renaissance literature and art

RenaissanceLiterature,

Art and Architecture

Creation of Man

A New Type of Scholar Called a Humanist

• Scholars became interested in ancient Greek and Roman culture

• Artists used ancient art as models

• Architects designed buildings after studying Roman ruins

Humanism

• Primarily literary movement, but spread to the arts (architecture, paintings, sculpture)

• Emphasis on well-rounded education leads to concept of Renaissance Man

• A belief in human potential

Humanism

Philosophy:While God had established and maintained order in the Universe, it was the role of Man to establish and maintain order in Society.

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The “Renaissance Man”

- well educated in the Classics

- dance, write poetry and play music

'Young Man Among Roses' by Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619) has come to epitomise the romantic vision of the sonnet hero of Shakespeare's England.

Women in the Renaissance- Renaissance women were better

educated however they had few choices in life. They could join a religious order, marry (or be a mistress) or work hard on farms.

- It was improper to seek fame or political power.

- We only see them through the eyes of men.Lady Penelope Rich /The Dark Lady / Avisa. (1563-1607)

Art of the Renaissance

Painting

Renaissance Painting

Madonna And Child by Raphael (1483-1520)

Renaissance Painting

• Naturalism: people represented as they are in reality• Idealisation: characters are idealised and do not

have deformations• Order, proportion and harmony: objects and people

transmit calm and serenity• Perfection: works perfectly finished with attention to

the small detail • New techniques : canvass and oil paint• Rationalism: Use of perspective and backgrounds

Jan van EyckNetherlandish art

(1380-1441)– Pioneer – Perfected the art of

oil painting– The couple are in

the process of making a vow.

Jan van Eyck (c. 1395-1441), �Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. Oil on wood, 32 1/4" x 23 1/2".

Renaissance Painting

Monarch Henry VIII (1491-1547)

by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543)

Jane Seymour, Queen of England

Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533. Oil on wood

Renaissance Painting

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Tower of Babel, 1563. Tempera on panel

Some of the Important Painters of the Renaissance were…

• Botticelli • Leonardo Da Vinci • Michelangelo • Raphael • Titian• Tintoretto

How were women portrayed?

Giorgione (1477-1510) Sleeping Venus

Renaissance women in painting

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (detail), ca. 1588. by George Gower, Oil on canvas.

Playing an instrument like the lute, became one of the major accomplishments

expected of a Renaissance courtier.

Renaissance women in painting

Pieter Bruegel. Haymaking (detail), 1565

Caspar Netscher (1639 – 684) was a Dutch portrait and genre painter

• Leonardo da Vinci was an inventor, painter, sculptor, & scientist

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa

is great for its emotion and depth

Mona Lisa has no visible facial hair at all - including eyebrows and eyelashes

Modern Mona Lisa i Picasso style

His “Last Supper” shows Jesus’ last meeting with the 12 apostles before the crucifixion

The facial expressions, detail, and emotion had made it a masterpiece

The Last Supper – da Vinci, & Geometry

horizontal

vertical

The Last Supper and Perspective

A Da Vinci “Code”St. John or Mary Magdalene?

• The Renaissance spread from Italy as scholars from other areas visited Italian city-states & took the new ideas they saw back

Sixteenth-Century Literature

• Sir Thomas More, (served as chancellor to King Henry VIII) – Utopia (1516)– Was the first literary description of an ideal state since Plato’s Republic.

Woodcut by Ambrosius Holbein for a 1518 edition of Utopia. The lower left-hand corner shows the traveler Raphael Hythlodaeus, describing the island.

Sixteenth-Century Literature

• Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) (Spaniard)– Don Quixote recounts the adventures of a

chivalrous knight who confronts reality through the lens of personal fantasy.

Don Quixote de la Mancha and Sancho Panza, 1863, by Gustave Doré

William Shakespeare(1564-1616)

William Shakespeare emerged during the Golden Age of England under the rule of Elizabeth I. He produced 37 plays- comedies, tragedies, romances, and histories.154 sonnets and other poems.

Shakespeare’s sonnets (1609)

SHALL I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease (1) hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye (2) of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;And every fair from fair sometime declines, (3)By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; (4)But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st; (6) So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet XVIII , “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

1) allotted time2) The sun3)Beautiful thing from beauty4)Stripped of beauty5)Your fame will grow as time elapses6) the sonnet itself

The Shakespearean Stage

Renaissance Painting

• Supports– Wall painting was frequent in Italy;

mosaic left way to mural painting in Venice

– Even if the canvas advanced, wood was of frequent use

– Poliptics were common in Spain and Northern Europe whereas in Italy they used an only panel.

Renaissance Painting

• Techniques:– In Italy the fresco continued– Book illumination lost importance with

the printed books– Engraving on wood and on copper

developed– Drawing became more important– Temple was replaced by oil

systematically

Renaissance Painting

• Themes:– Religious continued being important,

mainly in Northern Europe and Spain.– In Italy mythology was more important– Portrait developed – Landscape, without being independent,

acquired more importance in the paintings

Renaissance Painting

• Composition:– Space was rationalised with the resource to

lineal and atmospheric perspective– The organization of the painting put more

attention in the centre than in the periphery– Sometimes the shapes are organised following

simple shapes.– The background used traditional motives or

architectures of Roman inspiration.

Renaissance Painting

• Drawing, colour and brushstroke:– Gold disappeared, the same as light

colours in the strategic areas of the painting

– Palette diversified, being commonly light– Oil painting permitted the use of

delicate nuances (transparencies, luminosity)

– Triumph of the sfumato.

Renaissance Painting

• Images:– Faces are full of a new realism– Bodies must be convinced by the

imitation of real forms.– Worry for idealization, especially in

nudes, using canons of beauty– The normalisation of beauty led to the

apparition of their antagonists, with grotesque or caricaturized images.

Mannerist Painting

• Technique and support:– Are the same as those of the Renaissance– Format of paintings:

• Big in churches and palaces• Small for stamps

• Themes:– Religious were frequent– Mythology and allegory depiction improved– Portrait developed more

Mannerist Painting

• Composition, drawing, colour and brushstrokes:– Everything tried to create surprise– Compositions are not centred – Colours are not common– Images are numerous

• Images:– They try to surprise– Deformations and complicated lines

Renaissance Painters

• Botticelli– Individual and graceful style– Pure visual poetry– Denial of rational spatial construction and

no attempt to model solid-looking figures– Figures float on the forward plane, agains a

decorative landscape– Form outlined– Personal type of femenine beauty– Works: The Spring, The Birth of Venus

Renaissance Painters

• Mantegna– Mastery of perspective– Adapt the scene to low viewpoint– Scorzo– Works: Death Christ

• Bellini– Famous for his portraits– Large-scale narrative paintings– Works: Portrait of the Dux

Renaissance Painters

• Leonardo– Delicate treatment of the characters

portrayed– Lack of rigidity in the contours– Sfumato or special way of changing

colours, covering them with shadows– Direct gazes of enigmatic meaning– Variety of techniques not always successful– Works: Mona Lisa, The Virgin of the Rocks,

Saint John

Renaissance Painters

• Raphael– Clear organization of the composition– Avoidance of excessive detail– Expansive style of composition which

presented itself as a homogeneous and easily intellegible whole

– Painting was no longer to be a portrayal of an event but an interpretation of its subject-matter

– He adopted the innovations of Leonardo and Michelangelo

– Works: The Athens School, Madonna Sixtina, The Weddings of the Virgin.

Renaissance Painters

• Michelangelo– His characters are depicted in an

sculptoric way, with an important entity– Images are full of movement – Characteristic terribilitá– Richness of colours, light in general– Works: Ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel,

Panel of the Last Judgement, Tondo Doni

Renaissance Painters• Giorgione

– The landscape is more that just the background– Images depicted without detail– Work: The Tempest

• Titian– History paintings– Portraits with high level of felicity– Works: Charles V at Mülbherg, Baccanal

• Veronese– Regular volumes– Strong colours and great contrasts– Conventionalised figures– Works: marriage at Cana

Renaissance Painters

• Holbeing the Younger– Excellent portratist– Portraits do not reveal the personality– Taste for illusionist effects– Works: Henry VIII , The Ambassadors

• Tintoretto– Figures full of heath– Effects of light and shadow– Colossal conception of the human but with

elegance