Renaissance Art E-Book

Victoria Charles

• Herausgeber: Parkstone International
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 154

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The Renaissance began at the end of the 14th century in Italy and had extended across the whole of Europe by the second half of the 16th century. The rediscovery of the splendour of ancient Greece and Rome marked the beginning of the rebirth of the arts following the break-down of the dogmatic certitude of the Middle Ages. A number of artists began to innovate in the domains of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Depicting the ideal and the actual, the sacred and the profane, the period provided a frame of reference which influenced European art over the next four centuries. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Giorgione, Mantegna, Raphael, Dürer and Bruegel are among the artists who made considerable contributions to the art of the Renaissance.

Leseprobe

Author: Victoria Charles

Translation: Marlena Metcalf

© 2023, Parkstone Press International, New York, USA

© 2023, Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA

All rights reserved worldwide. If not otherwise noted, the copyright of the work belongs to the individual photographers. Despite of intensive research, it was not possible in every case to establish the right of ownership. If necessary, please inform us.

Victoria Charles

Contents

Introduction

I. Art in Italy

The Italian Early Renaissance

The Italian High Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Raphael

Painting in Middle and Upper Italy

Painting in Venice

Architecture in Northern Italy

II. Art in Germany and the Rest of Northern Europe

Albrecht Dürer

Hans Holbein the Younger

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Tilman Riemenschneider

Veit Stoss

Architecture During the German Renaissance

III. Art in the Netherlands, France, England and Spain

The Netherlands

France

England

Spain

Major Artists

Architecture

Filippo Brunelleschi (born in Florence in 1377 – died in Florence in 1446)

Leon Battista Alberti (born in Genoa in 1404 – died in Rome in 1472)

Donato Bramante (born in Urbino in 1444 – died in Rome in 1514)

Giuliano da Sangallo (born in Florence circa 1445 – died in Florence circa 1516)

Jacopo Sansovino (born in Florence in 1486 – died in Venice in 1570)

Andrea Palladio (born in Padua in 1508 – died in Vicenza in 1580)

Painting

Fra Angelico (Fra Giovanni da Fiesole) (born in Vicchio in 1387 – died in Rome in 1455)

Jan and Hubert Van Eyck (born near Maastricht circa 1390 – died in Bruges in 1441) (born in Bruges circa 1366 – died in Bruges in 1426)

Rogier Van der Weyden (born in Tournai in 1399 – died in Brussels in 1464)

Masaccio (Tommaso Cassai) (born in San Giovanni Valdarno in 1401 – died in Rome in 1427)

Piero della Francesca (born in Borgo San Sepulcro in 1416 – died in Borgo San Sepulcro in 1492)

Jean Fouquet (born in Tours in 1420 – died in Tours in 1481)

Giovanni Bellini (born in Venice in 1430 – died in Venice in 1516)

Andrea Mantegna (born in Isola di Carturo in 1431 – died in Mantova in 1506)

Hans Memling (born in Seligenstadt in 1433 – died in Bruges in 1494)

Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) (born in Florence in 1445 – died in Florence in 1510)

Leonardo da Vinci (born in Vinci in 1452 – died in Le Clos-Lucé in 1519)

Albrecht Dürer (born in Nuremberg in 1471 – died in Nuremberg in 1528)

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) (born in Urbino in 1483 – died in Rome in 1520)

Titian (Vecellio Tiziano) (born in Pieve di Cadore in 1490 – died in Venice in 1576)

Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (born in Corregio in 1490 – died in Corregio in 1534)

Hans Holbein the Younger (born in Augsburg in 1497 – died in London in 1543)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (born in Breda in 1525 – died in Brussels in 1569)

Veronese (Paolo Caliari) (born in Verona in 1528 – died in Venice in 1588)

Sculpture

Lorenzo Ghiberti (born in Florence circa 1378 – died in Florence in 1455)

Donatello (born in Florence circa 1386 – died in Florence in 1466)

Andrea del Verrocchio (Andrea di Francesco de Cioni) (born in Florence circa 1435 – died in Venice in 1488)

Veit Stoss (born in Horb circa 1450 – died in Nuremberg in 1533)

Tilman Riemenschneider (born in Heiligenstadt circa 1460 – died in Wurzburg in 1531)

Michelangelo Buonarroti, called Michelangelo (born in Caprese in 1475 – died in Rome in 1565)

Benvenutto Cellini (born in Florence in 1500 – died in Florence in 1571)

Germain Pilon (born in Paris circa 1525 – died in Paris in 1590)

Giambologna (Jean Bologne or Boulogne) (born in Douai in 1529 – died in Florence in 1608)

Jean Goujon (active 1540 – 1563)

Bibliography

Index

Michelangelo Buonarroti,David, 1501-1504.

Marble, h: 410 cm.

Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.

Introduction

In the middle of the fourteenth century a cultural transformation took place, a transformation that was initiated in Italy and was called Rinascimento there, and was subsequently known as Renaissance in France. It separated the Middle Ages from the Modern Age and was accompanied by Humanism and the Reformation. This development was a return to the classical arts of Greek and Roman Antiquity. It led to intensive studies of the long forgotten poets, to an enthusiasm for sculpture and for the numerous remains of architecture, even if they only existed as ruins.

Equally important for this development was the development of technology and sciences, which began in today’s Scandinavia, as well as the Netherlands and later in Germany.

In Italy, it was initially architecture which fell back on classical ideals and, a little later, it was sculpture which sought a closer bond with nature. When the architect and sculptor, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 to 1466), went to Rome to excavate, study and measure the remains of antique buildings, he was accompanied by the goldsmith and sculptor Donatello (around 1386 to 1466). The sculptures found during that time and during later excavations fired the enthusiasm of the sculptors, which, at the end of the fifteenth century was powerful enough to lead Michelangelo to bury one of his pieces of work in the ground, so that shortly afterwards it could be dug up as being “genuinely antique”.

The Italian Renaissance lasted for approximately two hundred years. The early Renaissance is classed as belonging to the years between 1420 and 1500 (the Quattrocento), the heyday of the Renaissance ended about 1520, and the late Renaissance, which turned into Mannerism, came to a close in around 1600 (the Cinquecento). Baroque art (roughly translated as “quirky, eccentric”) developed as an imperceptible transition from the late Renaissance as a further development in Italy and in some other countries and was occasionally seen as a deviant and decadent, but now and again as a higher form of development, dominating until the end of the seventeenth century. After the Renaissance crossed the Alps into Germany, France and the Netherlands, it took a similar course and is classified the same way as in Italy.

Lorenzo Ghiberti,Door of Eden, 1425-1452.

Gilded bronze, 506 x 287 cm.

Baptistery, Florence.

Donatello, David, c. 1440-1443.

Bronze, h: 153 cm.

Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

I. Art in Italy

The Italian Early Renaissance

The earliest traces of the Renaissance are found in Florence. In the fourteenth century, the town already had 120,000 inhabitants and was the leading power in middle Italy. The most famous artists of this time lived here – at least at times – Giotto (probably 1266 to 1336), Donatello (1386 to 1466), Masaccio (1401 to 1429), Michelangelo (1475 to 1564), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 to 1455).

Brunelleschi secured a tender in 1420 to reconstruct the Florentine Cathedral, which was to receive a dome as a proud landmark. The foundation of his design was the dome of the Pantheon, originating in the Roman Empire. He deviated from the model by designing an elliptical dome resting on an octagonal foundation (the tambour). In his other buildings, he followed the forms of columns, beams and chapters of the Greek-Roman master builders. However, owing to the lack of new ideas, only the crowning dome motif was adopted in the central construction, in the form of the Greek cross or in the basilica in the form of the Latin cross. Instead, the embellishments taken from the Roman ruins were further developed according to classical patterns. The master builders of the Renaissance fully understood the richness and delicateness, as well as the power of size in Roman buildings, and complemented it with a light splendour. Brunelleschi, in particular, demonstrated this in the chapel erected in the monastery yard of Santa Croce for the Pazzi Family, with its portico born by Corinthian columns, in the inside of the Medici Church San Lorenzo and the sacristy belonging to it. These buildings have never been surpassed by any later, similar building in so far as the harmony of their individual parts is in proportion to the entire building.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404 to 1472), who like Brunelleschi was not only a master builder, but at the same time also a significant art historian with his writings About Painting (1435) and About Architecture (1451), was probably the first to articulate this quest for harmony. He compared architecture to music. For him, harmony was the ideal of beauty, because for him beauty meant “…nothing other than the harmony of the individual limbs and parts, so that nothing can be added or taken away without damaging it”. This principle of the science of beauty has remained unchanged since then.

Alberti developed a second type of Florentine palace for the Palazzo Rucellai, for which the facade was structured by flat pilasters arranged between the windows throughout all storeys.

Andrea della Robbia,The Madonna of the Stonemasons, 1475-1480.

Glazed terracotta, 134 x 96 cm.

Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

Donatello, Virgin and Child, 1440.

Terracotta, h: 158.2 cm.

Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

In Rome, however, there was an architect of the same standard as the Florentine master builders: Luciano da Laurana (1420/1425 to 1479), who had been working in Urbano until then, erecting parts of the ducal palace there. He imparted his feeling for monumental design, for relations as well as planning and execution of even the smallest details to his most important pupil, the painter and master builder Donato Bramante (1444 to 1514), who became the founder of Italian architecture High Renaissance. Bramante had been in Milan since 1472, where he had not only built the first post-Roman coffer dome onto the church of Santa Maria presso S. Satiro and had also erected the church Santa Maria delle Grazie and several palaces, but had also worked there as a master builder of fortresses before moving to Pavia and in 1499 to Rome. As was common in the Lombardy at that time, he built the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie as a brick building, focusing on the sub-structure. Using ornamentation covering to cover all parts of buildings had been a feature of the Lombards’ style since the early Middle Ages.

This type of design, with incrustations succeeding medieval mosaics, was very quickly adopted by the Venetians, who had always attached much greater value to an artistic element rather than an architectonic structural feature. Excellent examples of these facade designs are the churches of San Zaccaria and Santa Maria di Miracoli, looking like true gems and demonstrating the love of glory and splendour of the rich Venetian merchants. The Venetian master builder Pietro Lombardo (about 1435 to 1515) showed that a strong architectonic feeling was also very much present here with one of the most beautiful palaces in Venice at that time, the three-storey Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi.

The architect Brunelleschi had succeeded in implementing a new and modern method of construction. But gradually a sensitivity toward nature, defined as one of the foundations in Renaissance, becomes transparent in some sculptural work of the young goldsmith Ghiberti, which can be found almost at the same time in the Dutch painter brothers Jan (around 1390 to 1441) and Hubert (around 1370 to 1426) Van Eyck, who began the Ghent Altar. During this twenty year period, Ghiberti worked on the bronze northern door of the baptistery and the sense of beauty of the Italians continued to develop. Giotto had further developed the laws of central perspective, discovered by mathematicians, for painting – later Alberti and Brunelleschi continued his work. Florentine painters eagerly took up the results, subsequently engaging sculptors with their enthusiasm. Ghiberti perfected the artistic elements in the relief sculpture. With this, he counterbalanced the certainly more versatile Donatello, who, after all, had dominated Italian sculpture for a whole century.

After a project of Donato Bramante,Santa Maria della Consolazione, 1508.

Todi.

School of Piero della Francesca  (Laurana or Giuliano da Sangallo?),Ideal City, c. 1460.

Oil on wood panel, 60 x 200 cm.

Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino.

Donatello had succeeded in doing what Brunelleschi was trying to do: to realise the expression of liveliness in every material, in wood, clay and stone, independent of reality. The figures’ terrible experiences of poverty, pain and misery are reflected in his reproduction of them. In his portrayals of women and men, he was able to express everything that constituted their personalities. Additionally, none of his contemporaries were superior to him in their decorations of pulpits, altars and tombs, and these include his stone relief of Annunciation of the Virgin in Santa Croce or the marble reliefs of the dancing children on the organ ledge in the Florentine Cathedral. His St George, created in 1416 for Or San Michele, was the first still figure in a classical sense and was followed by a bronze statue of David, the first free standing plastic nude portrayal around 1430, and in 1432 the first worldly bust, with Bust ofNiccolo da Uzzano. Finally, in 1447, he completed the first equestrian monument of Renaissance plastic with the bronze Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata, the Venetian mercenary leader, (around 1370 to 1443), which he created for Padua.

Donatello’s rank and fame was only achieved by one other person, the sculptor Luca della Robbia (1400 to 1482), who not only created the singer’s pulpit in Florence Cathedral (1431/1438), but also the bronze reliefs (1464/1469) at the northern sacristy of the Cathedral. His most important achievement, however, is his painted and glazed clay work. The works, which were initially made as round or half-round reliefs, were intended as ornamentation for architectonic rooms. But they found a role elsewhere - the Madonna with Child accompanied by Two Angels, surrounded by flower festoons and fruit wreaths in the lunette of Via d’Angelo is a rather splendid result of his creations. As Donatello’s skills culminated in his portraits of men, Robbia’s mastery is demonstrated in his graceful portrays of childlike and feminine figures – there was nothing more beautiful in Italian sculpture in the fifteenth century.

The demands on the design of these products rose to the extent with which the skills in manufacturing glazed clay work in Italy increased. In the end, not only altars and individual figures but also entire groups of figures were made using this technique, which left the artist complete freedom with regard to the design. Luca della Robbia passed his skills and his experience on to his nephew Andrea della Robbia (1435 to 1525). He in turn, and his sons Giovanni (1469 until after 1529) and Girolamo (1488 to1566) developed the technique of glazed terracotta even further and together with them created the famous round reliefs of the Foundling Children on the frieze above the hall of the Florence orphanage during the years from 1463 to 1466.

Pisanello (Antonio Puccio),Portrait of a Princess, c. 1435-1440.

Oil on wood panel, 43 x 30 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The fact that the production of the workshop of the della Robbia Family can still be admired nowadays in many places on Northern Italy demonstrates that the terracotta was not only to the taste of the general Italian public but also to that of the Europeans generally, and that the style was gaining more and more lovers. At the same time we should not forget that no other century was as favourably inclined towards sculptural design as the fifteenth century. Thus Donatello’s seeds bore splendid fruit. His two most important students, the sculptor Desiderio da Settignano (approximately 1428 to 1464) and the painter, sculptor, goldsmith and bronze caster Andrea del Verrocchio (1435/1436-1488), continued to run his school in his way of thinking. Especially the latter not only created a number of altarpieces, but also became the most important sculptor in Florence. He cast the statue of David, for instance, (around 1475) and the Equestrian Statue (1479) of the mercenary leader Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400 to 1475) in Venice. Verrocchio’s style prepared the transition to the High Renaissance.

Settignano has left considerably fewer pieces of art than Verrocchio and mainly occupied himself with marble Madonna reliefs, figures of children and busts of young girls. He passed his skills and knowledge on to his most important student, Antonio Rosselino (1427 to 1479), whose main piece of work is the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal in San Miniato al Monte in Florence.

Among Rosselino’s students was Mino da Fiesole (1431 to 1484), who, while originally a stonemason, became the best marble technician of his time and created gravestones in the form of monumental wall graves, and Benedetto da Maiano. Fiesole’s art mainly lived on imitating nature, and was thus too limited to lend variety to his large production.

Domenico Veneziano,Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1465.

Oil on wood panel, 51 x 35 cm.

Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.

The second half of the fifteenth century shows the gradual transition from popular marble processing to the more austere bronze casting, and the two David statues are examples of this. Donatello’s work shows a rather thoughtful David, the other, by Verrocchio, in complete contrast, created in the ideal form of naturalism, a self-confident youth, who is smiling, satisfied with his successful battle, Goliath’s head chopped off at his feet. This smile, which has frequently, but to no avail, been copied by stonemasons has become a trade mark of Verocchio’s school. Only one artist really succeeded in conjuring this smile onto some of his own work: Leonardo da Vinci, also a student of Verrocchio. The sculptor Verrocchio has to share his fame with the painter Verrocchio, who has only left few paintings behind. Among them are The Madonna (1470/1475), Tobias and the Angel, also (1470/75), as well as the Baptism of Christ, painted in tempera colours (1474). As the painter, master builder and art writer Giorgio Vasari (1511 to 1574) recorded convincingly, Leonardo da Vinci painted the angel kneeling in the foreground in this picture. Later, he possibly painted over this picture in oil after Verrocchio had moved away to Venice.

Apart from the statue of the young David, another sculpture belonging to his masterpieces is surely Christ and St Thomas in a niche in the Church of Or San Michele and the Equestrian Statue ofColleoni, which he did not live to see completed.