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The Renaissance of Painting…and the beginning of Art History
"The example of so many able men and all the various details of all kinds
collected by my labors in this book will be no little help to practicing artists as
well as pleasing all those who follow and delight in the arts.”
Giorgio Vasari - The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects
Vasari’s Essential Properties of True Art
• Natura (Nature) Mere reproduction falls short of perfection. True art can and must improve on nature, although nature remains both a starting point and a constant reference.
• Grazia (Grace) A quality suggesting softness, facility and appropriateness. ‘An indefinable quality dependant on judgment and therefore one the eye.’
• Decoro (Decorum) Initially, a sense of the appropriate, if a painter depicts a saint, the gestures, clothes and expression should reflect that of a holy man. Later, the suitability of a work of art to its surroundings.
• Iudizio (Judgment) The reason of the eye. Incorporated after the rules of imitation, proportion and measurement have been followed.
• Maniera (Manner) The style of an artist or school (of thought or practice.)
Cimabue
The flood of misfortunes which continuously swept over and submerged the unhappy country of Italy not only destroyed everything worthy to be called a building but also, and this was of greater consequence, completely wiped out the artists who lived there. Eventually, however, by God’s provenance, Giovanni Cimabue, who was destined to take the first steps in restoring the art of painting to its earlier stature, was born in the city of Florence in the year 1240.
“In my opinion painters owe to Giotto, the Florentine painter, exactly the same debt they owe to nature, which constantly serves them as a model and whose finest and most beautiful aspects they are always striving to imitate and reproduce.”
“To Masaccio especially we are indebted for the good style of modern painting; for it was Masaccio who perceived that the best painters follow nature as closely as possible (since painting is simply the imitation of all the living things of nature, with their colors and design just as they are in life.)”
“The most captivating and imaginative painter to have lived since Giotto would have certainly been Paolo Uccello, if only he had spent as much time on human figures and animals as he spent, and wasted, on the finer points of perspective.”
Fra Fillipo Lippi
All Fra Filippo’s work was outstanding, but in his smaller paintings he excelled even himself, producing pictures of such incomparable grace and beauty, as we can see in all the predellas he did for his panels. His stature as a painter was such that none of his contemporaries and few modern painters have surpassed him.
But above every other consideration of skill and art is Piero’s representation of Night, where he depicts an angel in flight, foreshortened with his head downwards, bringing the signs of victory to Constantine who is sleeping in a tend guarded by a servant and some men faintly discerned through the darkness of the night; the light coming from the angel illuminates the tent, the men-at-arms, and all the surroundings. -on Constantine’s Dream, San Francesco, Arezzo
Mantegna
Andrea discovered a vastly improved way of painting figures in perspective from below upwards, and this was a very difficult and ingenious invention.
Verrocchio
“It must be admitted that the style of his sculpture and painting tended to be hard and crude, since it was the product of unremitting study rather than of any natural gift or facility. But because of his intense studies and diligence even if he had lacked any natural facility Andrea would have excelled in those arts.”
Ghirlandaio
“He is said to have been so accurate in draftsmanship, that, when making drawings of the antiquities of Rome, such as arches, baths, columns, colossea, obelisks, amphitheatres, and aqueducts, he would work with the eye alone, without rule, compasses, or measurements; and after he had made them, on being measured, they were found absolutely correct, as if he had used measurements. He drew the Colosseum by the eye, placing at the foot of it a figure standing upright, from the proportions of which the whole edifice could be measured; this was tried by some masters after his death, and found quite correct.”
Botticelli
Altogether, Sandro Botticelli’s pictures merited the highest praise; he threw himself into his work with diligence and enthusiasm, as can be seen in the Adoration of the Magi in Santa Maria Novella, which is a marvelous painting.
Bellini
And to the end that the name which he had acquired in painting might not only be maintained in his house and for his descendants, but might grow greater, there were born to him two sons of good and beautiful intelligence, strongly inclined to the art: one was Giovanni, and the other Gentile... Now, when the said two sons had grown to a certain age, Jacopo himself with all diligence taught them the rudiments of drawing; but no long time passed before both one and the other surpassed his father by a great measure, whereat he rejoiced greatly …
Giorgione
He was an artist of great natural discernment and talent; and so in his oil paintings and frescoes he created living forms and other representations which were so soft, so well harmonized, and so subtly shaded and blended that many of the great artists of his time admitted that he had been born to infuse life into painted figures and to represent the freshness of living forms more convincingly than any other painter, in Venice or anywhere else.
Raphael
For to be sure, because of Raphael, art, coloring, and invention have all three been brought to a pitch of perfection that could scarcely have been hoped for; nor need anyone hope to surpass him. Apart from the benefits he conferred on painting, as a true friend of the art, while he was alive he never ceased to show us how to conduct ourselves when dealing with great men, with those of middle rank or station, and with the lowest.
Michelangelo
What a happy age we live in! And how fortunate are our craftsmen, who have been given light and vision by Michelangelo, and whose difficulties have been smoothed away by this marvelous and incomparable artist! The glory of his achievements has won them honor and renown; he has stripped away the bandage than kept their minds in darkness and shown them how to distinguish the truth from the falsehoods that clouded their understanding. You artists should thank heaven for what has happened and strive to imitate Michelangelo in all that you do.
Titian
For the little church in San Niccolo Titian painted an altarpiece on which he depicted St. Nicholas, St. Francis, St. Catherine, and also a little nude of St. Sebastian portrayed from life whose limbs and trunk are conveyed without artifice, all being presented just as Titian saw it in nature, so that the body of St. Sebastian seems as if printed from a living figure, it is so fleshlike and natural. It is held therefore to be extremely beautiful…
