Renaissance Art Museum Exhibit

Taylor Hardy Dr. Robinson

January 31,2013

How Sculpture, Architecture, and Oil Controlled the Differences among Renaissance Artists in

Italy and Northern Europe

Oil Painting, “Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Barbara”

Not all art from an art period is similar.

Although the Renaissance is a specific period in the history of art, individual artists had different techniques, skills, and themes.

On the Italian peninsula, an early and important influence on the development of art was Filippo Brunelleschi. His influence derived from both his architectural creations and his use of perspective in frescos.

Filippo Brunelleschi

• 1377-1436 (Born in Florence)• Credited with introducing perspective into art • Studied mathematics, law, and goldsmith skills. • As a young man, he took a trip to study ancient ruins,

measuring and sketching them. • His application of math to art was an important aid in

seeing objects in their relationship to other objects. • He reinvented the art of capturing perspective, a skill that

was lost during medieval time.

The rediscovery of perspective• Brunelleschi's most important achievement in mathematics came around

1415 when he rediscovered the principles of linear perspective using mirrors. • He understood that there should be a single vanishing point to which all

parallel lines in a plane, other than the plane of the canvas, converge. • Also important was his understanding of scale, and he correctly computed

the relation between the actual length of an object and its length in the picture depending on its distance behind the plane of the canvas.

• Using these mathematical principles, he drew various scenes of Florence with correct perspective.

• These perspective drawings by Brunelleschi have since been lost but a "Trinity" fresco by Masaccio still exists which uses Brunelleschi's mathematical principles.

SYSTEMATIC LINEAR PERSPECTIVE

Brunelleschi’s importance

• Brunelleschi influenced other artists to use his SYSTEMATIC LINEAR PERSPECTIVE

• His architectural works are a lasting testimony to his skill.

• One of the earliest of his followers was Masaccio

Brunelleschi’s most famous art work

• Contains over 4 million bricks

The Dome of Florence Cathedral

• Dome still dominates skyline of Florence

• Duration of building 1420-1436

The history behind Brunelleschi's creations

• http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://maitaly.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/0328p_duomo6_b.jpg&imgrefurl=http://maitaly.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/brunelleschi-and-the-re-discovery-of-linear-perspective/&usg=__122DYxfQStaTOY2F0sOQImjrNnk=&h=480&w=535&sz=73&hl=en&start=1&sig2=r7sEdN3O5r7Y0LvgbNjlfg&zoom=1&tbnid=8K8tJAjuztEatM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=132&ei=j5EIUcOcO4er0AG-jICYCw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpainting%2Bby%2Bbrunelleschi%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1

The trinity fresco SYSTEMATIC LINEAR PERSPECTIVE: AN EARLY WORK

Around 1427 Masaccio won a prestigious commission to produce a Holy Trinity for the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

Who funded the painting? No contemporary documents record the patron of the fresco, but recently references to ownership of a tomb at the foot of the fresco have been found in the records of the Berti family of the Santa Maria Novella Quarter of Florence (this working-class family expressed a long-standing devotion to the Trinity, and may well have commissioned Masaccio's painting). Probably it is the male patron who is represented to the left of the Virgin in the painting, while his wife is right of St. John the Evangelist.

The fresco, considered by many to be Masaccio's masterwork, is the earliest surviving painting to use systematic linear perspective, possibly devised by Masaccio with the assistance of Brunelleschi himself.

Masaccio’s Trinity fresco

This fresco uses the principles of perspective discovered by

Brunelleschi.

MASACCIO

• Tommaso di ser Giovanni di Simone, called Masaccio

• 1401-1428 Born in Florence, died in the Papal States

THE LAST SUPPER• A famous use of perspective can be seen in Leonardo da

Vinci’s Last Supper.• The tapestries and the ceiling pattern all help to focus on a

particular point in the fresco, the figure of Christ in the center.• The room appears to mimic the way we see railroad tracks

converge in the distance. It uses ORTHOGONAL LINES to convey the perspective and to focus on a central point.

• The orothogonal lines focus on a VANISHING POINT.• The vanishing point is on a HORIONTAL LINE that is the line of

perspective of the viewer.

Focusing on a central point

Leonardo’s famous work• The Last Supper • A late 15th century mural painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the refectory of

the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan. • The work is presumed to have been commenced around 1495 and was

commissioned as part of a scheme of renovations to the church and its convent buildings by Leonardo's patron Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.

• The painting represents the scene of The Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, as it is told in the Gospel of John, 13:21.

• Like other artists, Leonardo investigated the question of how to draw three dimensional objects on flat surfaces. Like others, also, he began to think of a painting as an "open window" through which the viewer sees the painted world based on a system of mathematical rules known as linear perspective to help painters achieve the goal of realism.

Leonardo da vinci

• The complete Renaissance Man: Leonardo was a polymath, a person capable of doing many things, including art, scientific discovery, and invention

• 1452-1519• His Mona Lisa is his most famous painting, but his Last

Supper is the most copied religious artwork.• Even the famous portrait shows his ability to capture

perspective.• The trees, water, and winding road in the painting appear to recede into the distance.

Raphael • Born in Urbino in 1483; died in Rome in 1520

• Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.

• His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.

• Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

• Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and despite his death at 37, a large body of his work remains.

• Many of his works are found in the Apostolic Palace of The Vatican, where the frescoe Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura.

The Great Michelangelo• Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni• 1475-1564• Sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an

UNPARALLELED INFLUENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF WESTERN ART

• Many famous works, including the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Pieta, and St. Peter’s

• As a sculptor and architect, Michelangelo had to master perspective.

The Importance of Light and Color in Flemish Renaissance Art

• Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait shows shading• The orthogonal lines are not well developed• From the front to the back of the bed seems to be a very short distance.

The Annunciation by van Eyck• Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation uses some perspective, but the

size of the arches in the painting does not change from front to back.

• The focus seems to be controlled by the brightly lighted faces, and the corner where the two walls meet.

Jan van Eyck• Jan van Eyck (or Johannes de Eyck) • Born before about 1390 ; died about July 1441• Van Eyck was a Flemish (from Flanders, northern Belgium) painter• He lived in Bruges• He is a significant painter among the Northern European Renaissance artists of the

15th century.• His Portrait of a Man in a Turban shows his attention to light and color. The light falls on the face, and the dark coat contrasts with the lighted face. Perspective Can be seen by shading in the folds of the turban and not by orthogonal lines focusing on a vanishing point like the paintings with systematic linear perspective.

Sources• Slide 4 Statue of Brunelleschi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi• Slide 6 Linear Perspective http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi• Slide 8 Florence Cathedral http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi• Slide 11 Masaccio’s Trinity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaccio• Slide 14 The Last Supper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_• Slides 16 and 17 the Pieta and the Prophet David from the Sistine Chapel• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo• Slides 18 through 20 van Eyck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_van_Eyck