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Home , Brancacci Chapel, Cimabue, Florence Baptistery, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Santa Trinita, Tornabuoni Chapel

Cultural Encounters HUM 102

Renaissance Art

February 18 Buonarroti, The Last Judgment, 1536–41, Sistine , 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 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, , 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 , 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!” First edition (1550)

Published in

Dedicated to Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of

Second, enlarged edition (1568)

Giovanni Vasari, Lives of The Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1568 Lives of The Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects Three 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) (1400s) (1500s) , 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: , Virgin and Child Enthroned ( Maesta), c. 1280, Galleria degli Right: Giotto, Virgin and Child Enthroned (Ognisanti ), 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 “…A nude trembling because of the cold, amongst the other neophytes, executed with such and gentle manner, that it is highly praised and admired by all artists, ancient and modern.”

Vasari, Lives of Artists

Masaccio, of the Neophytes, , Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, 1424–8 “…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, Laocoön both the main figure as Group, well as the children, and Roman copy the serpents with their (c. 27 BC-68 marvellous folds. This AD) of an group was made in ancient concert by three most Greek eminent artists, bronze Agesander, Polydorus, original and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes.”

Discovered Pliny, Natural History, in Rome in XXXVI, 37 1506

“… 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 of , 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 Michelangelo Buonarroti, , hundred crowns from Piero 1501–4. Marble, Soderini, and it was set up in height 4,09 m. 1504…” Galleria dell’Accademia, Vasari, Lives of Artists Florence “…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.”

Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1553

Florence Cathedral, late 13th century on / dome (by ): 1417–36 of San Giovanni, 1059 Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence, 1059–1129

Southern by (1330– 6), Eastern and northern doors by (1403–1425; 1452–62) Lorenzo Ghiberti, Sacrifice of , 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 THE VANISHING POINT 2. atmospheric perspective (on the horizon) 3. single source of light

THE PERSPECTIVE GRID

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. , constructed between 1059 and 1128 -renowned for its three sets of bronze doors with relief (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 (1417–36) and for developing the mathematical technique of linear perspective Figure from the 1804 edition of (1435) of , 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 “ in painting “Masaccio was a very expressed the likeness of good imitator of everything in nature so well nature, with great and that with our eyes we seemed comprehensive to see not the images of rilievo, a good things but things componitore and puro, themselves.” without ornato, because he devoted himself only to the Alamanno Rinuccini, 1472 imitation of truth and to the rilievo of his figures.”

Cristoforo Landino, 1481

Masaccio, The , 1427. Church, Florence “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…” Interior of the Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. Frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino (c. 1423–28) and (c. 1482–84) Masaccio. Tribute Money, 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 Raphael, Madonna of the Meadows, 1505–6, University Beinecke Rare Books Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Library, MS 404 “…they serve the glory of God, the honor of the city, and the commemoration of myself.”

Portrait of Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai, attributed to Francesco Salviatio, c. 1540 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 , Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 1485–90 “..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….”

Filippo Lippi, Sketch of an Altarpiece, 1457. Florence, Archivio di Stato (Med. Av. Pr., VI, no. 258) 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 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sonnet “To Giovanni da Pistoia” and caricature on his painting the Sistine Ceiling. , Florence Archivio Buanarroti (XIII, fol. 111) 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.