotions, almost like masks. And that sense of masking by artificiality of an art that is not based on nature is really typical of mannerism. Some people have seen the mannerist style as like a style that expresses a new spirituality as opposed to the naturalism of the early renaissance.
When it comes to men eristic, artists, they greatly admired the masters of the high Renaissance Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. They actually copied a lot of their works that was a common practice. Artists began to experiment with what was developed during the high Renaissance. Mannerism is essentially a reaction to the High Renaissance ideas so they may break the rules or they may exaggerate concepts. The mannerist knew what they were doing when they created these slightly odd images and presented them as genuine. Distorting elements such as scale and perspective and adding drama in subtle ways whenever they could, were exactly the look they were going for. Mannerists took cues from the Renaissance artists about matters such as bright color, fine detail and a focus on individualism and the human form, but applied these ideas in a way that transformed their style. Mannerist artists departed from the ideals of mathematical, anatomical, spatial, and even scenic perfection of the Renaissance in breaking these rules and depicting unrealistic body proportions, poses, colors, and settings, they opened imaginative possibilities for juxtapose scenes, vibrant color, and perfect elegance.
Resources
- Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in fifteenth-century Italy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988
- The Springtime of the Renaissance Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400-60, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 23 March-18 August 2013
- Rona Goffen, Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002
- (^) http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/renaissance-art.htm
- https://www.friendsofflorence.org
Mehrdad Torabi
