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Art/Architecture in the Italian Renaissance

1400-1520

Map 13.1 Renaissance in Italy, 1300-1570

Characteristics of the Renaissance?

• Classical “rebirth” • Christian • Realism • Idealized • Secular • Religious • Change • Continuity • Humanism • [Heaven] • Individualism • Corporatism • Public • Private • National/International • Local/Regional

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Art in Italy

• Late Medieval / Byzantine • Duccio, Martini

• Early Renaissance • Giotto, Masaccio, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi

• High Renaissance • Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian

Characteristics of Byzantine & Late Medieval Art • Stiff figures • Gold background • Two-point perspective • Religious scenes • Lack of emotion • Byzantine eyes, dress • Gothic churches

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Emperor Justinian at Ravenna (6th century)

Late Medieval Italian Art ca. 13th c.

Duccio

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Simone Martini, Annunciation

Giotto, Madonna Enthroned (1310)

Sculpture of Giotto in Florence

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Giotto, Madonna & Child

Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel

• Art historians credit Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337) with having revolutionized the course of painting in Europe. In 1305-1306 he executed his masterpiece--the design for the Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel in Padua, which was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, a wealthy merchant. The thirty-nine frescoes, which cover the walls and the ceiling of the chapel in three tiers, were designed by Giotto as a series of three narratives to be read from the center, then down and clockwise. Scala/Art Resource, NY

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Giotto, “Lamentation” (Padua)

“Flight into Egypt”

Giotto, “Kiss of Judas”

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Characteristics of Early Renaissance Art (ca. 1400) • Realism • Naturalism • Individualism • Secularism • Classicalism

• Mankind • Fresco > Mosaic

Masaccio (1401-1428)

Masaccio’s “Trinity”

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Masaccio’s “Madonna”

Masaccio, “Cycle of St. Peter”, Brancacci Chapel

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Sandro Botticelli

Botticelli’s Primavera (1478)

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Brunelleschi's Dome

• Filipo Brunelleschi, the foremost architect of the Early Renaissance, lost the competition for the commission for the north door of the Baptistery to Ghiberti. In 1417 he bested Ghiberti for the commission to build a dome for the Florentine Cathedral. Between 1420 and 1436 he built a drum--a vertical supporting wall--on the existing 138-foot- diameter octagonal cross of the cathedral. He then assembled the dome on the drum, essentially creating an eight-sided Gothic vault.

Scala/Art Resource, NY

Doors of Florentine Baptistery

Brunelleschi vs. Ghiberti: Which would YOU choose?

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Characteristics of High Renaissance Art (ca. 1500) • Highly individualized portraits/styles • Great technical skill • Artist as Genius • Increased Realism of human bodies

Raphael, Holy Family

Raphael, School of Athens • In 1504 Raphael Sanzio went to Florence where he studied the works of Masaccio, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. Raphael's designs for the Vatican frescoes in the four stanzas (papal apartments) are created with real pictorial space. The most remarkable of these "Raphael Stanzas" is the composition representing natural Truth -- known as the School of Athens. The arches of the painting draw the eye into the depths of the scene, creating a straightforward perspective, which culminates between the figures of Plato and Aristotle. Other great thinkers of antiquity are grouped around them. Scala/Art Resource, NY

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Michelangelo, “Pieta”

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Renaissance Art Today (Michelangelo)

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