16_CH16_P556-589.qxp 12/10/09 09:16 Page 556 16_CH16_P556-589.qxp 12/10/09 09:16 Page 557 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER The High Renaissance in Italy, 1495 1520 OOKINGBACKATTHEARTISTSOFTHEFIFTEENTHCENTURY , THE artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote in 1550, Truly great was the advancement conferred on the arts of architecture, painting, and L sculpture by those excellent masters. From Vasari s perspective, the earlier generation had provided the groundwork that enabled sixteenth-century artists to surpass the age of the ancients. Later artists and critics agreed Leonardo, Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, and with Vasari s judgment that the artists who worked in the decades Titian were all sought after in early sixteenth-century Italy, and just before and after 1500 attained a perfection in their art worthy the two who lived beyond 1520, Michelangelo and Titian, were of admiration and emulation. internationally celebrated during their lifetimes. This fame was For Vasari, the artists of this generation were paragons of their part of a wholesale change in the status of artists that had been profession. Following Vasari, artists and art teachers of subse- occurring gradually during the course of the fifteenth century and quent centuries have used the works of this 25-year period which gained strength with these artists. Despite the qualities of between 1495 and 1520, known as the High Renaissance, as a their births, or the differences in their styles and personalities, benchmark against which to measure their own. Yet the idea of a these artists were given the respect due to intellectuals and High Renaissance presupposes that it follows something humanists. Their social status was on a par with members of the lower, which seems an odd way to characterize the Italian art of great royal courts. In some cases, they were called genius or the inventive and dynamic fifteenth century. For this and other divine. Some among them were raised to the nobility. reasons, this terminology has been reconsidered in the past few Part of this cult of fame was owed to the patrons who com- decades. Nonetheless, however we label it, this brief period saw missioned this small number of gifted and ambitious men to make the creation of what are still some of the most revered works of works of art for them. This period saw the coming together of European art. These were created by the most celebrated names in demanding patrons rulers, popes, princes and innovative artists. the history of art, as chronicled in Vasari s The Lives of the Most Patrons competed for works by these artists and in so doing set the Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects of Italy. Vasari s book artists into competition with each other; this pattern had already placed the biography of the artist at the center of the study of art, begun in early fifteenth-century Florence. The artists tested their and his Lives became a model for art-historical writing. Indeed, skills against each other to inspire them to produce innovations in the celebrity of artists is a distinctive characteristic of the early technique and in expression. The prestige of their patrons con- sixteenth century. tributed to the mystique that developed around the artists, even as the reputations of the artists enriched the prestige of the patrons. What is truly remarkable about this group of artists is their Detail of figure 16.32, Titian, Madonna with Members of mastery of technique in their chosen mediums and in their styles the Pesaro Family of expression. Each of these artists developed a distinctive visual CHAPTER 16 THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 1495 1520 557 16_CH16_P556-589.qxp 12/10/09 09:16 Page 558 style that grew out of the ideas of the fifteenth century, but which, lands and new peoples across the ocean, which challenged their through their personal vision, their awareness of intellectual trends, notion of the world itself. and their hard work, gave rise to works of art that their contem- poraries claimed surpassed both nature and the ancients. Their pictorial works share certain features: an approach to the imitation THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN of nature that idealizes forms even as they are rendered to replicate FLORENCE AND MILAN nature; understanding of and reliance on the forms of antiquity; balance and clarity in their compositions; and emotional power. Florence s reputation as a center for the arts made it a magnet for Also remarkable is that works of such authority and harmony artists and patrons as the fifteenth century came to a close. The were produced during a quarter-century of crisis and instability. brilliance of the court around Lorenzo de Medici came to an end During this period, Italy was threatened by the Turkish expansion with his death in 1492 and the subsequent failure of his son as the from Istanbul, invaded by the French, and torn apart by internal leader of the city. Many Florentines heeded the warnings of the wars. Florence saw the exile of the Medici, the rise of Girolamo preacher Girolamo Savonarola, who encouraged them to reform Savonarola, the establishment of a republic, and the return of the their faith and their lives; in response, they rejected the worldly Medici. Venice saw its territories stripped away by its rivals. culture of the Medici court. Under his influence, pagan texts Milan was ruled by a despot, then conquered by the French. The and works of art were burned in bonfires in the Piazza della papacy began a program of territorial reclamation and expansion Signoria; the painter Sandro Botticelli destroyed several of his that brought it into conflict with its neighbors; the Roman paintings at these bonfires. Yet the penitential furor that Church also had to contend with the shock of a theological Savonarola urged did not outlive the preacher s execution in 1498. challenge offered by Martin Luther s critique of Catholic dogma Florence restored its republican form of government, which and practice. All of Europe was astonished by reports of new lasted only until the next generation of Medici politicians took 16.1 Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Ginevra de Benci, ca. 1474 78 13 9 Oil on panel, 16 *16 + 14 *16" (42.7 + 37 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund.1967.6.1.a 558 PART III THE RENAISSANCE THROUGH ROCOCO 16_CH16_P556-589.qxp 12/10/09 09:16 Page 559 back the reins of government in 1512. The political ferment seems landscape, but Leonardo s landscape is much more believable and to have inspired tremendous artistic innovation, as witnessed in humid-looking. He exploits the oil technique here to blend his the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti. brushstrokes very subtly so as to diminish the appearance of contour lines. His figures seem to exist only as the result of light falling on three-dimensional objects. This method of modeling is Leonardo da Vinci in Florence called chiaroscuro, the Italian word for light and dark. Starting Leonardo da Vinci was at once a scientist, painter, sculptor, from a middle tone laid all over the panel, Leonardo renders deep musician, architect, and engineer. Born the son of a notary in the shadows and bright highlights for his forms. Instead of standing little Tuscan town of Vinci in 1452, Leonardo trained as a painter side by side in a vacuum, forms share in a new pictorial unity cre- in Florence in Verrocchio s busy workshop. He left Florence ated by the softening of contours in an envelope of atmosphere. around 1482 to work for Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, pri- These early experiments in the oil medium and the intelligence marily as a military engineer and only secondarily as an artist. he gives to his sitter point to directions his art would take in On Sforza s removal by the French in 1499, Leonardo made his the future. way to Venice, Rome, and Florence, where he executed several commissions between 1503 and 1505. From 1506 through 1516 he worked in Rome and Florence and again in Milan, whose French Leonardo in Milan overlord, Francis I, invited him to retire to a chateau in the Loire Leaving behind several incomplete commissions, Leonardo left Valley. Leonardo died there in 1519. Florence for Milan in 1481, where he entered the employ of During his twenties, as a student and then assistant in the Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. He stayed there until 1499, workshop, Leonardo collaborated with his teacher Verrocchio working as an engineer, court artist, and military designer. As had before taking commissions on his own. Several works from this Brunelleschi before him, Leonardo turned to analysis and period remained unfinished, but one that he completed is the research to solve a variety of problems, both artistic and scientific. Portrait of Ginevra de Benci, usually dated between 1474 and He believed the world to be intelligible through mathematics, 1478 (fig. 16.1). Vasari described this painting in his Life of which formed the basis for his investigations. Thus, the artist Leonardo, and most authorities recognize it as an early work by must know not only the rules of perspective, but all the laws of his hand. nature. To him, the eye was the perfect means of gaining such The sitter s identity is known, both from what Vasari says and knowledge. The extraordinary range of his inquiries can be seen elements of the painting itself. The young woman stands before a in the hundreds of drawings and notes that he made and hoped thick hedge of juniper, which is a pun on her name (juniper is one day to turn into an encyclopedic set of treatises.