1 The High Renaissance and Early Mannerism 1494-1564

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The High Renaissance and Early Mannerism

1494-1564

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A Period of Genius

da Vinci; Raphael; Michelangelo; Machiavelli

High Renaissance (1494-1520)• Classical principles

• Shift of cultural center from Florence to Rome

Mannerism• Anti-humanistic vision of world

• “Mannered” style adopted by artists/intellectuals

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The Rise of the Modern Sovereign State

The Struggle for Italy, 1494-1529French invasions

Hapsburg-Valois war (Spain vs. France)

Charles V and the Hapsburg EmpireGoal of united Christendom never realized

Balance of Power Concept

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The Struggle for Italy

Foreign occupation had an impact on the culture of the Italian Renaissance.

Great Schism

French domination of Papacy and European intellectual life

French and Spanish armies occupied large portions of Italy

The Italian city states sought to establish their own civic identities by looking to the models of the classical world.

Rome and its cities were Italian inheritance.

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The Struggle for Italy, 1494-1529

Peace of Lodi (1454) shattered by French invasions1494: France, under Charles VIII invades Italy in hopes of claiming Milan and Naples; struggle also involves Florence and the Pope

Venice, Pope, Holy Roman Emperor, and Spain ally to drive French out

1499: France, under Louis XII returns to press claim to Milan; again driven out.

Over next several decades, France intermittently invades Italy

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Hapsburg-Valois Rivalry

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Hapsburg-Valois Rivalry (1522-1529)1522: Full-scale hostilities break out between France (Francis I) and Spain/Holy Roman Empire (Charles V) over Italy’s future; pits new Europe against old

1527: Spanish under Charles VIII loot Rome

• Cast doubt on Rome’s ability to control Italy

• Showed that secular rulers no longer respected Papal authority

• Ended Papal patronage of arts for almost a decade

• Had chilling effect on artistic ideals/contributed to rise of Mannerism

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Treaty of Cambrai (1529)Years of invasions left Italy divided and exhausted

Florence now a puppet state

Venice alone kept political independence; becomes haven for artists and intellectuals for rest of 16th century

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Charles V and the Hapsburg Empire

Charles V was at the center of Europe’s political storm. In some ways he foreshadowed the modern age marked by sovereign rulers, standing armies, diplomatic agreements, and strong religious differences; in others, he stands as Europe’s last medieval king.

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The Hapsburg Empire

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Charles V and the Hapsburg Empire

Struggle shifts to Central EuropeFrench feel hemmed in by Hapsburg Empire

Hapsburg feel French are blocking a unified Christian empire

Charles V abdicates in 1556, exhausted and disillusioned; succeeded by Ferdinand (German-Austrian region) and Philip (Spain, New World, Netherlands)

End of vision of united Europe and united Christendom

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Economic Expansion and Social Developments

Growing population

Increasing prosperity

Shift in center of commerce to Atlantic coast

Age of discovery

Manufacturing innovations

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Demographics, Prosperity and the Beginning of a Global World

Population growth45mm 1400 > 60mm 1500 > 89mm 1600

Shift to urban areas

Urban – not rural – prosperity on rise

Excess capital available for reinvestment opens first phase of commercial capitalism

New World resources/agricultural products become available

Slavery emerges

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TechnologySailing

• Ships: Caraval, Galleon

• Navigation: Magnetic compass, Astrolabe

• Firearm: Cannon

Magellan/Columbus

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WarfareShift to bronze cannon

Emergence of arsenals and foundries

Development of field artillery

Advances in strategies and tactics

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Science and MedicineDissection/structure of human body

Civic humanism (source: Greek polis)

Public health/Health boards

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From High Renaissance to Early Mannerism

High Renaissance

Visual Arts: Under influence of Classical ideals, High Renaissance filled with images of repose, harmony, and heroism

Literature: Writers adopt secularism and idealism from Classical heritage

Mannerism

Following sack of Rome in 1527, artists move away from imitation of nature and Classical ideals

Mannerist aesthetic questions/denies inherent worth of human beings, presenting negative image in an uncertain world

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LiteratureGaspara Stampa (Venetian poet)

• Petrarchan sonnets

• Female point of view

Camoes (Lusiads)

Castiglione: The Courtier

Machiavelli: The Prince

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Gaspara Stampa and Luiz Vaz de Comoes

Baldassare Castiglione and Niccolo Machiavelli

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Encounter:Portuguese Exploration Sets the Stage for a New

World

Starting in the mid-fifteenth century, Portugal led the first wave of Europeans to export their peoples, traditions, and culture overseas. In response to their daring deeds, the poet Luis Vaz da Camoes, following the lead of the ancient poet Vergil, wrote an epic poem celebrating his adventurous countrymen and heralding the new Age of Exploration.

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PaintingLeonardo da Vinci

• The Last Supper

• Mona Lisa

Michelangelo• The Sistine Chapel

• The Last Judgment

Cellini• Perseus and the head of Medusa

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Da Vinci: Last Supper

This painting (1495-98) is usually used to date the beginning of the High Renaissance. Its simplicity and restraint, as well as its use of perspective, focus the viewer not on “clutter,” but on the human drama unfolding at the table.

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Da Vinci: Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa, a likeness of the wife of the Florentine merchant Giocondo, both illustrates the new status of Italy’s urban middle class, and ushers in a new type of portrait: The half-length view. Note how Leonardo:

(1)blends the likeness of a real person with an ideal

(2)uses landscape to isolate the image in space and time, and

(3)uses a technique called sfumato – made possible by oil-based paints – to soften both Mona Lisa’s features and the background.

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Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel

In 1508, Michelangelo Buonarotti was asked by Pope Julius II to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, covering some 5,800 square feet. Michelangelo tried to avoid the commission, but ultimately took it on, combining biblical narrative, theology, Neo-Platonist philosophy, and Classical allusion in one of the masterworks of the Renaissance

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he paintings on the Sistine Chapel ceiling fall into three broad groups (1) The central section, depicting the history of the world from the creation through Noah; (2) the portraits on both sides and at either end, which depict Biblical prophets and pagan oracles predicting he coming of Christ; and (3) the Old Testament scenes and the corners, all involving violence and death, which had been allegorized as foreshadowing the coming of Christ.

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Two of the most famous scenes from the Sistine Chapel, the Libyan Sibyl, and the Creation of Adam.

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In the Last Judgment (1536-41), Michelangelo has moved to the Mannerist style, rejecting Classical elements. This painting’s chaotic composition, it focus on large numbers of male nudes, its use of bizarre perspective, and the odd postures of the people in the frame all express an anti-Classical, Mannerist sensibility.

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PaintingRaphael

• The School of Athens

• Madonna Series

The Venetian School: Giorgione and Titian

The School of Parma: Parmigiano

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Raphael: The School of Athens

The youngest of the three Renaissance masters, Raphael’s works for the stanze of the Papal apartments stand out. In the most famous of these, he follows Da Vinci’s Last Supper, , giving each philosopher a gesture that reveals his inner thoughts

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Raphael: Madonna of the Chair

Raphael also completed a series of portraits of Mary and Jesus, the most popular of which has long been the Madonna of the Chair. Rather than delivering a sermon, telling a story, or lecturing on theology, this painting simply puts mother and child in a familiar, domestic, and loving setting.

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Giorgione: The Tempest

Giorgione’s best-known painting creates a dramatic landscape, framed by the soldier on the left and the nursing mother on the right. It does not allude to the Bible or myth – the landscape and the mood of the impending storm are its topics, and in this it blazed the trail for later painters, mainly in the North, who took the landscape as their subject.

Along with the landscape, Giorgione made one other major innovation: the female nude.

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Titian: Martyrdom of St. Lawrence

Titian, perhaps the greatest of Europe’s painters, worked within the High Renaissance style, but was dissatisfied with its rule on symmetry…and broke them. Here, the temple’s columns recede along a diagonal line, creating a sense of deep space in the foreground; within this space, he arranged objects n a triangular outline with a celestial light source at the apex. By using diagonal and triangular lines, Titian was able to achieve dramatic, emotional effects without sacrificing coherence or meaning.

The subtle modulations of color in this work also create a sense of harmony, and his mastery of this technique made Titian a leading “colorist,” someone concerned as much or more with color as with form.

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Parmigianino: Madonna with the Long Neck

Parma was another leading center of the High Renaissance, and Parmigianino was a founder of Mannerism. Note the contradictions in this painting: the mix of the sacred and the sensual in the depiction of Mary, a Jesus who appears more dead than alive, , invoking the pieta along with the Madonna. The five people on the left are all looking in different directions…and what are the unfinished columns and the man reading a scroll (lower right) doing there?

With its multiple focuses and blend of sexuality, the sacred, and death, the painting is an enigma, quite the opposite of readily understood Renaissance art

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SculpturePietà

David

ArchitectureHigh Renaissance: Bramante

Mannerist style: Palladio

Music

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Michelangelo: Pietas

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Michelangelo: David and Moses

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Michelangelo: Battle of the Cenaturs

The Battle of the Centaurs, complete when Michelangelo was only 17, bears many of his hallmarks: facility, economy, energy…and the fact that it is unfinished.

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Michelangelo: The Atlas Slave and the Dying Slave

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Cellini: Perseus and the Head of Medusa

Cellini’s great bronze may be the best documented Renaissance work of art, for the artist describes its conception and fabrication in considerable detail in his autobiography…which the hot-blooded artist wrote in prison, not for murder (for which he was arrested twice), but for sodomy.

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Bramante: Early Work

Some of Bramante’s works include the church of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan, the Abbey of Sant’Ambrogio in Mila, and the original plan for the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome.

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Bramante: Tempietto di Sant’Andrea

Designed as both a small church (seating only 10 worshippers) and as a building marking the site of the martyrdom of St. Peter, the Tempietto is the earliest surviving High Renaissance building, and a great example of the style. It’s devoid of decoration, and its separate parts (dome, drum, columns, and base) are brought into a single, harmonious whole. Clearly, Bramante rejected the then-reigning building style – called scenographic, in which buildings were composed of separate and discrete units – in favor of a much more sculptural approach.

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Michelangelo: Dome of St. Peter’s

Bramante had originally been commissioned by Pope Julius II to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica, but he died before his plans could be carried out. The project fell to other architects, and eventually to Michelangelo, who worked on it from 1546 until his death in 1564.

Key project was the dome (cp. Brunelleschi). To integrate the dome with the existing structure, Michelangelo used double Corinthian columns.

Note that as an architect – unlike his painting and sculpture – Michelangelo clung to Classical principles and never adopted the Mannerist style.

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Palladio: Villa Rotonda

Palladio’s Villa Rotonda is Classical in spirit, but contains a number of Mannerist surprises, including four identical porches, elongated stairways, and statues on the rooftop – an Etruscan element. This villa as the inspiration for any number of English and ante-bellum American homes.

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Dossi: Apollo and Daphne

This painting – clearly influenced by Giorgione, Titian, and Raphael – may be the first to feature the violin, and instrument which had appeared only in 1510.

By the 1570s, Andrea Amati was making violins in Cremona; Stradivari and Guarneri were apprenticed to Niccolo Amati, Andrea’s grandson.

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MusicJosquin des Prez

Adrian Willaert

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Slice of Life:Artists and Their Critics: Michelangelo’s

Strategy

The writer Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) actually studied painting with Michelangelo, but he is known today primarily for his accounts of the lives of Renaissance artists, sculptors, and architects. Medieval artists had been categorized with guild members, who were little more than skilled craftspeople and not high up in the social hierarchy. In an excerpt from his Life of Michelangelo, Vasari shows Michelangelo as a full-blown Renaissance artist: proud, confident, and ready to take on critics, even the head of the Florentine republic.

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The Legacy of the High Renaissance and Early Mannerism

Golden Age of the West Visual arts

Machiavelli: founder of modern political thought

Beginning of modern secular state

New code of behavior

First stirrings of multiculturalism

Belief that free expression is both a social and private good

Documents

1 The High Renaissance and Early Mannerism 1494-1564