The Renaissance in Italy

1
The Renaissance in Italy
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Giotto Nº36 Scenes from the Life of Christ
29. Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ)
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The Mourning of Christ

• Giotto was recognized as the first genius of art
  in the Italian Renaissance. He lived and worked
  at a time when people's minds and talents were
  first being freed from the shackles of medieval
  restraint. He dealt largely in the traditional
  religious subjects, but he gave these subjects an
  earthly, full-blooded life and force.
• Giotto lacked the technical knowledge of anatomy
  and perspective that later painters learned. Yet.
  he had a grasp of human emotion and of what was
  significant in human life. In concentrating on
  these essentials he created compelling pictures
  of people under stress, of people caught up in
  crises and soul-searching decisions
• Giottos work broke free from the stylizations
  of Byzantine art, introducing new ideals of
  naturalism and creating a convincing sense of
  pictorial space. His figures have a completely
  new sense of three-dimensionality and physical
  presence, and in portraying the sacred events he
  creates a feeling of moral weight rather than
  divine splendour. He seems to base the
  representations upon personal experience, and no
  artist has surpassed his ability to go straight
  to the heart of a story and express its essence
  with gestures and expressions of unerring
  conviction.

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Fra Angelico The Annunciation 1430-2Museo
del Prado, Madrid
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The Annunciation

• It is the main painting on the altarpiece known
  as the Prado Altarpiece. There are five small
  predella pictures below the Annunciation, painted
  on the same panel, depicting the story of the
  Virgin. The new Renaissance command of
  architectural perspective accompanies a
  continuing medieval delight in the lavish use of
  gilding. The painting was taken to Spain in 1611.

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Fra Angelico The Adoration of the Magi
c.1445National Gallery of Art, Washington
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The Adoration of the Magi

• Documents indicate this tondo may have
  originally belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler
  of Florence and patron of Renaissance artists.
  Following the three kings a splendid procession,
  symbolizing all the races of mankind, waits to
  pay homage to the new-born Christ. The peacock is
  a symbol of Resurrection.

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Paolo Uccello St George and the Dragon
1456National Gallery, London
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St George and the Dragon

• This picture shows two episodes from the story
  of Saint George. First, the saint with his lance
  defeats a plague-bearing dragon that had been
  terrorising a city. Behind the unusual,
  two-limbed dragon is a large cave with water on
  the ground. In the second episode, the rescued
  princess brings the dragon to heel, using her
  blue belt as a leash.
• It is perhaps evening, or early morning, as
  there is a tiny crescent moon at the top
  right-hand side of the picture. In the sky, a
  storm is gathering. The eye of the storm lines up
  with Saint Georges lance, suggesting that divine
  intervention has helped him to victory.
• The strange patches of grass work a bit like
  a black-and-white tiled floor. They demonstrate
  Uccellos obsessive concern with linear
  perspective, and his tendency to create
  decorative pattern. This can also be seen in the
  coloured discs on the dragons wings.

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Piero della Francesca Madonna with the Child
with SaintsMontefeltro Altarpiece 1472-74
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
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Madonna with the Child with Saints

• In this painting, the artist's mastery of
  proportions is remarkable it is almost
  symbolized by the large ostrich egg hanging from
  the shell in the apse. The shape of this symbolic
  element is echoed by the near perfect oval of the
  Madonna's head, placed in the absolute centre of
  the composition. In this painting Piero places
  his vanishing point at an unusually high level,
  more or less at the same height as the figures'
  hands, with the result that his sacred
  characters, placed in a semicircle, appear less
  monumental.
• Piero's extraordinary invention of an
  architectural apse echoed below by another apse,
  consisting in the figures of the saints gathered
  around the Madonna, was taken up time and again
  by artists, even by Dalí.

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Piero della Francesca Portrait of Federico da
Montefeltro 1465-66 Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence
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Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro

• The Montefeltro family in Urbino was Piero's
  most generous patron towards 1465. In the diptich
  with the portraits of Battista Sforza and
  Federico da Montefeltro, Piero attempts a very
  difficult compositional construction, that had
  never been attempted before. Behind the profile
  portrait of the two rulers, the artist adds an
  extraordinary landscape that extends so far that
  its boundaries are lost in the misty distance.
  Yet the relationship between the landscape and
  the portraits in the foreground is very close,
  for the portraits, with the imposing hieratic
  profiles, dominate the painting just as the power
  of the rulers portrayed dominates over the
  expanse of their territories. The daringness of
  the composition lies in this sudden switch
  between such distant perspective planes.
• Piero's ability in rendering volumes is
  accompanied by his attention to detail. Through
  his use of light, he gives us a miniaturistic
  description of Sforza's jewels, of the wrinkles,
  moles and blemishes on Federico's olive-coloured
  skin.

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Ghirlandaio An Old Man and his Grandson
c.1490 Musée du Louvre, Paris
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An Old Man and his Grandson

• Ghirlandaio incorporated portraits of his
  contemporaries in many biblical scenes. For
  precisely that reason he was so popular among the
  rich Florentines, particularly keen on self
  portrayal. This makes it astonishing that so few
  secular portraits have survived.
• There are two paintings, in the Paris Musée du
  Louvre and in Madrid, that are masterpieces of
  his art and yet fundamentally different Giovanna
  Tornabuoni is idealized to the extent of becoming
  an "icon" of beauty for young Florentine girls,
  while the old man with the boy is painted with a
  pitiless degree of realism. Ghirlandaio does not
  shrink even from depicting his nose in all its
  disfigurement.
• The artist succeeds not only in portraying the
  two figures with great tenderness, but also in
  conveying the deep affection between them. Their
  eyes meet on a diagonal this balances the
  composition, and also excludes the observer from
  the intimate scene. The delicacy of the beautiful
  view of the landscape is, so to speak, a
  commentary on the profound companionability of
  the two generations. As the lit halves of their
  faces are turned towards each other, and the same
  bright red is used for the garments and cap, the
  two figures seem to merge to form one. The
  picture is entirely composed with their unity in
  mind.

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Ghirlandaio Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni
1488Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid
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Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni

• This outstanding portrait, one of the most
  famous of the Quattrocento, makes it clear that
  portraits of women were one of Ghirlandaio's
  ideal subjects.
• The delightful young woman stands out, in a
  clear contrast of light against dark, from the
  black niche in the background. The reserved
  beauty of the young woman is fittingly expressed
  in the formal clarity of the composition.
• She is wearing a valuable piece of jewelry,
  comprising a ruby in a gold setting with three
  silky shining pearls, hanging from her neck by a
  delicate cord. There is a very similar item of
  jewelry on the shelf behind her, and this,
  combined with red coral beads against the black
  background, gives the work a noble elegance.
  These beads are part of a rosary, the use of
  which was introduced in 1475 by Alain de la
  Roche, and the section that is hanging straight
  down directs our gaze to the prayer book. Between
  these two "pious" objects is a little note
  alluding to the beautiful soul of the portrayed
  woman by means of an epigram written by the Roman
  poet Martial in the first century A.D. Ars
  utinam mores animumque effigere posses pulchrior
  in terris nulla tabella foret. (Art, if only you
  could portray mores and spirit, there would be no
  more beautiful picture on earth).

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Sandro Boticelli Primavera c. 1482Galleria
degli Uffizi, Florence
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Primavera

• In the 15th century the Primavera had been
  decorating an anteroom attached to Lorenzo di
  Pierfrancesco de Medicis chambers in Florence's
  city palace.
• Such large format paintings were nothing new in
  high-ranking private residences. The Primavera
  is, however, special in that it is one of the
  first surviving paintings from the post-classical
  period which depicts classical gods almost naked
  and life-size. Some of the figures are based on
  ancient sculptures translated into Botticelli's
  own unconventional formal language slender
  figures whose bodies at times seem slightly too
  long. The women's domed stomachs demonstrate the
  contemporary ideal of beauty.
• Venus is standing in the centre of the picture.
  Above her, Cupid is aiming one of his arrows of
  love at the Three Graces, elegantly dancing a
  roundel. The garden of the goddess of love is
  guarded by Mercury. Mercury is wearing a helmet
  and carrying a sword, clearly characterizing him
  as the guardian of the garden. The messenger of
  the gods is also identified by means of his
  winged shoes and the caduceus staff which he used
  to drive two snakes apart and make peace
  Botticelli has depicted the snakes as winged
  dragons. From the right, Zephyr, the god of the
  winds, is forcefully pushing his way in, in
  pursuit of the nymph Chloris. Next to her walks
  Flora, the goddess of spring, who is scattering
  flowers.
• One source for this scene is Ovid's Fasti, a
  poetic calendar describing Roman festivals but
  the main source is Lucretius philosophical
  didactic poem De Rerum Nature.

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Sandro Boticelli The Birth of Venus 1485
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Birth of Venus

• Despite the title, however, it is not the birth
  of the Goddess which is depicted, but rather her
  coming ashore on the island of Cythera, where she
  is supposed to have landed following her birth -
  thus Homer, the classical poet, in his hymn to
  Venus, also served Botticelli as literary source
  for his picture. On the left-hand side flies
  Zephyrus, God of Winds, the arms of the breeze
  Aura wrapped tightly around him. The two of them
  are endeavouring to blow the Goddess of Love
  ashore. She is standing naked on a golden shining
  shell, which reaches the shore floating on
  rippling waves. There, a Hora of Spring is
  approaching on the tips of her toes, in a
  graceful dancing motion, spreading out a
  magnificent cloak for her. Venus rises with her
  marble-coloured carnations above the ocean next
  to her, like a statue. The unapproachable gaze
  gives the goddess an air of cool distance. The
  rose is supposed to have flowered for the first
  time when Venus was born. For that reason, gentle
  rose-coloured flowers are blowing around Zephyr
  and Aura in the wind.
• The goddess of love, one of the first
  non-biblical female nudes in Italian art, is
  depicted in accordance with the classical Venus
  Pudica.
• Art historians claim that The Birth of Venus is
  a clear example of applied Neoplatonism. It has
  been described as "an allegory of the innocence
  and truth of the human soul naked to the winds of
  passion and about to be clothed in the robe of
  reason.

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Sandro Boticelli Madonna of the Magnificat
1480-1Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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Madonna of the Magnificat

• The painting contains nearly life-size
  figures. The Virgin, crowned by two angels, is
  depicted as the Queen of Heaven. Two of the
  wingless angels are crowning the Queen of Heaven.
  The crown she is wearing is a delicate piece of
  goldsmiths work consisting of innumerable stars
  they are an allusion to the 'Stella matutina'
  (morning star), one of the Mother of God's names
  in contemporary hymns devoted to Mary.
• Encouraged by the Christ Child, the Virgin is
  about to dip her quill and write the last words
  of the Magnificat, beginning on the right page
  with the large initial "M". The pomegranate which
  the mother and child are both holding is a symbol
  of the Passion and adds to the basic melancholy
  and meditative mood of the painting,
  characteristic of Boticelli..
• The background of the picture opens out into a
  landscape which point to the influence exerted
  upon Botticelli by contemporary Netherlands'
  artists such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der
  Weyden and Hubert van der Goes. Trading relations
  between Italy and the Netherlands had been
  growing more intensive since the 15th century.
  The Italian painters particularly admired the
  realistic fashioning of the figures in the
  pictures, and the atmospheric effect of the
  landscapes as rendered in the art of their
  colleagues north of the Alps
• This portrait of the Virgin represents the
  costliest tondo that Botticelli ever created in
  no other painting did he employ so much gold as
  in this one, using it for the ornamentation of
  the robes, for the divine rays, and for Mary's
  crown, and even utilizing it to heighten the hair
  colour of Mary and the angels.

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Domenico Veneziano The Madonna and Child with
Saints c.1445 Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Madonna and Child with Saints

• The work, signed and dated about 1445, comes
  from the Florentine church of Santa Lucia dei
  Magnoli and shows the Madonna enthroned with
  Child among the saints (left to right) Francis,
  John the Baptist (whose face is the self-portrait
  of the painter), Zenobius and Lucy. The sacra
  conversazione is placed in a completely
  Renaissance architectural setting, an elegant
  loggia. What really stands out is the pale and
  delicate light coming from a natural source, like
  an open window with a ray of warm sunlight
  streaming in, lighting up the peaceful
  composition and creating a shadow against the
  background, as evidence of its existence. This
  natural light and the absence of gold on the
  background of the picture, make this altarpiece
  one of the first achievements of the new
  Renaissance art.

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Giovanni Gentile Portrait of Doge Leonardo
Loredan 1501National Gallery, London
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Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan

• The portrait, the largest of Bellini's
  portraits, was probably painted around 1501, the
  year in which this aristocrat rose to the dogate.
  The teaching of Antonello da Messina had clearly
  been absorbed in the subtle realism of the facial
  wrinkles and the garments and, even before this,
  in the sitter's three-quarter turn.
• Nevertheless, any psychological excess or a too
  penetrating individualization were prohibited in
  the name of official and hierarchical decorum.
  For this reason the portrait finishes by being
  placed in a line that is consistent more with the
  Venetian portraiture tradition than with the
  revolutionary and hyper-real portraits of
  Antonello da Messina.

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Filippo Lippi Madonna with the Child and two
Angels 1465Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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Madonna with the Child and two Angels

• The tension and incisiveness of the line, the
  typology of the faces and the tender melancholy
  expressed by the persons portrayed give a
  distinct foretaste of themes that would be
  developed by Botticelli, Pollaiolo and Leonardo .
  
• Design is greatly emphasised. The colour creates
  a soft light, and the play of light and shade,
  plus the transparency of the veils, creates the
  illusion of movement rather than of substance.
• The delicate profile of the Virgin Mary, seated
  by the window, is outlined clearly against the
  rocky landscape, while two angels hold up the
  Christ Child, who reaches toward his praying
  mother. The angel in the foreground turns with an
  odd smile toward the spectator.

30
Pietro Perugino Christ handing the Keys to
Saint Peter 1481-2Capella Sistina, Vatican
31
Christ handing the Keys to Saint Peter

• At his best, in the Vatican fresco, he has the
  authority of a great master. The harmony and
  spatial clarity of his compositions and his
  idealized physical types had great influence on
  the young Raphael, who worked with him early in
  his career, so Perugino can be seen as one of the
  harbingers of the High Renaissance.

32
Rafaello Sanzio The Sistine Madonna
1513-14Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
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The Sistine Madonna

• It is characterized by an imaginary space
  created by the figures themselves. The figures
  stand on a bed of clouds, framed by heavy
  curtains which open to either side. The Virgin
  actually appears to descend from a heavenly
  space, confident and yet hesitant, out into the
  real space in which the painting is hung. The
  gesture of St Sixtus and the glance of St Barbara
  seem to be directed toward the faithful, whom we
  imagine beyond the balustrade at the bottom of
  the painting. The Papal tiara, which rests on top
  of this balustrade, act as a bridge between the
  real and pictorial space.
• The painting was probably intended to decorate
  the tomb of Julius II, for the holy pope Sixtus
  was the patron saint of the Della Rovere family
  and St Barbara and the two winged 'genii'
  (visible at the bottom of the picture space)
  symbolize the funeral ceremony.
• The curtain gives the illusion of hiding the
  Madonnas figure from the eyes of the onlooker
  and at the same time of being able to protect
  Raphael's painting.

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Sandro Boticelli The Abyss of Hell
1480sBiblioteca Apostólica Vaticana, Rome
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The Abyss of Hell

• Dante wrote over 14.000 verses describing his
  visionary journey through the kingdoms of Hell
  (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Paradise
  (Paradiso). The epic is divided into 100 cantos
  34 for Hell and 33 each for Purgatory and
  Paradise. Dante is at first guided on his journey
  by the classical poet Virgil, but in Paradise he
  is led by his muse, Beatrice. During his journey
  Dante meets a large number of nameless people,
  and also famous personalities from the past and
  his own age. Every one of them has received the
  place he deserves as a result of the offences or
  merits of his life.
• Dante imagined Hell as being an abyss with nine
  circles, which in turn divided into various
  rings. Botticelli's cross-section view of the
  underworld is drawn so finely and precisely that
  it is possible to trace the individual stops made
  by Dante and Virgil on their descent to the
  centre of the earth.

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Rafaello Sanzio Madonna della Seggiola
1514Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence
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Madonna della Seggiola

• Raphael painted the picture in Rome, but it
  soon passed into the Medicean collections. It was
  carried off to Paris by the Napoleonic troops in
  1799 and brought back to Florence in 1815.
• Raphael is under the influence of the antique
  and of the Venetian school. The form of a "tondo"
  is in itself a reminder of Florence and carries
  us back to the taste of the Quattrocento. The
  bodies of the Virgin, Christ, and the boy Baptist
  are genially adapted to the outline of the
  painting. And yet the composition is in no way
  forced, but on the other hand the figures in
  following the curve become more closely entwined
  together. This grouping, this closing around the
  fulcrum of the tondo coincides with the centre of
  affection - the little Christ, the tender,
  natural looking embrace of the Mother and Child,
  the spiritual centre of the picture. The colour,
  in spite of its vividness, has a fusion and a
  warmth which Raphael attains with genial and
  personal mastery.
• The isolated chair leg is reminiscent of papal
  furniture, which has led to the assumption that
  Leo X himself commissioned the painting.

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Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
1503-05Musée du Louvre, Paris
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Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)

• This figure of a woman, dressed in the
  Florentine fashion of her day and seated in a
  visionary, mountainous landscape, is a remarkable
  instance of Leonardo's sfumato technique of soft,
  heavily shaded modeling. The Mona Lisa's
  enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring
  and aloof, has given the portrait universal fame.
  
• Taking a living model as his point of departure,
  Leonardo has expressed in an ideal form the
  concept of balanced and integrated humanity. The
  smile stands for the movement of life, and the
  mystery of the soul. The misty blue mountains,
  towering above the plain and its river, symbolize
  the universe.

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Leonardo da Vinci The Virgin and Child with
St. Anne c.1510Musée du Louvre, Paris
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The Virgin and Child with St. Anne

• The theme of the Christ Child on the knee of the
  Virgin, who is herself seated on St Anne's lap,
  is fairly rare- the stream of life flowing
  through three generations.
• Mary's gaze is melancholy. Her body still seems
  to be showing the tension of the previous moment
  when she wanted to pull her child away from the
  lamb, the symbol of his future suffering. St Anne
  is watching the events benevolently.
• The pyramidal composition is dynamic, yet
  harmoniously balanced. The colossal sense of
  depth created by the mountainous landscape gives
  the painting a perceptible peacefulness and
  greatness..
• It is unfinished perhaps it was abandoned
  because of the artist's sudden interest in
  mathematics, and his engagement as engineer in
  the service of Cesare Borgia.

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Michaelangelo Creation of Adam 1510Capella
Sistina, Vatican
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Creation of Adam

• Michelangelo's organization of the Sistine
  ceiling frescos represents perhaps the most
  complex composition in Western art. The space
  contains an intricate pseudo structure of
  architecture that frames the sculpture-like
  forms. Out of the nine narrative scenes depicting
  events from Genesis, the most sublime scene is
  this "Creation of Adam," in which his new vision
  of humanity attains pictural form.
• The beholder feels that he is assisting at a
  hallowed world-shaking event. Man, the microcosm
  and incarnate Word made in the divine image,
  issues from the hand of God as the fingers of the
  Father and the son touch in a loving gesture. The
  Eternal is circumscribed by the ellipse
  (symbolizing the 'cosmic egg') of his celestial
  mantle and angelic spirits, while Adam forms only
  an incomplete oval. Through the extended hands
  and arms, the creative flash passes from one
  orbit to the other. Love radiates from the face
  of God and from the face of man. God wills his
  child to be no less than himself. As if to
  confirm this, a marvellous being looks out from
  among the host of spirits that bear the Father on
  their wings a genius of love encircled by the
  left arm of the Creator. This figure has been
  variously interpreted as the uncreated Eve, or
  Sophia, divine wisdom. Be that as it may, this
  figure undoubtedly signifies beatific rapture.

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Michaelangelo The Delphic Sibyl
1509Cappella Sistine, Vatican
45
The Delphic Sibyl

• The unique female figures and representations of
  the eternal mother are overwhelming. The Sibyls,
  with the exception of the Pythia of Delphi, are
  not conceived as priestesses. It is beauty, their
  essentially feminine quality, that is brought
  out. As a group they represent the Renaissance
  ideal of the virago, a woman physically and
  mentally heroic, free of male bondage, strong and
  powerful. This applies least of all to the Pythia
  of Delpbi who shines with a priestly and inspired
  radiance, which does not prevent this pagan
  servant of Apollo from being a young and
  enchanting girl.
• The Delphic virgin is coifed with a white
  priestly band beneath a peacock blue headdress
  draped like a crown or diadem, the fair hair is
  blown back by the wind of the spirit. She gives
  true oracles and lives on in the great Holy
  Virgins of Christian art, who often wear a
  sibylline expression.

46
Correggio Noli me tangere c.1525Museo del
Prado, Madrid
47
Noli me tangere

• Untempted by Rome, Florence or Venice,
  Correggio, working in the North Italian city of
  Parma, maintained his originality throughout the
  High Renaissance and became one of the most
  important influences on seventeenth-century
  Baroque painting. However, he was receptive to
  the art particularly of Raphael and Leonardo his
  sense of ideal beauty and the structure of his
  compositions owe much to Raphael, while his
  handling of textures and light presupposes
  Leonardo.
• In this work he uses a pyramidal composition of
  classic High Renaissance kind and a diagonal
  movement anticipating the Baroque. The beautiful
  landscape evokes the light of dawn, the time when
  Mary Magdalene met Christ by the tomb.