florence cultural trip

Florence 2011The Uffizi Guide

1) The Renaissance consists of mostly religious works of art, until you hit the Botticelli Room. Try to identify the stories and protagonists in these pieces. How are stories COMMUNICATED to the viewer? Is there a clear narrative in these works? How do you know – or not know – what is going on?

2) Thematically, start thinking about comparing works a) between different periods or artists; b) of the same subject matter. Look closely at, say, two “Annunciations” or two portraits, and think about their similarities and differences.

The spread of humanism and the growing interest in classical antiquity contributed significantly to the remarkable growth and expansion of artistic culture in 15th-century Italy. Also important were political and economic changes that contributed to the rise of a new class of wealthy patrons who fostered art and learning on a lavish scale.

A new artistic culture emerged and expanded in Italy in the 15th century.

The Spread of Humanism: Humanism flourished in the 15th century. Emphasis was placed on education and every form of knowledge, the exploration of individual potential and a desire to excel, and a commitment to civic responsibility and moral duty.

Encouraging Individual Achievement: Humanism also fostered a belief in individual potential and encouraged individual achievement.

Good Citizens: Humanism also encouraged citizens to participate in the social, political, and economic life of their communities.

Of Wealth and Power: Shifting power relations among the numerous Italian city-states fostered the rise of princely courts and control of cities by despots. Princely courts emerged as cultural and artistic centers. Their patronage contributed to the formation and character of Renaissance art.

The “Rebirth” of Italian Culture

The republic of Florentine cultivated civic pride and responsibility in its citizens, which resulted in projects to embellish the city's buildings. The competitive and public nature of these projects, which were usually sponsored by civic or lay-religious organizations, promoted innovation and served to signal official approval of the new, classically inspired style. The emulation of antique models, however, was also supplemented by a growing interest in the anatomical structure of the human body (though often classically idealized) and the desire to show a naturalistic illusion of space (which resulted in the development of linear perspective). Human life and experience was acutely observed by artists such as the sculptor Donatello, who sought to convey through gesture, pose, and facial expression the personality and inner psychological condition of his figures.

Sculpture and Civic Pride in the Early Renaissance

The “Most Beautiful” Tuscan Church

Arnolfo di CambioFlorence Cathedral (view from the

South) Florence, Italy. begun 1296

Figure 19-12

The Florence Cathedral was recognized as the center of the most important religious observances in Florence. It was begun in 1296 by Arnolfo di Cambio and was intended to be the “most beautiful and honorable church in Tuscany.”

It certainly was a visual delight as it towered over the city and gleamed in the sunlight of Florence. Businessmen traveling to this city saw this cathedral, and the impression was made.......Any city with such a work of art had to be wealthy!

The building’s surfaces were ornamented in the old Tuscan fashion, with marble-encrusted geometric designs matching it to its eleventh-century Romanesque Baptistery of San Giovanni.

The Cathedral focuses on horizontal aspects, rather than lifting itself off the ground much like the Cologne Cathedral. The top dome has a crisp, closed silhouette that sets it off emphatically against the sky behind it.

The interior was kept minimal in order to remain “humble” to God.

The 14th Century in Italy

Filippo Brunelleschi, dome of Florence Cathedral

Florence, Italy; 1420-1436

Figure 21-14

Brunelleschi’s broad knowledge of Roman construction principles and his analytical and inventive mind permitted him to solve an engineering problem that no other 15th-century architect could have solved. The challenge was the design and construction of a dome for the huge crossing of the unfinished Florence Cathedral.

The space to be spanned was much too wide to permit construction with the aid of traditional wooden centering. Nor was it possible [because of the crossing plan] to support the dome with buttressed walls.

In 1420, officials overseeing cathedral projects awarded Brunelleschi and Ghiberti a joint commission. Ghiberti later abandoned the project and left it to his associates.

Fifteenth Century Italian Art

A Crowning Achievement

Brunelleschi not only discarded traditional building methods and devised new ones, but he also invented much of the machinery necessary for the job.

Although he might have preferred the hemispheric shape of Roman domes, Brunelleschi raised the center of his dome which is inherently more stable because it reduces the outward thrust around the dome’s base.

To minimize the structure’s weight, he designed a relatively thin double shell--the first in history--around a skeleton of 24 ribs. The eight most important are visible on the exterior. The structure is anchored at the top with a heavy lantern, built after his death but from his design. Figure 21-14 *on ArtStudy CD

Filippo Brunelleschi, dome of Florence Cathedral

Florence, Italy; 1420-1436


A Crowning Achievement

A Father's Emotional Sacrifice: Filippo Brunelleschi's competition panel shows a sturdy and vigorous interpretation of the Sacrifice of Isaac.

FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI, Sacrifice of Isaac,

competition panel for east doors, baptistery of Florence Cathedral, Italy, 1401-1402.

Gilded bronze relief, 21" x 17". Museo Nazionale del

Bargello, Florence.

Brunelleschi

A Sacrifice in Relief: Lorenzo Ghiberti's competition panel emphasizes grace and smoothness.

LORENZO GHIBERTI, Sacrifice of Isaac, competition panel for east doors, baptistery, Florence Cathedral, Italy,

1401-1402. Gilded bronze relief, 21" x 17". Museo Nazionale del Bargello,

Florence.

Ghiberti

Keeping Perspective: Early Renaissance artists employed linear perspective to make a picture measurable and exact.

A Feast in Perspective: Donatello's bronze relief of the Feast of Herod employs pictorial perspective to create an illusion of space.

DONATELLO, Feast of Herod, from the

baptismal font of Siena Cathedral, Italy, ca. 1425. Gilded bronze relief, approx. 23" x

23".

Donatello

LORENZO GHIBERTI, east doors ("Gates of

Paradise"), baptistery, Florence Cathedral,

Italy, 1425-1452. Gilded bronze relief,

approx. 17' high.

Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" are comprised of ten gilded bronze relief panels depicting scenes from the Old Testament. In Isaac and His Sons, Ghiberti creates the illusion of space using perspective and sculptural means. Ghiberti also persists in using the medieval narrative method of presenting several episodes within a single frame.

Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise

LORENZO GHIBERTI, Isaac and His Sons (detail of FIG. 21-4 ), east doors, baptistery, Florence Cathedral, Italy, 1425-1452. Gilded bronze

relief, approx. 31 1/2" x 31 1/2".

Admiring the “Gates of ParadiseLorenzo Ghiberti, east doors (”Gates of

Paradise”), baptistery, Florence Cathedral, Florence, Italy,

1425-1452


Ghiberti, who demonstrated his interest in perspective in his Sacrifice of Isaac, embraced Donatello’s innovations. Ghiberti’s enthusiasm for a unified system for representing space is particularly evident in his famous east doors.

Michelangelo later declared these as “so beautiful that they would do well for the gates of Paradise.”

Each of the panels contains a relief set in plain moldings and depicts a scene from the Old Testament. The complete gilding of the reliefs creates an effect of great splendor and elegance.

Figure 21-4

The individual panels clearly recall painting techniques in their depiction of space as well as in their treatment of the narrative.

In this panel, the group of women in the left foreground attends the birth of Esau and Jacob in the left background; Isaac sends Esau and his hunting dogs on his mission in the central foreground; and, in the right foreground, Isaac blesses the kneeling Jacob as Rebekah looks on.

Viewers experience little confusion because of Ghiberti’s careful and subtle placement of each scene. The figures gracefully twist and turn, appearing to occupy and move through a convincing stage space, which Ghiberti deepened by showing some figures from behind.

The beginning of the practice of collecting classical art in the fifteenth century had much to do with the appearance of classicism in Renaissance humanistic art.

Figure 21-5

Admiring the “Gates of Paradise

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Isaac and his sons(”Gates of Paradise”), baptistery, Florence

Cathedral, Florence, Italy, 1425-1452


Characteristics of Renaissance Art

Realism & ExpressionRealism & Expression

Expulsion fromExpulsion fromthe Gardenthe Garden

MasaccioMasaccio

14271427

First nudes sinceFirst nudes sinceclassical timesclassical times..

2. Perspective2. Perspective

First use First use of linear of linear

perspectivperspective!e!

The TrinityThe Trinity

MasaccioMasaccio

14271427

PerspectivePerspective

3. Classicism3. Classicism

Greco-Roman influence.

Secularism.

Humanism.

Individualism free standing figures.

Symmetry/BalanceThe The ““Classical PoseClassical Pose””

Medici Medici ““VenusVenus””

4. Emphasis on 4. Emphasis on IndividualismIndividualism

Batista Sforza & Federico de Montefeltre: The Duke & Dutchess of Urbino

Piero della Francesca, 1465-1466.

5. Geometrical 5. Geometrical Arrangement of Arrangement of

FiguresFigures The Dreyfus

Madonna with the Pomegranate

Leonardo da Vinci

1469

The figure as architecture!

6. Light & 6. Light & Shadowing/Softening Shadowing/Softening

EdgesEdges

ChiaroscuroChiaroscuro

SfumatoSfumato

6. Artists as 6. Artists as Personalities/CelebritiePersonalities/Celebritie

ssLives of the Lives of the Most Most Excellent Excellent Painters, Painters, Sculptors, andSculptors, andArchitectsArchitects

Giorgio VasariGiorgio Vasari

15501550

Donatello, DavidMuseo Nationale del Bargello, Florence

1428-1432Figure 21-23

The Medici family commissioned Donatello to create this bronze statue for the Palazzo Medici courtyard. This was the first freestanding nude statue created since ancient times.

This statue portrays the biblical David, the young slayer of Goliath and the symbol of the independent Florentine republic. David possesses the relaxed classical contrapposto stance and the proportions and beauty of Greek Praxitelean gods.

The Medici family chose the subject of David, perhaps because they had seen Donatello’s previous statue of David which is located in the center of political activity in Florence. This shows that the Medici family identified themselves with Florence, and the prosperity of the city.


A Classically Inspired David

Room #2Room 2: Giotto, Cimabue, and Duccio: Please look carefully at the three large altarpieces in this room. Take the time to compare them and start to see the differences between them. Which one do you think was done latest? Which one best expresses depth and the human form?

Cimabue Maesta

Giotto’s Maesta

Monumental FiguresGiotto Di Bondone,

Madonna Enthroned, ca. 1310, Galleria degli Uffizzi, Florence

Giotto’s new form of painting displaced the Byzantine style and established painting as a major form of art form for the next six centuries. He is often credited as the father of Western pictorial art.

He restored the naturalistic approach invented by the Romans, that was abandoned in the middle ages, and established a method of pictorial expression based on observation that might be called “early scientific”.

Madonna is depicted in representational art with sculptural solidity and weight. Madonna, enthroned with angles, rests within her Gothic throne with the unshakable stability of an ancient marble goddess. His technique for such an aesthetic is called chiaroscuro.

This art was aimed to construct a figure that had substance, dimensionality, and bulk. Works painted in this new style portray figures, like those in sculpture, that project into the light and give the illusion that they could cast shadows. In this painting the throne is deep enough to contain the monumental figure and breaks away from the flat ground to project and enclose her

Figure 19-7


History has long regarded Cimabue as the last of an era that was overshadowed by the Italian Renaissance. In Canto XI of his Purgatorio, Dante laments Cimabue's quick loss of public interest in the face of Giotto's revolution in art:[2]

O vanity of human powers,how briefly lasts the crowning green of glory,unless an age of darkness follows!In painting Cimabue thought he held the fieldbut now it's Giotto has the cry,so that the other's fame is dimmed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance

In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari relates that Giotto was a shepherd boy, a merry and intelligent child who was loved by all who knew him. The great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Bondone and asked if he could take the boy as an apprentice.[2] Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena.

Vasari recounts a number of such stories about Giotto's skill. He writes that when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, his young apprentice painted such a lifelike fly on the face of the painting that Cimabue was working on, that he tried several times to brush it off. Vasari also relates that when the Pope sent a messenger to Giotto, asking him to send a drawing to demonstrate his skill, Giotto drew, in red paint, a circle so perfect that it seemed as though it was drawn using a compass and instructed the messenger to give that to the Pope.[2]

What sets Giotto ApartGiotto's depiction of the human face and emotion sets his work apart from that of his contemporaries. When the disgraced Joachim returns sadly to the hillside, the two young shepherds look sideways at each other. The soldier who drags a baby from its screaming mother in the Massacre of the Innocents does so with his head hunched into his shoulders and a look of shame on his face. The people on the road to Egypt gossip about Mary and Joseph as they go. Of Giotto's realism, the 19th century English critic John Ruskin said "He painted the Madonna and St. Joseph and the Christ, yes, by all means ... but essentially Mamma, Papa and Baby."[6]

Room 5-6Room 5-6: International Gothic. Looking at the two largest works in this room, Lorenzo Monaco’s Coronation of the Virgin and Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi (1423) – what do you conclude are the characteristics of this international gothic style?

Gentile Fabriani “Adoration of the Magi”Monaco’s “Coronation of

the Virgin

Simone Martini (and possibly Lippo Memmi)

Annunciation, 1333Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Martini’s own style did not quite reach the full exuberance of the developed International Style, A style of 14th- and 15th-century painting begun by Simone Martini, who adapted the French Gothic manner to Sienese art fused with influences from the North. This style appealed to the aristocracy because of its brilliant color, lavish costume, intricate ornament, and themes involving splendid processions of knights and ladies.

Elegant shapes and radiant color: flowing, fluttering line; and weightless figures in a spaceless setting characterize the Annuciation.

The complex etiquette of the European chivalric courts dictated the presentation. The angel Gabriel has just alighted, the breeze of his passage lifting his mantle, his iridescent wings still beating. The gold of his sumptuous gown heraldically represents the celestial realm whence he bears his message. The Virgin, putting down her book of devotions, shrinks demurely from Gabriel’s reverent genuflection, an appropriate gesture in the presence of royalty.

Image goes hereDelete this text before placing the image here.

Figure 19-18Creating an “International Style”


Lippo Memmi’s contribution is questioned and a matter of debate.

Simone Martini and Lippo MemmiAnnunciation, 1333

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Luke 1:26-56 (New International Version)

The Birth of Jesus Foretold

In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”

“I am the Lord's servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.

Figure 19-18

Creating an “International Style”


The panel portrays the path of the three Magi, in several scenes which start from the upper left corner (the voyage and the entrance into Bethlehem) and continue clockwise, to the larger meeting with the Virgin and the newborn Jesus which occupies the lowest part of the picture. All the figures wear splendid Renaissance costumes, brocades richly decorated with real gold and precious stones inserted in the panel. Gentile's typical attention for detail is also evident in the exotic animals, such as a leopard, a dromedary, some apes and a lion, as well as the magnificent horses and a hound.

Room 8 . Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Angels: consider the tenderness of expression, look at how volume is heightened using a black outline (Lippi taught this trick to Botticelli). Piero della Francesca, double portrait of the Duke of Urbino and his wife: what can you guess about gender differences in this period, just by looking at this painting? Whose world is more closed, and why?Duke of Urbino and His

Wife - FrancescaFilippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Angels

Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Angels

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence1455

Painted by Fra Filippo, this painting shows his skill in manipulating line. A wonderfully fluid line unifies the composition and contrubutes to the precise and smooth delineation of forms.

Few artists have surpassed Fra Filippos skill in using line. He interpreted his subject here in a surprisingly worldly manner.

The Madonna, a beautiful young mother, is not at all spiritual or fragile, and neither is the Christ Child, whom two angels hold up.

The angels have mischievous looks of children refusing to behave. All the figures reflect the use of live models. Fra Fillipo replenished the charm of youth and beauty.

Figure 21-40


A Humanized Madonna and Child

Botticelli Room

Room 10-14: Botticelli’s Primavera, Birth of Venus, Mystic Nativity, Madonna del Magnificat. Also of interest, all the religious paintings by Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli, Birth of VenusGalleria degli Uffizi, Florence

1482

Figure 21-27

Sandro Botticelli was one of the best known artists who produced works for the Medici. He painted this tempera on canvas for the Medici family.

A poem on the theme of the famous Birth of Venus by Angelo Poliziano was what inspired Botticelli to create this lyrical image.

Zephyrus (the west wind) blows Venus, born of the sea foam and carried on a cockle shell to her sacred island, Cyprus. The nymph Pomona runs to her with a brocaded mantle.

The wind is portrayed as light and bodiless, which moves all the figures with out effort. The more accommodating Renaissance culture gave way for the portrayal of Venus nude, on a large scale.


Visual Poetry


1482

Figure 21-27

Botticelli’s nude presentation of the Venus figure was in itself an innovation. The nude, especially the female nude, had been proscribed during the Middle Ages. Its appearance on such a scale and the artist’s use of an ancient Venus statue of the Venus pudica (modest Venus) type- a Hellenistic variant of Praxitele’s famous “Aphrodite of Knidos”- as a model could have drawn the charge of paganism and infidelity. But the more accommodating Renaissance culture and under the protection of the powerful Medici, the depiction went unchallenged.

The Medici family did not restrict their collecting to any specific style or artist. Their acquisitions often incorporated elements associated with humanism, from mythological subject matter to concerns with anatomy and perspective.

Collectively, the art of the Medici also makes a statement about the patrons themselves. Careful businessmen that they were, the Medici were not sentimental about their endowment of art and scholarship.


Visual Poetry


1482

Figure 21-27

Upper-Left: The West WindZephyr and Chloris fly with limbs entwined as a twofold entity: the ruddy Zephyr (his name is Greek for ``the west wind'') is puffing vigorously; while the fair Chloris gently sighs the warm breath that wafts Venus ashore. All around them fall roses--each with a golden heart--which, according to legend, came into being at Venus' birth.

Upper-Right: The Wooded ShoreThe trees form part of a flowering orange grove--corresponding to the sacred garden of the Hesperides in Greek myth--and each small white blossom is tipped with gold. Gold is used throughout the painting, accentuating its role as a precious object and echoing the divine status of Venus. Each dark green leaf has a gold spine and outline, and the tree trunks are highlighted with short diagonal lines of gold.

Right: NymphThe nymph may well be one of the three Horae, or ``The Hours'', Greek goddesses of the seasons, who were attendants to Venus. Both her lavishly decorated dress and the gorgeous robe she holds out to Venus are embroidered with red and white daisies, yellow primroses, and blue cornflowers--all spring flowers appropriate to the theme of birth. She wears a garland of myrtle--the tree of Venus--and a sash of pink roses, as worn by the goddess Flora in Botticelli's Primavera.


Visual Poetry

Center: The ShellBotticelli portrays Venus in the very first suggestion of action, with a complex and beautiful series of twists and turns, as she is about to step off her giant gilded scallop shell onto the shore. Venus was conceived when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, the god Uranus--the severed genitals falling into the sea and fertilizing it. Here what we see is actually not Venus' birth out of the waves, but the moment when, having been conveyed by the shell, she lands at Paphos in Cyprus.

Room 15: Leonardo

da Vinci’s Annunciation, unfinished Adoration of the Magi (examination reveals how he planned and built up painting); the early Baptism of Christ with his teacher Verrocchio (guess which part Leonardo did here).

Room 25Room 25: Don’t miss Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo: think about the position the figures are in – is this natural? That is an original frame, incidentally.

RaphaelHow do

Raphael and his school construct portraits? His contemporaries said he did everything with such ease you could not see the art in it.

Room 28: Titian and Venetian art.

. Observe the languid pose of Titian’s Venus of Urbino (who is she waiting for? Her husband or her lover?). Consider how the Venetian style (and subject matter) of the early Cinquecento is different than Quattrocento Florentine style;

Madonna of the Long

Neck The End of the Renaissance

Mannerism

The High Renaissance

Subduing a Giant

Michelangelo“David”

1501-1504

In 1501, the city of Florence asked Michelangelo to work a great block of marble, called “The Giant,” left over from an earlier aborted mission.

From this stone, David was sculpted, the defiant hero of the Florentine republic and, in so doing, assured his reputation then and now as an extraordinary talent.

David’s formal references to classical antiquity appealed to Julius II, who associated himself with humanists and with Roman emperors. Thus, this sculpture and the fame that accrued to Michelangelo on its completion called the artist to the pope’s attention, leading to major papal commissions.

Michelangelo used the themes of Donatello and Andrea del Verrocchio, but with his own original resolution.

The artist chose to depict David not after victory, but turning his head to his left, sternly watchful of the approaching foe. His whole muscular body, as well as his face, is tense with gathering power. Figure 22-9

David exhibits the characteristic representation of energy in reserve. His rugged torso, sturdy limbs, and large hands and feet, alerting viewers to the strength to come, do not consist simply of inert muscle groups, nor did the sculptor idealize them by simplification into broad masses.

Each swelling vein and tightening sinew amplifies the psychological energy of the monumental David’s pose.

The artist, without strictly imitating the antique style , captured the tension of Lysippan athletes and the psychological insight and emotionalism of Helenistic statuary.

This larger than life sculpture reaches over 13 feet in height. Sculpted in perspective (top heavy), this image retains perfection when viewed from below, as the figure looks proportional from the vantage point of the onlooker. Contrapposto (weight shift), yet another allusion to antiquity, is also apparent in this sculpture.

This sculpture became the immediate symbol of Florence, a wealthy but small nation at war with a much larger foe.

The High Renaissance

Subduing a Giant

Michelangelo“David”

1501-1504

Figure 22-9

Renaissance Florence

Gardner’s Art History

Fra Angelico

Annunciation

San Marco, Florence, Italy

ca. 1440-1445fresco7 ft. 1 in. x 10 ft. 6 in.

Fra Angelico, AnnunciationSan Marco, Florence, Italy 1440-1445

Like most of Fra Angelico’s paintings, Annunciation’s naive and tender charm still has an almost universal appeal and fully reflects the artist’s simple and humble character. Figure 21-38

This fresco painting by Fra Angelico appears at the top of the stairs leading to the friar’s cells.

Appropriately, Fra Angelico presented the scene of the Virgin Mary and and Archangel Gabriel with simplicity and serenity.

The two figures appear in plain loggia, and the artist painted all the fresco elements with a pristine clarity.

As an admonition to heed the devotional function of the images, he included a small inscription at the base of the image that reads “As you venerate, while passing before it, this figure of the intact Virgin, lest you omit to say to say a Hail Mary.”


A Visual Call to Prayer

Momentous Changes in Pictorial StyleMasaccio, Tribute Money,

Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine,Florence, Italy, ca. 1427.

Masaccio presented this narrative in three episodes within the fresco. In the center, Christ, surrounded by his disciples, tells Saint Peter to retrieve the coin from the fish, while the tax collector stands in the foreground, his back to spectators and hand extended, awaiting payment. At the left, in the middle distance, Saint Peter extracts the coin from the fish’s mouth, and at the right, he thrusts the coin into the tax collector’s hand.

Masaccio realized most of the figures not through generalized modeling with a flat neutral light lacking an identifiable source but by a light coming from a specific source outside the picture.

Figure 21-11

This painting by Masaccio depicts a story from the Gospel of Matthew.

The tax collector confronts Christ at the entrance of Capernaum (a

large Galilean

fishing village and

busy trading center.

This place is of

special interest to

Christians because

of its frequent

mention in the

history of Jesus

Christ.)

Christ directs Saint

Peter to Lake

Galilee. There Peter

finds the half

drachma (formerly

the basic unit of

money in Greece)

tribute in the mouth

of a fish and returns

to pay the tax.


The light strikes the figures at an angle, illuminating parts of the solids that obstruct its path and leave the rest in shadows: gives illusion of sculptural relief.

Light has its own nature, and the masses are visible only because of its direction and intensity.

The individual figures are solemn and weighty, but also express bodily structure and movement. They do not appear as a stiff screen in the front planes. Instead, the artist grouped them in circular depth around Christ, and he placed the whole group in a spacious landscape, rather than in the confined stage space of earlier frescoes.

Although ancient Roman painters used aerial perspective, medieval artists had abandoned it. It disappeared from art until Masaccio and his contemporaries rediscovered it. They realized that light and air interposed between viewers and what they see are parts of the visual experience called “distance.”

Momentous Changes in Pictorial StyleMasaccio, Tribute Money,

Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine,Florence, Italy, ca. 1427.

Figure 21-11


Masaccio, Holy TrinitySanta Maria Novella, Florence, Italy; ca.

1428

Figure 21-13

Masaccio’s fresco embodies two principal Renaissance interests--realism based on observation and the application of mathematics in the new science of perspective. The composition is painted on two levels of unequal height.

In the coffered barrel-vaulted chapel reminiscent of a Roman triumphal arch, the Virgin Mary and St. John appear on either side of the crucified Christ. God the Father emerges from behind Christ, supporting the arms of the cross. The Dove of the Holy Spirit hovers between God and Christ.

Also included are portraits of the donors of the painting, Lorenzo Lenzi and his wife, who kneel in front of the pilasters (A rectangular column with a capital and base, projecting only slightly from a wall as an ornamental motif.).

Below the altar-- a masonry insert in the depicted composition--the artist painted a tomb containing a skeleton. An Italian inscription above the skeleton reminds spectators that “I was once what you are, and what I am you will become.”

A Vision of the Trinity


The illusionism of Masaccio’s depiction brilliantly demonstrates the principles of Brunelleschi’s perspective; in fact, the work is so much in the Brunelleschian manner that some historians have suggested that Brunelleschi may have directed Masaccio.

Masaccio placed the vanishing point at the foot of the cross. With this point at eye level, spectators look up at the Trinity and down at the tomb. Above the floor level, the vanishing point pulls the two views together, creating the illusion of an actual structure that transects the wall’s vertical plane. While the tomb projects, the chapel recedes visually behind the wall and appears as an extension of the spectators’ space.

This adjustment of the pictured space to the position of the viewers was a first step in the development of illusionistic painting, which fascinated many artists of the Renaissance and the later Baroque period. Masaccio was so exact in his metrical proportions that it is possible to actually calculate the dimensions of the chapel.

Masaccio, Holy TrinitySanta Maria Novella, Florence, Italy; ca.

1428

Figure 21-13

A Vision of the Trinity


Masaccio, Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, Brancacci Chapel, Florence,

Italy, ca 1425

This was painted in an awkwardly narrow space at the entrance to the Brancacci Chapel. It displays the representational innovations of Tribute Money. For example, the sharply slanted light from an outside source creates deep relief, with lights placed alongside darks, and acts as a strong unifying agent.

Masaccio also presented the figures moving with structural accuracy and with substantial bodily weight. Further, the hazy, atmospheric background specifies no locale but suggests a space around and beyond the figures. Adam’s feet, clearly in contact with the ground, mark the human presence on earth, and the cry issuing from Eve’s mouth voices her anguish.

The angel does not force them physically from Eden, rather, they stumble on blindly, driven by the angel’s will and their own despair. The composition is starkly simple, its message incomparably eloquent.

Figure 21-12A Picture of Sinners’ Anguish


Filippo Brunelleschi, west facade of the Pazzi Chapel

Florence, Italy; begun ca. 1440

The chapel that was the Pazzi family’s gift to the church of Santa Croce in Florence presented Brunelleschi with the opportunity to explore this interest in a structure much better suited to such a design than a basilican church.

The chapel was not completed until the 1460s, long after Brunelleschi’s death, and thus the exterior does not reflect Brunelleschi’s original design. The narthex ( the entrance hall leading to the nave of a church.) seems to have been added as an afterthought, perhaps by the sculptor-architect Giuliano da Maiano.

It is suggested that the local chapter of Franciscan monks who held meetings in the chapel needed the expansion.

Figure 21-17Applying Roman Mathematical Logic


Although the plan is rectangular, rather than square or round, the architect placed all emphasis on the central dome-covered space. The short barrel-vault sections that brace the dome on two sides is done in gray stone, the so-called pietra serena [”serene stone”], which stands out against the white stucco walls and crisply defines the modular relationships of plan and elevation.

As in his design for Santo Spirito, Brunelleschi used a basic unit that alowed him to construct a balanced, harmonious, and regularly proportioned space.

Medallions with glazed terracotta reliefs representing the Four Evangelists in the dome’s pendentives and the Twelve Apostles on the pilaster-framed wall panels provide the interior with striking color accents.

Figure 21-18

Filippo Brunelleschi, plan of the Pazzi Chapel

Florence, Italy; begun ca. 1440Applying Roman Mathematical Logic


Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a YouthNational Gallery of Art, Washington

D.C.early 1480s

This full face portrait was created by Botticelli in the last decade of the fifteenth century. Italian painters adopted the 3/4 and full face views believing that such poses increased information available to viewers about the subject’s appearance.

These poses also permits greater exploration of the subject’s character. This is evident in this portrait where he is highly expressive psychologically. He has a delicate pose, a graceful head tilt, sidelong glance, and an elegant hand gesture. The subject seems to be half-musing, half-insinuating.

Botticelli merged feminine and masculine traits to make an image of rarefied beauty.

Figure 21-28


A Psychological Profile

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Giovanna Tornabuoni (?)

Madrid, Spain 1488Domenico Ghirlandaio produced this portait of an aristocratic young woman, probably Giovanna Tornabuoni, a member of the powerful Albizzi family and wife of Lorenzo Tournabuoni.

Though artists of this age had moved away from employing the profile pose to convey a character reading, this portrait reveals the proud bearing of a sensitive and beautiful young woman.

It tells viewers much about the advanced state of culture in Florence, the value and careful cultivation of beauty in life and art, the breeding of courtly manners, and the great wealth behind it all.

The painting also shows the powerful attraction classical liaterature help for Italian humanists; in the background an epitaph quotes the ancient Roman poet Martial.

Although Domencio Ghirlandaio did not develop a very inovative style, his art provides viewers with significant insight into artistic developments.

This summarizes the state of Florentine art toward the end of the fifteenth century. His works expressed his times to perfection, and, because of this, he enjoyed great popularity among his comtemporaries. His paintings reveal a deep love of Florence , with its spectacles and pageantry, its material wealth and luxury.

Figure 21-30


An Elegant and Cultured Woman

Andrea Del Castagno, Last Supper, monastery of Sant’ Apollonia,

Florence, Italy, 1447

Andrea del Castagno, like Fra Angelico, accepted a commission to produce a series of frescoes for a religious establishment.

His Last Supper painted in the refectory (dining hall) of Sant’Apollonia in Florence, a convent for Benedictine nuns, manifests both a commitment to the biblical narrative and an interest in perspective.

The lavishly painted space Christ and his 12 diciples occupy suggests Castagno’s absorption with creating the illusion of three-dimensional space. However, on scrutiny, inconsistencies are apparent, such as the fact Renaissance perspectivial systems make it impossible to see both the ceiling and the roof, as Castagno depicted. Further, the two side walls do not appear parallel.


Dining in the Presence of Christ

Figure 21-39

The artist chose a conventioal compositional format, with the figures seated at a horizontally places table. Castagno derived the apparent self-absorption of most of the disciples and the malevolent features of Judeas from the Gospel of Saint John, rather than the more familiar version of the Last Supper recounted in the Gospel of Saint Luke. The prevalent exploration of perspective clearly influenced Castagno’s depiction of the Last Supper, which no doubt was a powerful presence for the nuns during their daily meals.


Dining in the Presence of Christ

Andrea Del Castagno, Last Supper, monastery of Sant’ Apollonia,

Florence, Italy, 1447

Figure 21-39

florence cultural trip

Education

spread of humanism

civic responsibility

religious works of art

individual achievement

sponsoredby civic

sunlight of florence

new artistic culture

rise of princely courts