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Cultural Encounters
HUM 102
Renaissance Art
February 18
Michelangelo
Buonarroti,
The Last
Judgment,
1536–41,
Sistine Chapel,
Vatican
“Besides every beautiful detail, it is
extraordinary to see such a work painted and
executed so harmoniously that it seems to have
been done in a single day and with the type of
finish that no illuminator could ever have
achieved it…Although this was a marvellous
and enormous undertaking, it was not
impossible for this man…And how truly happy
are those who have seen this truly stupendous
wonder of our century! Most happy and
fortunate Paul III, for God granted that under
his patronage the glory that that writers’ pens
will accord to his memory!
Certainly his birth has brought a most happy
fate to the artists of this century, for they have
seen him tear away the veil from all the
difficulties that can be encountered or imagined
in the arts of painting, sculpture, and
architecture.
Michelangelo labored on this work for eight
years and unveiled it in the year 1541 on
Christmas Day, to the wonder and amazement
of all of Rome, or rather, of the entire world,
and that year, when I was living in Venice, I
went to Rome to see it, and I was stupefied by
it!”
Giovanni Vasari,
Lives of The
Most Excellent
Painters,
Sculptors, and
Architects, 1568
First edition (1550)
Published in
Florence
Dedicated to
Cosimo I de
Medici, Grand
Duke of Tuscany
Second, enlarged
edition (1568)
Lives of The Most Excellent Painters,
Sculptors, and ArchitectsThree prefaces
1) “Creation of man” / design / sculpture and painting as “sister arts” / the rise of the arts to perfection, their decline and their restoration (rinascita) / to perpetuate knowledge of artists
2) Discussion of architecture, sculpture, painting / division of the book into three parts
3) Discussion of the origins and nobility of the arts / surpassing the ancients / perfection of “rule, order, proportion, draughtsmanship, manner”
Organized into three periods:
Trecento (1300s)
Quattrocento (1400s)
Cinquecento (1500s)
Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, Arena
(Scrovegni) Chapel, Padua, c. 1305
Personified figures of Humility and Pride, The Sinner
and the Hypocrite, Somne le Roi, manuscript
illumination, c. 1290, British Library Add. 54180
Left: Cimabue, Virgin and Child Enthroned (Santa Trinita Maesta), c. 1280, Galleria degli Uffizi
Right: Giotto, Virgin and Child Enthroned (Ognisanti Madonna), c. 1310, Galleria degli Uffizi
“There in a little time, by the aid of nature and the teaching of Cimabue, the boy not only equalled his master, but freed
himself from the rude manner of the Greeks, and brought back to life the true art of painting, introducing the drawing from
nature of living persons, which had not been practised for two hundred years.”
Vasari, Lives of Artists
Masaccio, Baptism of
the Neophytes,
Brancacci Chapel,
Church of Santa Maria
del Carmine, 1424–8
“…A nude trembling
because of the cold,
amongst the other
neophytes, executed
with such relief and
gentle manner, that it
is highly praised and
admired by all artists,
ancient and modern.”
Vasari, Lives of
Artists
Laocoön
Group,
Roman copy
(c. 27 BC-68
AD) of an
ancient
Greek
bronze
original
Discovered
in Rome in
1506
“…Such is the case with
the Laocoön, for
example, in the palace
of the Emperor Titus, a
work that may be
looked upon as
preferable to any other
production of the art of
painting or of [bronze]
statuary. It is sculptured
from a single block,
both the main figure as
well as the children, and
the serpents with their
marvellous folds. This
group was made in
concert by three most
eminent artists,
Agesander, Polydorus,
and Athenodorus,
natives of Rhodes.”
Pliny, Natural History,
XXXVI, 37
Michelangelo
Buonarroti, David,
1501–4. Marble,
height 4,09 m.
Galleria
dell’Accademia,
Florence
“… When the statue was finished
and set up Michelangelo uncovered
it. It certainly bears the palm
among all modern and ancient
works, whether Greek or Roman,
and the Marforio of Rome, the
Tiber and Nile of Belvedere, and
the colossal statues of
Montecavallo do not compare with
it in proportion and beauty. The
legs are finely turned, the slender
flanks divine, and the graceful pose
unequalled, while such feet, hands
and head have never been excelled.
After seeing this no one need wish
to look at any other sculpture or the
work of any other artist.
Michelangelo received four
hundred crowns from Piero
Soderini, and it was set up in
1504…”
Vasari, Lives of Artists
Ascanio Condivi, The
Life of Michelangelo
Buonarroti, 1553
“…because certain
persons who wrote
about this great man
without knowing him as
intimately as I do, partly
related events that had
never occurred and
partly omitted such as
would be very much
worthwhile noting.”
Florence Cathedral, late 13th century on / dome (by Filippo Brunelleschi): 1417–36
Baptistery of San Giovanni, 1059
Baptistery of San
Giovanni, Florence,
1059–1129
Southern doors by
Andrea Pisano (1330–
6), Eastern and
northern doors by
Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1403–1425; 1452–62)
Lorenzo
Ghiberti,
Sacrifice of
Isaac, 1401–3
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of
Paradise (East Doors),
Baptistry of San Giovanni,
Florence, 1425–52
“All those things have given me the greatest
satisfaction and contentment because they are not
only for the honor of God but are likewise for my
own remembrance. For fifty years, I have done
nothing else but earn money and spend money;
and it became clear that spending money gives me
greater pleasure than earning it.”
Cosimo di Giovanni de Medici (1389–1464)
1. LINEAR PERSPECTIVE: a system
for creating an illusion of depth on a flat
surface. All parallel lines (orthogonals)
in a painting or drawing using this
system converge in a single vanishing
point on the composition’s horizon line.
THE PERSPECTIVE GRID
THE VANISHING POINT
(on the horizon)
1. linear perspective
2. atmospheric perspective
3. single source of light
Florence Baptistery, constructed between 1059 and 1128
-renowned for its three sets of bronze doors with relief sculptures (south doors created by Andrea
Pisano; north and east doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti)
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446)-architect,
designer
Famous for designing the dome of the Florence
Cathedral (1417–36) and for developing the
mathematical technique of linear perspective
Figure from the 1804 edition of De Pictura (1435) of Leon Battista Alberti, showing the vanishing
point
Alberti’s treatise was the first surviving European treatise on
painting. Book I is a geometry of perspective. Book II describes the
good painting. Book III discusses the education and life-style of the
artist
Masaccio, The Holy
Trinity, 1427. Santa
Maria Novella Church,
Florence
“Masaccio was a very
good imitator of
nature, with great and
comprehensive
rilievo, a good
componitore and puro,
without ornato,
because he devoted
himself only to the
imitation of truth and
to the rilievo of his
figures.”
Cristoforo Landino,
1481
“Masaccio in painting
expressed the likeness of
everything in nature so well
that with our eyes we seemed
to see not the images of
things but things
themselves.”
Alamanno Rinuccini, 1472
“Painting…compels the mind of the painter to transform itself into the
mind of nature itself and to translate between nature and art, setting out,
with nature, the causes of nature’s phenomena regulated by nature’s
laws—how the likenesses of objects adjacent to the eye converge with
true images to the pupil of the eye; which of objects equal in size appears
larger to that eye; which of equal colors appears more or less dark…”
Leonardo da Vinci
Interior of the Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. Frescoes by
Masaccio and Masolino (c. 1423–28) and Filippino Lippi (c. 1482–84)
Masaccio. Tribute Money, fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, c. 1427. (2.3x 6 m)
“And since he had excellent judgment, he
reflected that all the figures that did not stand
firmly with their feet in foreshortening on the
level, but stood on tip-toe, were lacking in all
goodness of manner in the essential points, and
that those who make them thus show that they
do not understand foreshortening.”
Vasari, Lives of Artists
Leonardo da Vinci, Perspective Study for the Adoration of the Magi, Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence
Leonardo da Vinci,
Vitruvian Man, c. 1490,
Gallerie
dell’Accademia,
Venice
Madonna, Rothschild Canticles,
turn of the 14th century, Yale
University Beinecke Rare Books
Library, MS 404
Raphael, Madonna of the Meadows, 1505–6,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Portrait of Giovanni
di Paolo Rucellai,
attributed to
Francesco Salviatio,
c. 1540
“…they serve the
glory of God, the
honor of the city,
and the
commemoration
of myself.”
Left: Page from the Bible of Borso d’Este, 1455–61. Modena, Bib. Estense, MS V.G. 12-13, lat. 422-3
Right: View of the Tornabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 1485–90
Filippo Lippi, Sketch of an Altarpiece, 1457. Florence, Archivio di Stato (Med. Av. Pr., VI, no. 258)
“..And to keep you informed, I send a drawing of how the triptych is made of wood, and with its
height and breadth. Out of friendship to you I do not want to take more than the labor costs of 100
florins for his: I ask no more….”
Gentile da
Fabriano,
Adoration
of the
Magi,
1423,
Galleria
degli Uffizi
The patron, Palla Strozzi (detail), from Gentile da
Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi
I've already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's
poison).
My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!
My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's
all knotted from folding over itself.
I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.
Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.
My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sonnet “To Giovanni da Pistoia”
and caricature on his painting the Sistine Ceiling. Casa
Buonarroti, Florence Archivio Buanarroti (XIII, fol. 111)