Art History Final ~ Study Guide

Masolino

Little concerned with the problems and ideals that inspired the sculptors of the time

Created an artificial world of refined shapes and elegant manners, flowerlike colors and unreal distances

Delicately modeled head is typical of Masolino’s female faces Roundness of the modeling of the forms in light and shade

Baptism of Christ

Emphasizes grace and harmony Contains an echo of Masaccio in the figures undressing or drying themselves Not interested in re-creating Masaccio’s rugged heroes Dainty Christ seems almost to be dancing in the ornamental patterns of the

water Learned how to construct one point perspective, with strings and a nail Takes more pleasure in the creation of a fantastic landscape, in which hills,

rocks, water and drapery flow delicately together New = his delight in the wide, light-filled expanses of nature He offers a new vision of landscape on a large scale, an extension of what

Masaccio had accomplished in the Tribute Money

Fra Angelico

We can see the emergence of the new Renaissance style “The angelic painter” When he left for Rome, he provided paintings for the Monastery of San

Marco’s chapter house, corridors, overdoors and 44 individual monks’ cells The painters were under the direction of the prior, St. Antoine The style of their painting differs sharply from that of Angelico’s altarpieces for

public view There is even a distinction between the frescoes destined for the monastic

community as a whole and those in the individual cells – a reminder of how an artist and his workshop could modify their style and iconographic interpretations according to location and audience

Within the monks cells, the observer penetrates into deeper regions of the soul

Everything in these images is pure, clean and disembodied The world seems to retreat, leaving the meditative subject suspended before

the cell’s occupant The frescoes in the San Marco cells suggest, through austere color and

simplified shapes, that no worldly concerns should trouble the spirit In each painting, Fra Angelico also probes the sensibilities of the individual

observer, as Donatello had done in his sculpture In these frescoes the individual is the center, as is also true in the Renaissance

perspective system – in this sense these paintings are fully Renaissance works

Annunciation

Splendid altarpiece Setting is a portico of Corinthian columns that divide his panel into thirds – two

occupied by the arches of his portico, the third by three receding arches and a garden

The angel centers the portico, bowing and genuflecting before Mary as he delivers his greeting

Mary, seated on a chair draped with gold brocade, abandons her book to cross her hands on her breast in acceptance of her destiny

Gabriel’s words run from left to right, but Mary’s reply is written upside down and in reverse, from Mary to the angel

The angel then replies “the Holy Ghost shall come unto thee…” and directly above Mary’s head, in the shadow under the star-studded ceiling, the dove of the Holy Spirit appears and gives off a golden light

A sculptured representation of the prophet Isaiah looks down from the spandrel between the arches

Behind the angel’s head, through a doorway and past a partially drawn curtain, we can see into Mary’s bedchamber

The garden at the left, a symbol of Mary’s virginity that will reappear in many Quattrocento Annunciations, illustrates the words of the Song of Songs “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse”

“Garden of the soul” – set of meditations for penitents Also identifies the garden with Eden, for at the upper left the weeping figures

of Adam and Eve are being gently but firmly expelled This association is natural since Christ is the second Adam and Mary is the

second Eve Angelico avoids the drama that is seen in Masaccio’s Expulsion and also the

nudity, instead clothing Adam and Eve in the coats of skins God made for them, according to Genesis

Fra Angelico is aware of Masaccio’s method of constructing forms and spaces but he limits his chiaroscuro as firmly as he does the emotion in his subjects

The slender limbs of his figures are only just discernible under their garments and they seem barely corporeal

The faces are drawn with simplicity and purity and they have exquisitely tended blonde hair

The poised shapes, the subtle contours and the harmonies of space and light are enhanced by the freshness of his colors

The angel, with wings seemingly made of beaten gold, is dressed in a tunic of clear, bright vermilion with bands of golden embroidery

Mary’s blue mantle contrasts with the sparkling folds of the cloth of honor that hangs behind her, as do the snowy columns with the richly veined marble of the floor, or the white steps with the flowerly lawn

The world that Fra Angelico creates is remote from reality, a realm of unmarred celestial beauty!

Predella of Visitation

In the predella scenes, the real world reappears Looking past Mary and her cousin, we see an old woman laboring up the hill

toward us and then beyond her a broad landscape, its distance enhanced by shadows of clouds

Mary “went into the hill country with hast” wrote Luke in his Gospel

Hilly background is important for this subject, which marks the first recognition of the divinity of Christ – the response of John the Baptist while he was still in the womb of Elizabeth

The background elements are identifiable as the town of Castigline Fiorentino, the tower of Montecchi and the wide lake that then filled the Chiana Valley below Cortona

This may well be the earliest recognizable portrait of a known place in the Renaissance

Beyond the sun-drenched town, the plain fuses with the sky in imperceptible gradations of summer sunlight and dusty haze

The spatial experience of landscape is realized more fully in this tiny panel than in any previous Italian work

Descent from the Cross (or Deposition)

His earliest fully Renaissance painting At first sight, he seems hampered by the preexisting frame Then we realize that he has exploited the Gothic arches, utilizing the central

panel for the cross and ladders and anchoring the bases of the arches to the gates of Jerusalem on one side and to a grove of trees on the other

Presents us with a world in which every shape is clear, every color bright and sparkling

Christ, gently lowered from the cross, is received by John, Mary Magdalen and others and mourned by the kneeling Virgin and the Marys

On the right stand a group of men in contemporary Florentine dress; one wearing a red cappuccio, holds the nails and the crown of thorns, as if to

encourage meditation or debate Both he and the young man kneeling in adoration are characterized as beati

(blessed) by gold rays emanating from their heads The figures, grouped on a flowering lawn, are united by their devotion to the

crucified Christ, whose body is depicted with Fra Angelico’s characteristic reticence and grace, emphasizing beauty rather than suffering

One barely notices the bruises on Christ’s torso or the blood on his forehead Instead, attention is concentrated on the quiet face and on the light that draws

attention to the lips, eyelids, arching brows and silky surfaces of hair and beard Fra Angelico’s method of stylization presents the distant Jerusalem as an array

of multicolored geometric shapes The storm cloud that darkened the sky during the Crucifixion still casts a

shadow over some of the city On the right side, trees provide a loose screen through which one looks into a

hilly Tuscan landscape punctuated by towns, villages, farmhouses, castles and villas under a sky filled with soft clouds

Milestone – no painter could surpass his control of the resources of the new naturalism and none could match the harmony of figures and landscape seen here

Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints

Gold curtains, their loops continued across the top of the picture by festoons of pink and white roses, seem to have just been parted to invite us to view the court of heaven

At the center, where the perspective lines converge, the Virgin is enthroned in a Renaissance niche whose Corinthian order is so closely related to Brunelleschi’s new style that he himself may have shown Fra Angelico how such things should be designed

The Christ Child, seated as the Divine Ruler, holds a prominent orb painted with a world map that has the Holy Land at its center, marked by a gold star

Gold brocades decorate the throne and create a wall over which one looks into the next level of the illusion, an “enclosed garden” of fruit trees, cedars and cypresses, palms and roses; these choices are not merely decorative, for Christ is the fruit of the Tree of Life, and Mary, according to symbolism is a cedar of Lebanon, etc

The garden in the background is both the representation and the symbol of these words

A circle of angels and saints gather on the steps and on an Anatolian animal carpet which provides the converging orthogonals of the perspective construction; this carpet seems to be precisely rendered, but in fact its border features the red balls of the coat of arms of the monastery’s patron, the Medici

In the foreground, the circular composition in space is continued by the kneeling Medici patron saints, Cosmas and Damian, and completed by what seems to be a small panel of the Crucifixion, a picture within a picture

This illusionistic device is based on the custom of placing an image of the Crucifixion or the dead Christ on the altar while saying Mass

When no such image appeared in the altarpiece, a small panel like the one painted within Fra Angelico’s altarpiece would have to be brought from the sacristy

In this case, his illusion is clever, for it provides the needed image while adding another grace note to his highly developed spatial composition

This unified grouping of figures within an integrated, continuous, illusionistic space is a new development in Renaissance painting

Fra Angelico was in the forefront of current developments With its perspective construction, lofty central arched throne and pyramidal

grouping of figures within a circle in depth, the altarpiece establishes a precedent that may well have been an impetus for the many other centralized, multifigural compositions that were to be created in subsequent decades of the Quattrocento

More completely than any work by Fra Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico’s San Marco

altarpiece embodies the ideals of the new phase of the Florentine Renaissance The pictorial space, measured by systematic perspective from the foreground

place to the horizon beyond the trees, provides place and scale for every figure and thing

The space is projected by dividing the lower edge using the squares in the carpet, then drawing othogonals from these segments to the vanishing point

One of the kneeling saints turns and looks outward as he points with his right hand, directing our attention to the center of the picture

The use of these two devices – the perspective scheme and the agent who invites us to contemplate the theme – corresponds to the doctrines of Alberti

In the predella panels he displayed his versatility in handling both figures and the luminous and atmospheric effects of the natural world

Dominican high altarpieces rarely have predellas, and the inclusion here of this cycle, instantly recognizable as Medician, reveals the influence of the patron in determining iconography, even in public religious works

Annunciation

At the head of the staircase, which every monk must have used several times a day

Role of images in the daily rituals of the monastery Interest in natural light is evident When it is seen in its original setting, after making a turn in the staircase, light

floods in from a large window to the left, conforming to the painted light within the picture

As befits both the fresco medium and the monastic setting, the bright colors and gold of the altarpiece give way to pale tints

The architecture is now seen directly from the front, so that the lateral

columns recede toward the center of the composition, drawing the viewer’s eye from left to right

The greater weight of the columns and the care with which the capitals are rendered probably reveal the painter’s interest in Michelozzo’s architecture, then in construction all about him

The mood is less immediate and more contemplative than in the Cortona Annunciation

Mary has no book and she sits on a rough-hewn, three-legged wooden stool The fence around her “garden of the soul” is higher and stronger He chamber, stripped of furniture, looks on the world through a barred

window, and one is reminded of St. Antoine’s admonition to sweep clean the room of one’s mind and to distrust the eye, the window of the soul

Fra Angelico made the window the eye of his fresco, the vanishing point of his perspective lines

Annunciation With S. Peter Martyr

Fresco of the Dominican saint Peter Martyr Over the door leading from the cloister to the adjoining church The saint has his finger raised in the traditional gesture of silence, reminding

the monks that they could speak in the cloister but had to fall silent upon entering church

This version shows a standing angel and a kneeling Virgin, slight and frail, who holds her open book to her breast

The angel has entered with the light, which falls on the Virgin They are united by the simple rhythms of the plain architecture, which is like

the cell it adorns There is no garden, and outside the arcade St. Peter Martyr meditates on the

event; he functions as an example for the monk, who, under the hypnotic influence of the luminous colors, clear shapes, harmonious spaces and simple

composition, is expected to experience mystically the miracle of the Incarnation

Coronation of the Virgin

Glitters with delicate lilacs and greens in the shadows of the throne and the white garments

Christ places a crown on the head of the Virgin while Franciscan and Dominican saints, knowing the miracle without having to see it, kneel in an arc on clouds

Fra Filippo Lippi:

We can see the emergence of the new Renaissance style

Madonna and Child Enthroned, “Tarquinia Madonna”

Annunciation

Madonna and Child with Two Angels

Madonna and Child with the Birth of the Virgin and Meeting of Joachim

and Anna

Feast of Herod

Adoration of the Infant Jesus

Paolo Uccello:

Equestrian Portrait of Sir John Hawkwood

The Flood

Battle of S. Romano

Domenico Veneziano:

Madonna and Child with Saints

Predella of the Annunciation

Andrea del Castagno:

Last Supper

Cycle of the Uomini Famosi or Famous Men and Women

Pippo Spano

Cumaean Sibyl

Vision of St. Jerome

Equestrian Portrait of Niccolò da Tolentino

Piero della Francesca:

Baptism of Christ

Resurrection

Frescoes of The Legend of the True Cross

Discovery of the Wood of the True Cross and Meeting of Solomon and

the Queen of Sheba

Invention of the True Cross and Recognition of the True Cross

Battle of Constantine and Maxentius

Annunciation

Vision of Constantine

Flagellation of Christ

Madonna and Child with Saints “Montefeltro Altarpiece”

Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, front panels

Triumphs, on reverse

Extra:

Florentine style – sweetness of the Christ Child, tenderness, easy curvilinear flow of the drapery

Period comprised the decline of the Florentine banking houses, including that of the Medici, but it also saw the establishment of a new social and intellectual aristocracy among the Medici and their supporters

These humanistically oriented patrons commissioned buildings, statues,

portraits and altarpieces in the new classicizing style