'We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art.'
Oscar Wilde - from The English Renaissance of Art'
The city - Florence
A recent U.N.E.S.C.O. report said that 60% of the World's most important works of art are to be found in Italy and of those 60%, half are to be found in Florence. So 30% of the World's most important works of art are to be found in this fortunate city, Florence.
The model - Ancient Greece and Rome
For the answer to the first question we have to go back to the fall of the Roman Empire and the period of the 'Dark Ages' up to 1250. During this time, the once great skills of painting, sculpture and to a lesser degree, architecture had all but died out as the art of Byzantium was more concerned with gold mosaics showing stiff unemotional characters. Skills that had been perfected by Greek masters such as Phidias, Daedalus, Apelles and Praxiteles, of which we only have a handful of works remaining today.
St Francis
The inspiration came in the form of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) whose renouncement of worldly goods and return to nature would generate an interest in 'earthly things',
Then around 1250/60 a group of young Florentine men who were despairing at the lack of quality art being produced, started searching around among the ruins of ancient Rome and Greece for some inspiration to translate to prospective painters and sculptors back in Florence, where the new wealthy mercantile climate would provide the money and commissions to launch a 're-birth' of Western art. The result was this 'Renaissance', a movement that was to go down in history as equal to, if not greater than, the 'golden age' of perfection that the Greeks achieved nearly two thousand years earlier.
The biographer- Giorgio Vasari
From here on in most of our knowledge of the personalities and stories come primarily from the 15th century biographer and 'second tier' artist, Giorgio Vasari.
The Artists
Pisano
It was the sculptor Nicola Pisano (1220-1284) who was credited with being the founder of modern sculpture. His work is to be found on the castle in Prato, San Martino in Lucca and the baptistery in Pisa. He then worked with sculptor and architect Arnolfo di Cambio on the pulpit of the cathedral in Siena. Pisano was influenced by the works of classical antiquity and somewhat attached to the constraints of gothic art, his work nonetheless is original and unique and became the precursor to Renaissance sculpture. In fact most sources give the date that begins the Renaissance as 1260, the date Pisano created his masterpiece, the pulpit in Pisa.
The pulpit, which sits on six columns, some resting on lions, with its five panels carved in white Carrara marble tells the life of Christ. The figures wear Roman style tunics and show regal, godlike qualities, clearly inspired by the Arch of Constantine in Rome.
Here begins the Renaissance.
Cimabue
The artist who had the ability to represent these Renaissance ideas was Cimabue (1240-1302), he liked to sketch and used to go and watch some of the Greek artists who had been brought over to Florence. He soon broke with the crude, stiff, mosaic-like paintings which were covered in heavy outlines. His style was more realistic, with softer curves and flowing garments and draperies.
His masterpiece was the wooden Crucifix, which is now in the Santa Croce museum, executed around 1265 and painted in distemper. The work was commissioned by the Franciscan friars of Santa Croce and is built from a complex arrangement of five main and eight ancillary timber boards. It is one of the first Italian artworks to break from the late medieval Byzantine style and is renowned for its technical innovations and humanistic iconography. The gilding and monumentality of the cross link it to the Byzantine tradition. Christ's static pose is reflective of this style, while the overall work incorporates newer, more naturalistic aspects. The work presents a lifelike and physically imposing depiction of the passion at Calvary. Christ is shown nearly naked, his eyes are closed, his face lifeless and defeated. His body slumps in a position contorted by prolonged agony. A graphic portrayal of human suffering, the painting is of seminal importance in art history and has influenced painters from Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Velázquez to Francis Bacon. The work was in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence from the late thirteenth century, and at the Museo dell'Opera Santa Croce since its restoration following the flood of the Arno in 1966. It remains in poor condition despite conservation.
Arnolfo di Cambio
“Man is the measure of all things."
Protagoras
Nicola Pisano’s chief assistant was Arnolfo di Cambio (1240-1300/10) born in Colle Val d’Elsa in the province of Siena. He was a sculptor and architect and worked with him on the pulpit of the Cathedral in Siena. He then went to Rome to sculpt many projects for King Charles I of Anjou and others, including a rare seated bronze of St Peter which is now in St Peters basilica and was influenced by the Byzantine and Medieval Cosmatesque art.
He then returned to Florence In 1294 where was responsible for designing the Palazzo Vecchio as well as Santa Croce and Santa Maria del Fiore.
(both pictured here as they would have been without their façades for hundreds of years).
He also provided statues for the Cathedral, the originals which are today to be found in the museum of the Cathedral works. His work owed more to the Gothic style than the Renaissance, but his creations left us with these eternal masterpieces and his place in the beginnings of the Renaissance is unquestioned.
The Poet - Dante
“Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri, born in Florence (1265-1321) is one of the most famous poets of all time. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered the most important poem of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
In the Late Middle Ages, most poetry was written in Latin, making it accessible only to the most educated readers. However, Dante defended the use of the vernacular in literature. He would even write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and the Divine Comedy; this highly unorthodox choice set a precedent that important later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow.
Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art. He is cited as an influence on John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alfred Tennyson, among many others. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, or the terza rima, is attributed to him. He is described as the "father" of the Italian language
Dante made significant contributions to the early Renaissance and many of his ideas and themes were developed by later writers, artists, and thinkers. Dante contributed to the development of humanism, the use of the vernacular in literature and challenged the hegemonic nature of the Church and these helped to generate the cultural and intellectual changes known as the Renaissance, which transformed the world forever.
Giotto
“Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour.’ Giotto di Bondone
It was while out walking in the countryside that Cimabue noticed a young boy sketching sheep on a rock. He took the boy on as his apprentice. On one occasion when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, Giotto painted a remarkably lifelike fly on a face in a painting of Cimabue. When Cimabue returned, he tried several times to brush the fly off. With his natural talent for drawing, that boy was Giotto (1266-1337), the artist would eclipse his master and go on to take painting out of the dark ages. Giotto, with his ability to show feelings and emotion left absolute masterpieces of the fresco technique in Florence, Assisi and Padova (the Scrovegni chapel). Artists flocked to admire his work and today the whole world comes to admire them.
Giovanni Boccaccio, a friend of Giotto, said of him that "there was no uglier man in the city of Florence" and indicates that his children were also plain in appearance. There is a story that Dante visited Giotto while he was painting the Scrovegni Chapel and, seeing the artist's children underfoot asked how a man who painted such beautiful pictures could have such plain children. Giotto, who, according to Vasari was always a wit, replied, "I make my pictures by day, and my babies by night."
Boccacio also gave Giotto a mention in the Decameron;: “…Giotto brought back to light an art which had been buried for centuries…So faithful did he remain to Nature…that whatever he depicted had the appearance, not of a reproduction, but of the thing itself, so that one very often finds, with the works of Giotto, that people’s eyes are deceived and they mistake the picture for the real thing.”
Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron VI, 5
Giotto also got a mention in Dante’s Divine Comedy:
“O empty glorying in human power! How short a day the crown remains in leaf, If it’s not followed by a duller age! In painting it was Cimabue’s belief He held the field; now Giotto’s got the cry and Cimabue’s fame is dim…”
Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Canto XI, lines 91–95
Petrarch
“And what is the use of knowing many things if, when you have learned the dimensions of heaven and earth, the measure of the seas, the courses of stars, the virtues of plants and stones, the secrets of nature, you still don’t know yourself?”
Francesco Petrarca
It was a contemporary of Giotto, the scholar and poet, Francesco Petrarch (1307-1374) who furthered the philosophy of Renaissance ideals. He proposed a return to classical writers in a search for truth and found in the works of Cicero and Plutarch, models on which he believed people could base their lives on.
Siena
At this point a passing mention must go to the Sienese school of painting that flourished between the 13th and 15th century, spawning dozens of important artists such as Duccio, Lippo Memmi, Becafumi, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers- Ambrogio and Pietro. A couple of frescoes I wanted to include, from the Palazzo Publicco in Siena, are the Allegory of good and bad government carried out by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338
and the Guidoriccio di Fogliano fresco on the Sala del mappa mondo western wall.
From 1347-1351 the bubonic plague struck Europe killing between 75-200 million people.
Paolo Ucello
It took another 60 years before Paolo Ucello (1397-1475) would come and further the ideals of the Renaissance and carry the torch that Giotto had lit. Ucello made use of space in his backgrounds and packed lots of action into them, whereas medieval artists used plain backgrounds because they hadn't learned how to make that space look realistic, their work was flat and compositions awkward. Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his study trying to grasp the exact vanishing point. While his contemporaries used perspective to narrate different or succeeding stories, Uccello used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. His best known works are the three paintings representing the battle of San Romano..
Today one is in the Uffizi in Florence, one in the Louvre in Paris and the third in the National Gallery in London.
Two other impressive paintings are the hunt in the forest, showing people, horses, deer and dogs disappearing into the background, which was revolutionary for its time and is in the Ashmoleon in Oxford, and George and the dragon also in the National Gallery in London. It even has a poem dedicated to it.
Not my Best Side
U. A. Fanthorpe
Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.
Ghiberti
‘The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.’ Michelangelo
Someone who aimed very high was Lorenzo Ghibertii (1378 – 1455) a Florentine artist of the Early Renaissance best known as the creator of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery. He trained as a goldsmith and sculptor and established an important workshop for sculpture in metal. Ghiberti gave volume and depth to his sculpture and was interested in the harmony of composition and the theoretical use of perspective.
Andrea Pisano had been awarded the commission, as recommended by Giotto, to design the first set of doors fair the Florence baptistery in 1329. The south doors were originally installed on the east side, facing the Duomo.
In 1401, a competition was announced by the Cloth Importers Guild to design a second set of doors, with twenty eight panels which would eventually be placed on the north side of the baptistery. Lorenzo Ghiberti won the competition to cast the doors. his panel depicting the sacrifice of Isaac winning out in the final round against Brunelleschi. It took Ghiberti 21 years to complete these doors.
Ghiberti was now widely recognized as a celebrity and the top artist in this field. He was showered with commissions, even from the pope. In 1425 he got a second commission, this time for a third set of doors for the baptistery, on which he toiled for 27 years. These had ten panels depicting scenes from the Old Testament, and were in turn installed on the east side. It was these doors that Michelangelo christened ‘the gates of Paradise.’ Today all three sets of doors have been replaced with copies and you can see the originals inside the museum of the cathedral works behind the Dome.
It was then, around 1420 that the floodgates opened and the quality of work was turned up a notch , with the arrival of three giants of the still early Renaissance.
The Architect - Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture, was a Florentine architect and designer and now recognised to be the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor. Brunelleschi rediscovered the antique methods of Marco Vitruvius and together with Masaccio is credited with the discovery of perspective in art. Brunelleschi applied these classical rules to Renaissance ideals and created completely original buildings that were beautiful in their simplicity.
The hospital of the innocents, the Pazzi chapel, Santo Spirito, San Lorenzo and his crowning glory, the creation of the self-supporting cupola of the Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, a feat of engineering that had not been accomplished since antiquity.
Construction on the cathedral had begun in 1296, but after its original architect was unable to come up with a way to construct a dome over the cathedral’s massive nave, the building had remained unfinished for nearly a century. In 1418 the group in charge of the construction of the cathedral announced that they were accepting ideas for how to design the dome. Filippo submitted his name to be included and then issued a challenge, saying that the commission to build the dome should be given to the man who could make an egg stand on end, as that man would have the skills required for the job. After the various architects tried in vain, Filippo took an egg, whacked it on its end and then placed it on the table where it stood upright and did not fall over. The other architects protested that they could have done that, too, to which Filippo replied that they could have built the dome, too, had they seen his model. Impressed, the judges awarded Filippo the commission to construct the dome. The dome was completed in 16 years and even today is still the largest dome ever created with bricks and masonry.
The Sculptor - Donatello
Donatello (1386 – 1466) was born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used this to develop a complete Renaissance style in sculpture. He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco and wax. Though his best-known works were mostly statues in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was larger architectural reliefs. He studied under Ghiberti and assisted him in creating sculptures for the Baptistry before embarking on a series of sculptures for the Orsanmichele niches.
Made around 1460, it is certain that Cosimo de' Medici, the foremost art patron of his era, commissioned from Donatello the bronze David (now in the Bargello) for the court of his Palazzo Medici. This is now Donatello's most famous work, and the first known free-standing nude statue produced since antiquity. Conceived fully in the round, independent of any architectural surroundings, and largely representing an allegory of the civic virtues triumphing over brutality and irrationality, it is arguably the first major work of Renaissance sculpture.
The Painter - Masaccio
Masaccio (1401 – 1428) was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He employed nudes and foreshortenings in his figures. This had seldom been done before him.
Despite his brief career, he had a profound influence on other artists. He was one of the first to use linear perspective in his painting, employing techniques such as vanishing point in art for the first time. He moved away from the International Gothic style and elaborate ornamentation to a more naturalistic mode that employed perspective and chiaroscuro for greater realism.
The Brancacci Chapel
In 1424, Masaccio and Masolino were commissioned by the powerful and wealthy Felice Brancacci to execute a cycle of frescoes for the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Painting began around 1425, but for unknown reasons the chapel was left unfinished, and was completed by Filippino Lippi in the 1480s. The majority of the frescoes represent the life of St. Peter, two scenes, on either side of the threshold of the chapel space, depict the temptation and expulsion of Adam and Eve. As a whole, the frescoes recount the life of St Peter as if it were the story of salvation. The style of Masaccio's scenes shows the influence of Giotto especially. Figures are large, heavy, and solid; emotions are expressed through faces and gestures; and there is a strong impression of naturalism throughout the paintings. Unlike Giotto, however, Masaccio uses linear and atmospheric perspective, directional light, and chiaroscuro, which is the representation of form through light and color without outlines. As a result, his frescoes are even more convincingly lifelike than those of his trecento predecessors. His masterpiece in the Brancacci chapel became a kind of school where many future masters, including Michelangelo, would come and see.
Alberti
“Beauty: the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.”
Leon Battista Alberti
Out of this explosion of creativity came the most influential writer of the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Alberti, who was also an author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer; he epitomised, wrote that 'the artist should make nature his model and humans were central to nature as its most perfect creation. Therefore the soul was the source of movement and the language of the soul.
His ten books on painting and architecture proved to be a kind of manual to artists. He applied the rules of perspective from painting to his buildings, such as Santa Maria Novella, the Palazzo Rucellai and Sant' Andrea in Mantova and the Tempio Malatestiano and San Sebastiano in Rimini, where he united Christian and pagan styles, proportion based on geometry and arithmetic. To Alberti, art was an intellectual activity and it is no surprise that he came to be known as 'the Renaissance man.’ He claimed he that he could jump, with his feet tied together over a grown man. This fact was recounted in the 1994 film Renaissance Man, starring Danny Devito.
The Plato 4
Nothing symbolized this intellectual approach to art more than a group of men known as 'the Platonic Academy'. They were, amongst others, doctor and scientist, Marsilio Ficino, scholar, Angelo Poliziano, linguist, Pico di Mirandola and lecturer, Cristoforo Landino.
This group met to discuss and further Renaissance ideals at the house, or mansion, of Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492), Lorenzo would provide not only the funds and commissions for new works of art, but the love and imagination for art that would move the artist out of the perception of craftsman and into the realm of superstar. In fact it was Lorenzo who recognized the potential of the young Michelangelo and invited him to live in his household for four years.
Lorenzo the Magnificent
In the twenty-three years of his reign as head of the regional state, he raised Florence to the status of cultural capital of Europe. Between 1469 and 1492 he created a climate in which art could flourish and would produce a group of artists and artworks over the following 50 years, enough to convince anyone that in no other time in history has there every been such a period of creativity and invention in the arts:
There were obviously hundreds of very good artists that followed, here are the most famous and some of their masterpieces..
Fra Angelico
Guido di Pietro, or Fra Angelico or Beato Angelico as he was more commonly known lived from 1395 to 1455. He was a painter of frescoes and altar pieces of a religious nature. He left us wonderful annunciations, depositions, coronations and the lovely San Marco frescoes.
He painted in a light, sweet style with lots of pinks and blues and gossamer gold and we can see his understanding of linear perspective. He was described by Vasari as having "a rare and perfect talent, it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety.
He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made in each individual cell for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence.
In 1982 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
Luca della Robbia
Luca della Robbia (1400-1482) was a Florentine sculptor noted for his unique colorful, tin-glazed terracotta statuary. Though a leading sculptor in stone, he worked primarily in terracotta after developing his technique in the early 1440s. His large workshop produced both cheaper works cast from molds in multiple versions, and more expensive one-off individually modeled pieces.
The vibrant, polychrome glazes made his creations both more durable and expressive. His creations are noted for their charm rather than the drama of the work of some of his contemporaries. Two of his famous pieces are The Nativity and Madonna and Child. In stone his most famous work was also his first major commission, the choir gallery, Cantoria in the Florence Cathedral.
The Singing Gallery shows children singing, dancing, and making music to "praise the Lord" in the words of Psalm 150. Their figures are at once lively, finely observed, and gracefully combined in groups designed to fit the ten panels of the gallery. The advanced nature of the work established Luca della Robbia's skill in stone as well as secure his place as a major Florentine artist and student of Renaissance naturalism.
When he died he passed on his skills to his nephew, Andrea.
Filippo Lippi
As a young boy, Fra’ Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) would watch Masaccio paint and was inspired to become an artist. His parents died when he was a small child and he was brought up in the local Carmelite convent.
Again his paintings were religious, including the famous Madonna and Child with two angels in the Uffizi as well as Annunciations and Coronations.
He painted frescoes of St John and St Stephen in Prato Cathedral including Herod’s banquet and a dancing Salome. You can also see his works all around Italy as well as New York Washington, London, Paris, Munich and Berlin.
Filippino Lippi
He left a son, Filippino Lippi who was an important painter too. Filippino studied under Boticelli and assisted with many frescoes, even finishing the Brancacci Chapel.
Piero della Francesca
A very popular artist was Piero di Benedetto (1425-1492) born in San Sepolcro in the province of Arezzo. His father died before he was born and so he was called Piero della Francesca after his mother. He was an Italian painter, mathematician and geometer, known for his humanism, geometric forms and perspective.
His early work included the famous Baptism of Christ now in the National Gallery London, the Resurrection in Sansepolcro, the Madonna del Parto in Monterchi and the the Flagellation, which is considered one of the most famous and controversial pictures of the early Renaissance. It is marked by an air of geometric sobriety, in addition to presenting a perplexing enigma as to the nature of the three men standing at the foreground.
Another famous work painted in Urbino is the Double Portrait of Federico and his wife Battista Sforza, in the Uffizi. The portraits in profile take their inspiration from large bronze medals and stucco roundels with the official portraits of Fedederico and his wife.
In 1452 he was called to Arezzo to complete what would become his great Fresco cycle and one of the masterpieces of the a Renaissance, the History of the true cross, in the basilica of San Francesco .
Piero was commissioned to paint the Resurrection fresco in 1460 in San Sepolcro. Placed high on the interior wall facing the entrance, Jesus is in the centre of the composition, portrayed in the moment of his resurrection, as suggested by the position of the leg on the parapet of his tomb, which Piero renders as a classical sarcophagus. His stern, impassive figure, depicted in an iconic and abstract fixity rises over four sleeping soldiers. Christ's body is as perfectly sculpted and as blemish-free as that of an antique statue. But there are touches of intense humanity about him too: the unidealised, almost coarse-featured face. Piero emphasises his twofold nature, as both man and God. The guard holding the lance is depicted sitting in an anatomically impossible pose, and appears to have no legs. Piero probably left them out so as not to break the balance of the composition. The sleeping soldier in brown armor on Christ's right is a self-portrait of Piero.
Sansepolcro was spared much damage during World War 2 when British artillery officer Tony Clarke defied orders and held back from using his troop's guns to shell the town. Although Clarke had never seen the fresco, his diary records his shock at the destruction in Monte Cassino and, apparently remembering where he had read of Sansepolcro, ordered his men to hold fire just as methodical shelling had begun. Clarke had read Aldous Huxley's 1925 essay describing the Resurrection, which states: "It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world." Piero died in 1492
Mantegna
From the north of Italy came Mantegna (1431-1506) He was born near Padua and was a painter and a student of Roman archeology. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality. His flinty, metallic landscapes and somewhat stony figures give evidence of a fundamentally sculptural approach to painting. He was apprenticed to the famous Francesco Squarcione school at 11 years old.
One of his great early works, a fresco in Sant Agostino in Padova was almost entirely lost in the allied bombings there in 1944. The fresco cycle included the incredible and unusual worm-eye-view ‘James led to his execution.’
He married Giovanni Bellini’s sister and was inspired by a drawing of his father-in-law, Jacopo Bellini to paint the Agony in the garden, now in the National Gallery in London.
In Mantova the Gonzaga family had him paint the ceiling fresco in the ‘Camera degli Sposi’ or Wedding Chamber.
In Rome he continued work on a series of large panels entitled ‘Triumph of the Caesar’ which was sold to English king, Charles I and ended up in Hampton Court Palace near London.
In his later years he painted three Saint Sebastians and the dead Christ in Milan, displaying his incredible knowledge of foreshortening.
Vercocchio
Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni, better known as Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) was master of a workshop in Florence. His pupils included Leonardo Da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi.
As well as teaching, he produced some noteworthy pieces. Few paintings have been attributed to him, but they are very beautiful and include the Virgin and cold with two angels, in the National Gallery in London and the Madonna with seated child (pictured here, now in Berlin)
The Baptism of Christ, now in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, was painted in 1474–75. In this work Verrocchio was assisted by Leonardo da Vinci, then a youth and a member of his workshop, who painted the angel on the left and the part of the background above. According to Vasari, Andrea resolved never to touch the brush again because Leonardo, his pupil, had far surpassed him.
In 1467 he was commissioned to cast a bronze group portraying Christ and St. Thomas for the centre tabernacle, on the east facade of Orsanmichele. The work was placed in position in 1483 and has been acclaimed since the day of its unveiling and almost without exception recognised as a masterpiece.
Also in 1468 he was contracted to make a golden ball to be placed on top of the lantern of Brunelleschi's cupola on the Duomo in Florence. The ball was ingeniously made of sheets of copper soldered together and hammered into shape and then gilded. The ball was struck by lightning and fell in 1601 but was reconstructed in 1602.
A bronze statue of David was commissioned by Piero de'Medici. It is now at the Bargello in Florence. Verrocchio's David is a young lad, modestly clad, contrasting with Donatello's provocative David. For this figure, the Master is purported to have used the young Leonardo, a newcomer to his workshop, as his model.
In around 1470 he finished in bronze a Putto (winged boy) with Dolphin, originally intended for a fountain in the Medici villa of Careggi and later brought to Florence for a fountain and since 1959 has been kept in a room in the Palazzo Vecchio.
Also in 1468 he was contracted to make a golden ball to be placed on top of the lantern of Brunelleschi's cupola on the Duomo in Florence. The ball was ingeniously made of sheets of copper soldered together and hammered into shape and then gilded. The ball was struck by lightning and fell in 1601 but was reconstructed in 1602.
In 1475 the Condottiero Colleoni, a former Captain General of the Republic of Venice, died and by his will left a substantial part of his estate to the Republic on condition that a statue of himself should be commissioned and set up in the Piazza San Marco. A competition was arranged Verrocchio won and the contract was awarded to him. He then opened a workshop in Venice and made the final clay model, but died in 1488. The statue was eventually made by Alessandro Leopardi in the Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, where it stands today and is a fitting last tribute to Verrocchio’s
“the magnificent sense of movement in this figure is shown to superb advantage in its present setting and that, as sculpture, it far surpasses anything the century had yet aspired to or thought possible. Both man and horse are equally fine and together are inseparable parts of the sculpture.”
Bramante
The artist who introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and Rome was Donato Agnuolo or Donato di Pasuccio d’Antonio, better known to us as Donato Bramante (1444-1514) born in Urbino. In Milan he became the court architect to Ludovico Sforza. In Rome Pope Julius II recognized his skill and commissioned him for the first design of St Peters (that was eventually taken over and changed by Michelangelo)
He was also responsible for one of the Renaissance’s greatest buildings (and one of my favourites) the Tempietto in San Pietro in Montorio.
Boticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, or Sandro Boticelli, (meaning little barrel) as we know him (1445-1510) born in Borgo Ognissanti in Florence, was one of the most loved painters of the Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his as a "golden age".
He was apprenticed to Filippo Lippi and one of his early works were seven panels representing the seven Virtues. He then painted his celebrated adoration of the Magi (including portraits of the Medici family and even a self-portrait) for Santa Maria Novella, which is now in the Ufizzi and Madonna of the lillies, now in Berlin.
After working on frescoes in the Sistine Chapel he returned to Florence to create his two masterpieces and two of the greatest Renaissance paintings, the Birth of Venus and Primavera, both in the Ufizzi in Florence. As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity. Both of these paintings, along with Venus and Mars (in the National Gallery in London) and the less well known, Pallas and the Centaur, were based on mythological themes. They show the influence of Neo-Platonism and humanist ideals expounded by the ‘Plato Four’ and Lorenzo dei Medici.
By the 1490s his style became more personal and to some extent mannered, and he could be seen as moving in a direction opposite to that of Leonardo da Vinci (seven years his junior) and a new generation of painters creating the High Renaissance style as Botticelli returned in some ways to the Gothic style.
He painted several altarpieces as he returned to more religious themes and also many Madonna and child Tondos.
Botticelli's Virgins are always beautiful, in the same idealized way as his mythological figures, and often richly dressed in contemporary style. Something that caught the eye of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (one cannot have a discussion about the Renaissance without giving the ‘mad monk’ a mention!) Although Savonarola's main strictures were against secular art, he also complained of the paintings in Florentine churches that "You have made the Virgin appear dressed as a whore", which may have had an effect on Botticelli's style. They are often accompanied by equally beautiful angels, or an infant Saint John the Baptist (the patron saint of Florence). Some feature flowers, and none the detailed landscape backgrounds that other artists were developing.
According to Vasari, Botticelli became a follower of the deeply moralistic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who preached in Florence from 1490 until his execution in 1498.
Boticelli then attempted to illustrate Dante’s Divine Commedy with only some drawings completed.
Vasari tells us about his last years.
“Botticelli was a follower of Savonarola's, and this was why he gave up painting and then fell into considerable distress as he had no other source of income. None the less, he remained an obstinate member of the sect, becoming one of the piagnoni, the snivellers, as they were called then, and abandoning his work; so finally, as an old man, he found himself so poor that if Lorenzo de' Medici and then his friends and others had not come to his assistance, he would have almost died of hunger.”
Perugino
Pietro Vannucci, better known as Perugino (1446/52 - 1523) was born in Città delle Pieve, Umbria. His origins, family status and birthdate are unsure, but judging from his nickname, Perugino, we can deduce that he was probably studying painting in the local workshops in Perugia. He eventually made his way to Florence where he became one of the earliest proponents of oil painting. In 1480 he was called to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to paint frescoes on the walls of the Sistine chapel, which he did assisted by Pinturricchio.
His Christ giving the keys to St Peter, being the most well-known. He then worked mostly in Florence. A young Raphael was placed under his tutelage. I’m not a great fan of his works, but his place among the most famous Renaissance artists is indisputable.(although when Michelangelo met him he called him a ‘bungler in art’, so he wasn’t impressed either!) He painted many alter pieces and religious themed pieces, but also some nice portraits.
Perugino, put into words what was to follow him.
"We shall see all things infinitely improved, compositions with many more figures, richer ornamentation and design that is better grounded and more true to life. The style, the colours more delicate, so that the arts will be close to perfection and to the exact imitation of the truth of nature."
The Procession of the Magi
Three frescoes that must be mentioned are very different subjects and styles. The first was commissioned by Cosimo de’Medici and carried out in 1459 by Florentine artist Benozzo Gozzoli, the procession of the Magi in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi.
It actually extends over three walls of the little chapel and shows the Magi on their journey to visit Jesus. A beautifully elaborate depiction also includes portraits of the Medici household and is a masterpiece well worth seeing when in Florence.
The Last Judgement
The second is Luca Signorelli’s (1450-1523) Last Judgement painted from 1499-1503 in the San Brizio Chapel in the Orvieto Cathedral, crowded with powerful nudes painted in many postures that accentuate their musculature, With green and purple devils…
Definitely providing inspiration for Michelangelo’s Mannerist version some 30 years later in the Sistine Chapel.
The Piccolomini Library
The third is Pinturicchio’s life of Pope Pius II in the Piccolomini library in the Cathedral in Siena executed between 1503-1508. Pinturicchio even included a portrait of himself and a young Raphael who assisted in the fresco cycle.
The ideal city
Another set of paintings dated to the end of the 15th century should also be mentioned. The ideal city is a set of three painted panels all of a similar size, each one depicted a slightly different impression of an idealized city, inspired by different architectural styles, thought to have been originally designed for Federico da Montefeltro of Urbino.
In fact the first one is still on display in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino and has been attributed to four different artists including Piero della Francesca.
The second panel now kept on display in Baltimore, USA, is thought to have been painted between 1480-1484 by Fra Carnevale. However the painting has also been attributed to Martini and refers to architectural themes proposed by Leon Battista Alberti. The structures resemble the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine and the Baptistry in Florence. The four virtues are represented on the four columns; Justice, Moderation, Liberality and Courage.
The third panel kept in Berlin, which is too delicate to travel and dated to 1495 has been attributed to Francesco di Giorgio Martini. This one features in the film, 12 Monkeys and the video game, Assasins Creed 2.
Leonardo Da Vinci
One of the three greatest artists of the Renaissance came next. Transcending their art, place and time to become universal examples of greatness and genius.
The first one was the Polymath, Lionardo di Ser Piero Da Vinci, or to us, Leonardo Da Vinci. (1452-1519) His fields of expertise included invention, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time, despite only 15 of his paintings having survived.
Born to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and Caterina, in Vinci, in the region of Florence, Italy, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Italian painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan, and he later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice. He spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519.
Leonardo is renowned primarily as a painter. The Mona Lisa is the most famous of his works and the most popular portrait ever made.
The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is regarded as a cultural icon as well. Salvator Mundi was sold for a world record $450.3 million at a Christie's auction in New York, 15 November 2017, the highest price ever paid for a work of art.
Leonardo's paintings and preparatory drawings, together with his notebooks, which contain sketches, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary Michelangelo.
Although he had no formal academic training, many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the "Universal Genius" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination." He is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote. Scholars interpret his view of the world as being based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his time.
Two of my favorites are in the Ufizzi, the Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation. He also left us with hundreds of drawings, notes and letters, another favourite of mine is the ‘cartoon’ or preparatory drawing for the Virgin and child with Saint Anne and John the Baptist in the National Gallery in London.
Pienza - A Renaissance city
Pienza is an “Ideal City", built mostly from 1459 to 1462, to plans by Bernardo Rossellino. It’s a very small city in the Val d'Orcia region of Tuscany, close to San Quirico, Montalcino and Montepulciano.
In the Middle Ages, the village became a fiefdom of the Piccolomini family. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II, was born there in 1405. A formidable scholar, writer and patron of the arts, once he became Pope, he proceeded to turn his village of origin into a "città ideale" in the new Renaissance spirit. The Florentine architect Bernardo Rossellino, a student of Leon Battista Alberti, was hired to come up with a harmonious master plan and designs for the main buildings, mainly the church and a number of palazzi. The village, which had hitherto been called Corsignano, was then renamed "Pienza": The city of Pius.
Pienza was the first of a number of humanist urbanism projects, and inspired many Renaissance architects and urbanists.
The main piazza is now a major tourist attraction, as it allows you to feel as if you were standing in the middle of one of those well-known "città ideale" vedutas. The Duomo is a gem, one of the most beautiful examples of humanist architecture. The interior is a wonderful mixture of late Gothic and early Renaissance elements.
In 1996, UNESCO declared the town a World Heritage Site, and in 2004 the entire valley, the Val d'Orcia, was included on the list of UNESCO's World Cultural Landscapes.
History
Before the village was renamed to Pienza its name was Corsignano. It is first mentioned in documents from the 9th century. Around 1300 parts of the village became property of the Piccolomini family after Enghelberto d'Ugo Piccolomini had received the fief of Montertari in Val d'Orcia from the emperor Frederick II in 1220. In the 13th century Franciscans settled down in Corsignano.
In 1405 Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was born in Corsignano, a Renaissance humanist born into an exiled Sienese family, who later became Pope Pius II. Once he became Pope, Piccolomini had the entire village rebuilt as an ideal Renaissance town and renamed it after himself to Pienza which mean "city of Pius". Intended as a retreat from Rome, it represents the first application of humanist urban planning concepts, creating an impetus for planning that was adopted in other Italian towns and cities and eventually spread to other European centers.
The second of the three geniuses is my personal favourite, Michelangelo di Lodovico di Buonarotti Simoni, known to the world as Michelangelo (1475-1564).
Was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. His artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival, the fellow Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci. Several scholars have described Michelangelo as the greatest artist of his age and even as the greatest artist of all time.
He was born in Caprese, actually in the province of Arezzo, although his family moved to Florence almost immediately to the small town of Settignano, famous for its stonecutters, who Michelangelo claimed gave him his sculptural inspiration. In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one" His contemporaries often admired his terribilità, his ability to instil a sense of awe. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned, highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
It seemed he was born to sculpt and in fact painting was just an unwanted distraction to him. Ironic for the person responsible for arguably the greatest fresco painting of all time, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The output of his work was prodigious. He was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, a famous artist in his own right at age 13 and at 14 went to live with Lorenzo de’ Medici in his newly formed sculpture garden where he produced many small sculptural works.
At 21 years old he carved a series of masterpieces starting with Bacchus a marble sculpture. The statue is somewhat over life-size and depicts Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness. Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario’s banker and a friend to Michelangelo. It is now in the Bargello in Florence.
In 1492 his protectorate Lorenzo de’Medici died and two years later the Medici were expelled from Florence. Michelangelo left Florence too first going to Bologna and then in November 1497 to Rome. Where he was commissioned to carve a Pietà, a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of Medieval Northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal. The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion. It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh." It is now located in St Peter's Basilica.
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499 and was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of David, in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square.
Michelangelo's David has become one of the most recognized works of Renaissance sculpture, a symbol of strength and youthful beauty. The colossal size of the statue alone impressed Michelangelo's contemporaries. Vasari described it as "certainly a miracle that of Michelangelo, to restore to life one who was dead," and then listed all of the largest and most grand of the ancient statues that he had ever seen, concluding that Michelangelo's work surpassed "all ancient and modern statues, whether Greek or Latin, that have ever existed."
After the failed ‘Battle of Cascina’ fresco competition with Leonardo for the Palazzo Vecchio he was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a "Holy Family" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the Doni Tondo and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery.
In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years. Under the patronage of the pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks.
Once such ‘interruption’ was a commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which was to take four years to complete (1508–1512). According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St. Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament. Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Cumaean Sibyl.
Of course the fresco has been synonymous with decorating, with many a reference to any challenging job of considerable size with “well it’s difficult, but it’s not the Sistine Chapel!”
And millions have come and marveled and left quotes, here are two:
“This work has been and truly is a beacon of our art, and it has brought such benefit and enlightenment to the art of painting that it was sufficient to illuminate a world which for so many hundreds of years had remained in the state of darkness. And, to tell the truth, anyone who is a painter no longer needs to concern himself about seeing innovations and inventions, new ways of painting poses, clothing on figures, and various awe-inspiring details, for Michelangelo gave to this work all the perfection that can be given to such details.”
Giorgio Vasari
“Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving.”
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 23 August 1787
Afterwards his attention was turned back to the Julius tomb. Although Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516.
Of the other statues intended for the tomb, such as the slaves or prisoners and the Genius of Victory are in Florence and the two known as the Rebellious Slave and the Dying Slave, are now in the Louvre.
Michelangelo was to go on to carve the Medici tombs and Laurentian Library in Florence, fresco the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, design the Campidoglio and Dome of St Peter’s in Rome as well as a handful of sculptures and other projects until his death at 89 years old, but these works were to be created in the new Mannerist style.
The next great painter hailed from Venice. Giorgione, born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (1477/78–1510). Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are firmly attributed to him and he died during the plague, while he was still young. The uncertainty surrounding the identity and meaning of his work has made Giorgione one of the most mysterious figures in European art.
Together with Titian, who was slightly younger, he founded the distinctive Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painting, which achieves much of its effect through colour and mood, and is traditionally contrasted with Florentine painting, which relies on a more linear disegno-led style.
His masterpiece was The Tempest, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, it has been called the first Landscape painting in Western art. It depicts a soldier and breast feeding woman and is in Venice in the Accademia.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, (1483-1520)
Known as just Raphael, was a painter and architect and considered to be the third greatest artist of the Renaissance, after Michelangelo and Leonardo. He was born in Urbino and despite only living 37 years left quite a body of exceptional work and even spawned a new art movement, the. Pre-Raphaelites. He was orphaned at 11 and apprenticed to Perugino, where he developed a similar style of painting. Here he created the Wedding of the Virgin altarpiece, now in the Brera Milan. He moved on to Florence where he met and was inspired by Leonardo’s three quarter length female portraits including the Mona Lisa. In fact it was here he produced the Madonna of the Meadow and Madonna of the Golfinch both in a pyramidal composition. As well as his St Catherine inspired by Leonardo’s now lost Leda and the Swan.
He then moved on to Rome where he carried out his masterpiece, School of Athens fresco alongside Parnassus and the Disputation in the Vatican.
His later works cemented his place as one of the true masters of the Renaissance, with the Sistine Madonna (1512) and those angels, now in Dresden and the Triumph of Galatea (1515) with the flying Cupids in the Villa Farnesina, two of the last great paintings of the Renaissance.
His last work, the Transfiguration (1520) in the Vatican (considered one of the first great paintings of the Mannerism movement). Raphael died in 1520, the date that the Renaissance ended.
The last great artist of the Renaissance was Tiziano Vercelli, or Titian (1485-1576) He came from the small town of Pieve di Cadore, Belluno near Venice. At around 10-12 years old he and his brother were sent to stay with an uncle in Venice and apprenticed to Giovanni Bellini.
Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, exercised a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.
His career was successful from the start, and he became sought after by patrons, initially from Venice and its possessions, then joined by the north Italian princes, and finally the Habsburgs and papacy. Along with Giorgione, he is considered a founder of the Venetian School of Italian Renaissance painting.
He produced several portraits and then became assistant to Giorgione. After the death of Bellini and then Giorgione, Titian was left as the unrivaled master in Venice. Masterpieces started to come in 1515 with five idealized women, including Flora and then from 1515-1528 with the Assumption of the Virgin and the Pesaro Madonna in the Frari church in Venice.
During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically, but he retained a lifelong interest in colour. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone were without precedent in the history of Western painting.
One of his most famous canvases, Bacchus and Ariadne 1520-23 (actually part of a cycle of paintings) is now in the National Gallery in London. It depicts Theseus leaving Ariadne on the island of Naxos and Bacchus arriving and raising her to heaven. The canvas could be considered the last great painting of the Renaissance. Even if Titian continued, here is where the Renaissance ends.
And so in 1520, the year that the 37-year-old Raphael died and 1 year after the death of Leonardo, the Renaissance had reached its apex, there was nothing else to prove or say. Michelangelo was still 45 years old, Titian 35 and there were a group of young artists, eager to emulate their heroes and make a name for themselves and so a new art movement was born, Mannerism.
Pisano
It was the sculptor Nicola Pisano (1220-1284) who was credited with being the founder of modern sculpture. His work is to be found on the castle in Prato, San Martino in Lucca and the baptistery in Pisa. He then worked with sculptor and architect Arnolfo di Cambio on the pulpit of the cathedral in Siena. Pisano was influenced by the works of classical antiquity and somewhat attached to the constraints of gothic art, his work nonetheless is original and unique and became the precursor to Renaissance sculpture. In fact most sources give the date that begins the Renaissance as 1260, the date Pisano created his masterpiece, the pulpit in Pisa.
The pulpit, which sits on six columns, some resting on lions, with its five panels carved in white Carrara marble tells the life of Christ. The figures wear Roman style tunics and show regal, godlike qualities, clearly inspired by the Arch of Constantine in Rome.
Here begins the Renaissance.
Cimabue
The artist who had the ability to represent these Renaissance ideas was Cimabue (1240-1302), he liked to sketch and used to go and watch some of the Greek artists who had been brought over to Florence. He soon broke with the crude, stiff, mosaic-like paintings which were covered in heavy outlines. His style was more realistic, with softer curves and flowing garments and draperies.
His masterpiece was the wooden Crucifix, which is now in the Santa Croce museum, executed around 1265 and painted in distemper. The work was commissioned by the Franciscan friars of Santa Croce and is built from a complex arrangement of five main and eight ancillary timber boards. It is one of the first Italian artworks to break from the late medieval Byzantine style and is renowned for its technical innovations and humanistic iconography. The gilding and monumentality of the cross link it to the Byzantine tradition. Christ's static pose is reflective of this style, while the overall work incorporates newer, more naturalistic aspects. The work presents a lifelike and physically imposing depiction of the passion at Calvary. Christ is shown nearly naked, his eyes are closed, his face lifeless and defeated. His body slumps in a position contorted by prolonged agony. A graphic portrayal of human suffering, the painting is of seminal importance in art history and has influenced painters from Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Velázquez to Francis Bacon. The work was in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence from the late thirteenth century, and at the Museo dell'Opera Santa Croce since its restoration following the flood of the Arno in 1966. It remains in poor condition despite conservation.
Arnolfo di Cambio
“Man is the measure of all things."
Protagoras
Nicola Pisano’s chief assistant was Arnolfo di Cambio (1240-1300/10) born in Colle Val d’Elsa in the province of Siena. He was a sculptor and architect and worked with him on the pulpit of the Cathedral in Siena. He then went to Rome to sculpt many projects for King Charles I of Anjou and others, including a rare seated bronze of St Peter which is now in St Peters basilica and was influenced by the Byzantine and Medieval Cosmatesque art.
He then returned to Florence In 1294 where was responsible for designing the Palazzo Vecchio as well as Santa Croce and Santa Maria del Fiore.
(both pictured here as they would have been without their façades for hundreds of years).
He also provided statues for the Cathedral, the originals which are today to be found in the museum of the Cathedral works. His work owed more to the Gothic style than the Renaissance, but his creations left us with these eternal masterpieces and his place in the beginnings of the Renaissance is unquestioned.
The Poet - Dante
“Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri, born in Florence (1265-1321) is one of the most famous poets of all time. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered the most important poem of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
In the Late Middle Ages, most poetry was written in Latin, making it accessible only to the most educated readers. However, Dante defended the use of the vernacular in literature. He would even write in the Tuscan dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and the Divine Comedy; this highly unorthodox choice set a precedent that important later Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would follow.
Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art. He is cited as an influence on John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alfred Tennyson, among many others. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, or the terza rima, is attributed to him. He is described as the "father" of the Italian language
Dante made significant contributions to the early Renaissance and many of his ideas and themes were developed by later writers, artists, and thinkers. Dante contributed to the development of humanism, the use of the vernacular in literature and challenged the hegemonic nature of the Church and these helped to generate the cultural and intellectual changes known as the Renaissance, which transformed the world forever.
Giotto
“Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour.’ Giotto di Bondone
It was while out walking in the countryside that Cimabue noticed a young boy sketching sheep on a rock. He took the boy on as his apprentice. On one occasion when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, Giotto painted a remarkably lifelike fly on a face in a painting of Cimabue. When Cimabue returned, he tried several times to brush the fly off. With his natural talent for drawing, that boy was Giotto (1266-1337), the artist would eclipse his master and go on to take painting out of the dark ages. Giotto, with his ability to show feelings and emotion left absolute masterpieces of the fresco technique in Florence, Assisi and Padova (the Scrovegni chapel). Artists flocked to admire his work and today the whole world comes to admire them.
Giovanni Boccaccio, a friend of Giotto, said of him that "there was no uglier man in the city of Florence" and indicates that his children were also plain in appearance. There is a story that Dante visited Giotto while he was painting the Scrovegni Chapel and, seeing the artist's children underfoot asked how a man who painted such beautiful pictures could have such plain children. Giotto, who, according to Vasari was always a wit, replied, "I make my pictures by day, and my babies by night."
Boccacio also gave Giotto a mention in the Decameron;: “…Giotto brought back to light an art which had been buried for centuries…So faithful did he remain to Nature…that whatever he depicted had the appearance, not of a reproduction, but of the thing itself, so that one very often finds, with the works of Giotto, that people’s eyes are deceived and they mistake the picture for the real thing.”
Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron VI, 5
Giotto also got a mention in Dante’s Divine Comedy:
“O empty glorying in human power! How short a day the crown remains in leaf, If it’s not followed by a duller age! In painting it was Cimabue’s belief He held the field; now Giotto’s got the cry and Cimabue’s fame is dim…”
Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Canto XI, lines 91–95
Petrarch
“And what is the use of knowing many things if, when you have learned the dimensions of heaven and earth, the measure of the seas, the courses of stars, the virtues of plants and stones, the secrets of nature, you still don’t know yourself?”
Francesco Petrarca
It was a contemporary of Giotto, the scholar and poet, Francesco Petrarch (1307-1374) who furthered the philosophy of Renaissance ideals. He proposed a return to classical writers in a search for truth and found in the works of Cicero and Plutarch, models on which he believed people could base their lives on.
Siena
At this point a passing mention must go to the Sienese school of painting that flourished between the 13th and 15th century, spawning dozens of important artists such as Duccio, Lippo Memmi, Becafumi, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers- Ambrogio and Pietro. A couple of frescoes I wanted to include, from the Palazzo Publicco in Siena, are the Allegory of good and bad government carried out by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338
and the Guidoriccio di Fogliano fresco on the Sala del mappa mondo western wall.
From 1347-1351 the bubonic plague struck Europe killing between 75-200 million people.
Paolo Ucello
It took another 60 years before Paolo Ucello (1397-1475) would come and further the ideals of the Renaissance and carry the torch that Giotto had lit. Ucello made use of space in his backgrounds and packed lots of action into them, whereas medieval artists used plain backgrounds because they hadn't learned how to make that space look realistic, their work was flat and compositions awkward. Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his study trying to grasp the exact vanishing point. While his contemporaries used perspective to narrate different or succeeding stories, Uccello used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. His best known works are the three paintings representing the battle of San Romano..
Today one is in the Uffizi in Florence, one in the Louvre in Paris and the third in the National Gallery in London.
Two other impressive paintings are the hunt in the forest, showing people, horses, deer and dogs disappearing into the background, which was revolutionary for its time and is in the Ashmoleon in Oxford, and George and the dragon also in the National Gallery in London. It even has a poem dedicated to it.
Not my Best Side
U. A. Fanthorpe
Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.
Ghiberti
‘The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.’ Michelangelo
Someone who aimed very high was Lorenzo Ghibertii (1378 – 1455) a Florentine artist of the Early Renaissance best known as the creator of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery. He trained as a goldsmith and sculptor and established an important workshop for sculpture in metal. Ghiberti gave volume and depth to his sculpture and was interested in the harmony of composition and the theoretical use of perspective.
Andrea Pisano had been awarded the commission, as recommended by Giotto, to design the first set of doors fair the Florence baptistery in 1329. The south doors were originally installed on the east side, facing the Duomo.
In 1401, a competition was announced by the Cloth Importers Guild to design a second set of doors, with twenty eight panels which would eventually be placed on the north side of the baptistery. Lorenzo Ghiberti won the competition to cast the doors. his panel depicting the sacrifice of Isaac winning out in the final round against Brunelleschi. It took Ghiberti 21 years to complete these doors.
Ghiberti was now widely recognized as a celebrity and the top artist in this field. He was showered with commissions, even from the pope. In 1425 he got a second commission, this time for a third set of doors for the baptistery, on which he toiled for 27 years. These had ten panels depicting scenes from the Old Testament, and were in turn installed on the east side. It was these doors that Michelangelo christened ‘the gates of Paradise.’ Today all three sets of doors have been replaced with copies and you can see the originals inside the museum of the cathedral works behind the Dome.
It was then, around 1420 that the floodgates opened and the quality of work was turned up a notch , with the arrival of three giants of the still early Renaissance.
The Architect - Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture, was a Florentine architect and designer and now recognised to be the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor. Brunelleschi rediscovered the antique methods of Marco Vitruvius and together with Masaccio is credited with the discovery of perspective in art. Brunelleschi applied these classical rules to Renaissance ideals and created completely original buildings that were beautiful in their simplicity.
The hospital of the innocents, the Pazzi chapel, Santo Spirito, San Lorenzo and his crowning glory, the creation of the self-supporting cupola of the Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, a feat of engineering that had not been accomplished since antiquity.
Construction on the cathedral had begun in 1296, but after its original architect was unable to come up with a way to construct a dome over the cathedral’s massive nave, the building had remained unfinished for nearly a century. In 1418 the group in charge of the construction of the cathedral announced that they were accepting ideas for how to design the dome. Filippo submitted his name to be included and then issued a challenge, saying that the commission to build the dome should be given to the man who could make an egg stand on end, as that man would have the skills required for the job. After the various architects tried in vain, Filippo took an egg, whacked it on its end and then placed it on the table where it stood upright and did not fall over. The other architects protested that they could have done that, too, to which Filippo replied that they could have built the dome, too, had they seen his model. Impressed, the judges awarded Filippo the commission to construct the dome. The dome was completed in 16 years and even today is still the largest dome ever created with bricks and masonry.
The Sculptor - Donatello
Donatello (1386 – 1466) was born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used this to develop a complete Renaissance style in sculpture. He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco and wax. Though his best-known works were mostly statues in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was larger architectural reliefs. He studied under Ghiberti and assisted him in creating sculptures for the Baptistry before embarking on a series of sculptures for the Orsanmichele niches.
Made around 1460, it is certain that Cosimo de' Medici, the foremost art patron of his era, commissioned from Donatello the bronze David (now in the Bargello) for the court of his Palazzo Medici. This is now Donatello's most famous work, and the first known free-standing nude statue produced since antiquity. Conceived fully in the round, independent of any architectural surroundings, and largely representing an allegory of the civic virtues triumphing over brutality and irrationality, it is arguably the first major work of Renaissance sculpture.
The Painter - Masaccio
Masaccio (1401 – 1428) was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He employed nudes and foreshortenings in his figures. This had seldom been done before him.
Despite his brief career, he had a profound influence on other artists. He was one of the first to use linear perspective in his painting, employing techniques such as vanishing point in art for the first time. He moved away from the International Gothic style and elaborate ornamentation to a more naturalistic mode that employed perspective and chiaroscuro for greater realism.
The Brancacci Chapel
In 1424, Masaccio and Masolino were commissioned by the powerful and wealthy Felice Brancacci to execute a cycle of frescoes for the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Painting began around 1425, but for unknown reasons the chapel was left unfinished, and was completed by Filippino Lippi in the 1480s. The majority of the frescoes represent the life of St. Peter, two scenes, on either side of the threshold of the chapel space, depict the temptation and expulsion of Adam and Eve. As a whole, the frescoes recount the life of St Peter as if it were the story of salvation. The style of Masaccio's scenes shows the influence of Giotto especially. Figures are large, heavy, and solid; emotions are expressed through faces and gestures; and there is a strong impression of naturalism throughout the paintings. Unlike Giotto, however, Masaccio uses linear and atmospheric perspective, directional light, and chiaroscuro, which is the representation of form through light and color without outlines. As a result, his frescoes are even more convincingly lifelike than those of his trecento predecessors. His masterpiece in the Brancacci chapel became a kind of school where many future masters, including Michelangelo, would come and see.
Alberti
“Beauty: the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.”
Leon Battista Alberti
Out of this explosion of creativity came the most influential writer of the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Alberti, who was also an author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer; he epitomised, wrote that 'the artist should make nature his model and humans were central to nature as its most perfect creation. Therefore the soul was the source of movement and the language of the soul.
His ten books on painting and architecture proved to be a kind of manual to artists. He applied the rules of perspective from painting to his buildings, such as Santa Maria Novella, the Palazzo Rucellai and Sant' Andrea in Mantova and the Tempio Malatestiano and San Sebastiano in Rimini, where he united Christian and pagan styles, proportion based on geometry and arithmetic. To Alberti, art was an intellectual activity and it is no surprise that he came to be known as 'the Renaissance man.’ He claimed he that he could jump, with his feet tied together over a grown man. This fact was recounted in the 1994 film Renaissance Man, starring Danny Devito.
The Plato 4
Nothing symbolized this intellectual approach to art more than a group of men known as 'the Platonic Academy'. They were, amongst others, doctor and scientist, Marsilio Ficino, scholar, Angelo Poliziano, linguist, Pico di Mirandola and lecturer, Cristoforo Landino.
This group met to discuss and further Renaissance ideals at the house, or mansion, of Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492), Lorenzo would provide not only the funds and commissions for new works of art, but the love and imagination for art that would move the artist out of the perception of craftsman and into the realm of superstar. In fact it was Lorenzo who recognized the potential of the young Michelangelo and invited him to live in his household for four years.
Lorenzo the Magnificent
In the twenty-three years of his reign as head of the regional state, he raised Florence to the status of cultural capital of Europe. Between 1469 and 1492 he created a climate in which art could flourish and would produce a group of artists and artworks over the following 50 years, enough to convince anyone that in no other time in history has there every been such a period of creativity and invention in the arts:
There were obviously hundreds of very good artists that followed, here are the most famous and some of their masterpieces..
Fra Angelico
Guido di Pietro, or Fra Angelico or Beato Angelico as he was more commonly known lived from 1395 to 1455. He was a painter of frescoes and altar pieces of a religious nature. He left us wonderful annunciations, depositions, coronations and the lovely San Marco frescoes.
He painted in a light, sweet style with lots of pinks and blues and gossamer gold and we can see his understanding of linear perspective. He was described by Vasari as having "a rare and perfect talent, it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety.
He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made in each individual cell for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence.
In 1982 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
Luca della Robbia
Luca della Robbia (1400-1482) was a Florentine sculptor noted for his unique colorful, tin-glazed terracotta statuary. Though a leading sculptor in stone, he worked primarily in terracotta after developing his technique in the early 1440s. His large workshop produced both cheaper works cast from molds in multiple versions, and more expensive one-off individually modeled pieces.
The vibrant, polychrome glazes made his creations both more durable and expressive. His creations are noted for their charm rather than the drama of the work of some of his contemporaries. Two of his famous pieces are The Nativity and Madonna and Child. In stone his most famous work was also his first major commission, the choir gallery, Cantoria in the Florence Cathedral.
The Singing Gallery shows children singing, dancing, and making music to "praise the Lord" in the words of Psalm 150. Their figures are at once lively, finely observed, and gracefully combined in groups designed to fit the ten panels of the gallery. The advanced nature of the work established Luca della Robbia's skill in stone as well as secure his place as a major Florentine artist and student of Renaissance naturalism.
When he died he passed on his skills to his nephew, Andrea.
Filippo Lippi
As a young boy, Fra’ Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) would watch Masaccio paint and was inspired to become an artist. His parents died when he was a small child and he was brought up in the local Carmelite convent.
Again his paintings were religious, including the famous Madonna and Child with two angels in the Uffizi as well as Annunciations and Coronations.
He painted frescoes of St John and St Stephen in Prato Cathedral including Herod’s banquet and a dancing Salome. You can also see his works all around Italy as well as New York Washington, London, Paris, Munich and Berlin.
Filippino Lippi
He left a son, Filippino Lippi who was an important painter too. Filippino studied under Boticelli and assisted with many frescoes, even finishing the Brancacci Chapel.
Piero della Francesca
A very popular artist was Piero di Benedetto (1425-1492) born in San Sepolcro in the province of Arezzo. His father died before he was born and so he was called Piero della Francesca after his mother. He was an Italian painter, mathematician and geometer, known for his humanism, geometric forms and perspective.
His early work included the famous Baptism of Christ now in the National Gallery London, the Resurrection in Sansepolcro, the Madonna del Parto in Monterchi and the the Flagellation, which is considered one of the most famous and controversial pictures of the early Renaissance. It is marked by an air of geometric sobriety, in addition to presenting a perplexing enigma as to the nature of the three men standing at the foreground.
Another famous work painted in Urbino is the Double Portrait of Federico and his wife Battista Sforza, in the Uffizi. The portraits in profile take their inspiration from large bronze medals and stucco roundels with the official portraits of Fedederico and his wife.
In 1452 he was called to Arezzo to complete what would become his great Fresco cycle and one of the masterpieces of the a Renaissance, the History of the true cross, in the basilica of San Francesco .
Piero was commissioned to paint the Resurrection fresco in 1460 in San Sepolcro. Placed high on the interior wall facing the entrance, Jesus is in the centre of the composition, portrayed in the moment of his resurrection, as suggested by the position of the leg on the parapet of his tomb, which Piero renders as a classical sarcophagus. His stern, impassive figure, depicted in an iconic and abstract fixity rises over four sleeping soldiers. Christ's body is as perfectly sculpted and as blemish-free as that of an antique statue. But there are touches of intense humanity about him too: the unidealised, almost coarse-featured face. Piero emphasises his twofold nature, as both man and God. The guard holding the lance is depicted sitting in an anatomically impossible pose, and appears to have no legs. Piero probably left them out so as not to break the balance of the composition. The sleeping soldier in brown armor on Christ's right is a self-portrait of Piero.
Sansepolcro was spared much damage during World War 2 when British artillery officer Tony Clarke defied orders and held back from using his troop's guns to shell the town. Although Clarke had never seen the fresco, his diary records his shock at the destruction in Monte Cassino and, apparently remembering where he had read of Sansepolcro, ordered his men to hold fire just as methodical shelling had begun. Clarke had read Aldous Huxley's 1925 essay describing the Resurrection, which states: "It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world." Piero died in 1492
Mantegna
From the north of Italy came Mantegna (1431-1506) He was born near Padua and was a painter and a student of Roman archeology. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality. His flinty, metallic landscapes and somewhat stony figures give evidence of a fundamentally sculptural approach to painting. He was apprenticed to the famous Francesco Squarcione school at 11 years old.
One of his great early works, a fresco in Sant Agostino in Padova was almost entirely lost in the allied bombings there in 1944. The fresco cycle included the incredible and unusual worm-eye-view ‘James led to his execution.’
He married Giovanni Bellini’s sister and was inspired by a drawing of his father-in-law, Jacopo Bellini to paint the Agony in the garden, now in the National Gallery in London.
In Mantova the Gonzaga family had him paint the ceiling fresco in the ‘Camera degli Sposi’ or Wedding Chamber.
In Rome he continued work on a series of large panels entitled ‘Triumph of the Caesar’ which was sold to English king, Charles I and ended up in Hampton Court Palace near London.
In his later years he painted three Saint Sebastians and the dead Christ in Milan, displaying his incredible knowledge of foreshortening.
Vercocchio
Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni, better known as Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) was master of a workshop in Florence. His pupils included Leonardo Da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi.
As well as teaching, he produced some noteworthy pieces. Few paintings have been attributed to him, but they are very beautiful and include the Virgin and cold with two angels, in the National Gallery in London and the Madonna with seated child (pictured here, now in Berlin)
The Baptism of Christ, now in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, was painted in 1474–75. In this work Verrocchio was assisted by Leonardo da Vinci, then a youth and a member of his workshop, who painted the angel on the left and the part of the background above. According to Vasari, Andrea resolved never to touch the brush again because Leonardo, his pupil, had far surpassed him.
In 1467 he was commissioned to cast a bronze group portraying Christ and St. Thomas for the centre tabernacle, on the east facade of Orsanmichele. The work was placed in position in 1483 and has been acclaimed since the day of its unveiling and almost without exception recognised as a masterpiece.
Also in 1468 he was contracted to make a golden ball to be placed on top of the lantern of Brunelleschi's cupola on the Duomo in Florence. The ball was ingeniously made of sheets of copper soldered together and hammered into shape and then gilded. The ball was struck by lightning and fell in 1601 but was reconstructed in 1602.
A bronze statue of David was commissioned by Piero de'Medici. It is now at the Bargello in Florence. Verrocchio's David is a young lad, modestly clad, contrasting with Donatello's provocative David. For this figure, the Master is purported to have used the young Leonardo, a newcomer to his workshop, as his model.
In around 1470 he finished in bronze a Putto (winged boy) with Dolphin, originally intended for a fountain in the Medici villa of Careggi and later brought to Florence for a fountain and since 1959 has been kept in a room in the Palazzo Vecchio.
Also in 1468 he was contracted to make a golden ball to be placed on top of the lantern of Brunelleschi's cupola on the Duomo in Florence. The ball was ingeniously made of sheets of copper soldered together and hammered into shape and then gilded. The ball was struck by lightning and fell in 1601 but was reconstructed in 1602.
In 1475 the Condottiero Colleoni, a former Captain General of the Republic of Venice, died and by his will left a substantial part of his estate to the Republic on condition that a statue of himself should be commissioned and set up in the Piazza San Marco. A competition was arranged Verrocchio won and the contract was awarded to him. He then opened a workshop in Venice and made the final clay model, but died in 1488. The statue was eventually made by Alessandro Leopardi in the Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, where it stands today and is a fitting last tribute to Verrocchio’s
“the magnificent sense of movement in this figure is shown to superb advantage in its present setting and that, as sculpture, it far surpasses anything the century had yet aspired to or thought possible. Both man and horse are equally fine and together are inseparable parts of the sculpture.”
Bramante
The artist who introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and Rome was Donato Agnuolo or Donato di Pasuccio d’Antonio, better known to us as Donato Bramante (1444-1514) born in Urbino. In Milan he became the court architect to Ludovico Sforza. In Rome Pope Julius II recognized his skill and commissioned him for the first design of St Peters (that was eventually taken over and changed by Michelangelo)
He was also responsible for one of the Renaissance’s greatest buildings (and one of my favourites) the Tempietto in San Pietro in Montorio.
Boticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, or Sandro Boticelli, (meaning little barrel) as we know him (1445-1510) born in Borgo Ognissanti in Florence, was one of the most loved painters of the Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his as a "golden age".
He was apprenticed to Filippo Lippi and one of his early works were seven panels representing the seven Virtues. He then painted his celebrated adoration of the Magi (including portraits of the Medici family and even a self-portrait) for Santa Maria Novella, which is now in the Ufizzi and Madonna of the lillies, now in Berlin.
After working on frescoes in the Sistine Chapel he returned to Florence to create his two masterpieces and two of the greatest Renaissance paintings, the Birth of Venus and Primavera, both in the Ufizzi in Florence. As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity. Both of these paintings, along with Venus and Mars (in the National Gallery in London) and the less well known, Pallas and the Centaur, were based on mythological themes. They show the influence of Neo-Platonism and humanist ideals expounded by the ‘Plato Four’ and Lorenzo dei Medici.
By the 1490s his style became more personal and to some extent mannered, and he could be seen as moving in a direction opposite to that of Leonardo da Vinci (seven years his junior) and a new generation of painters creating the High Renaissance style as Botticelli returned in some ways to the Gothic style.
He painted several altarpieces as he returned to more religious themes and also many Madonna and child Tondos.
Botticelli's Virgins are always beautiful, in the same idealized way as his mythological figures, and often richly dressed in contemporary style. Something that caught the eye of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (one cannot have a discussion about the Renaissance without giving the ‘mad monk’ a mention!) Although Savonarola's main strictures were against secular art, he also complained of the paintings in Florentine churches that "You have made the Virgin appear dressed as a whore", which may have had an effect on Botticelli's style. They are often accompanied by equally beautiful angels, or an infant Saint John the Baptist (the patron saint of Florence). Some feature flowers, and none the detailed landscape backgrounds that other artists were developing.
According to Vasari, Botticelli became a follower of the deeply moralistic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who preached in Florence from 1490 until his execution in 1498.
Boticelli then attempted to illustrate Dante’s Divine Commedy with only some drawings completed.
Vasari tells us about his last years.
“Botticelli was a follower of Savonarola's, and this was why he gave up painting and then fell into considerable distress as he had no other source of income. None the less, he remained an obstinate member of the sect, becoming one of the piagnoni, the snivellers, as they were called then, and abandoning his work; so finally, as an old man, he found himself so poor that if Lorenzo de' Medici and then his friends and others had not come to his assistance, he would have almost died of hunger.”
Perugino
Pietro Vannucci, better known as Perugino (1446/52 - 1523) was born in Città delle Pieve, Umbria. His origins, family status and birthdate are unsure, but judging from his nickname, Perugino, we can deduce that he was probably studying painting in the local workshops in Perugia. He eventually made his way to Florence where he became one of the earliest proponents of oil painting. In 1480 he was called to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to paint frescoes on the walls of the Sistine chapel, which he did assisted by Pinturricchio.
His Christ giving the keys to St Peter, being the most well-known. He then worked mostly in Florence. A young Raphael was placed under his tutelage. I’m not a great fan of his works, but his place among the most famous Renaissance artists is indisputable.(although when Michelangelo met him he called him a ‘bungler in art’, so he wasn’t impressed either!) He painted many alter pieces and religious themed pieces, but also some nice portraits.
Perugino, put into words what was to follow him.
"We shall see all things infinitely improved, compositions with many more figures, richer ornamentation and design that is better grounded and more true to life. The style, the colours more delicate, so that the arts will be close to perfection and to the exact imitation of the truth of nature."
The Procession of the Magi
Three frescoes that must be mentioned are very different subjects and styles. The first was commissioned by Cosimo de’Medici and carried out in 1459 by Florentine artist Benozzo Gozzoli, the procession of the Magi in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi.
It actually extends over three walls of the little chapel and shows the Magi on their journey to visit Jesus. A beautifully elaborate depiction also includes portraits of the Medici household and is a masterpiece well worth seeing when in Florence.
The Last Judgement
The second is Luca Signorelli’s (1450-1523) Last Judgement painted from 1499-1503 in the San Brizio Chapel in the Orvieto Cathedral, crowded with powerful nudes painted in many postures that accentuate their musculature, With green and purple devils…
Definitely providing inspiration for Michelangelo’s Mannerist version some 30 years later in the Sistine Chapel.
The Piccolomini Library
The third is Pinturicchio’s life of Pope Pius II in the Piccolomini library in the Cathedral in Siena executed between 1503-1508. Pinturicchio even included a portrait of himself and a young Raphael who assisted in the fresco cycle.
The ideal city
Another set of paintings dated to the end of the 15th century should also be mentioned. The ideal city is a set of three painted panels all of a similar size, each one depicted a slightly different impression of an idealized city, inspired by different architectural styles, thought to have been originally designed for Federico da Montefeltro of Urbino.
In fact the first one is still on display in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino and has been attributed to four different artists including Piero della Francesca.
The second panel now kept on display in Baltimore, USA, is thought to have been painted between 1480-1484 by Fra Carnevale. However the painting has also been attributed to Martini and refers to architectural themes proposed by Leon Battista Alberti. The structures resemble the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine and the Baptistry in Florence. The four virtues are represented on the four columns; Justice, Moderation, Liberality and Courage.
The third panel kept in Berlin, which is too delicate to travel and dated to 1495 has been attributed to Francesco di Giorgio Martini. This one features in the film, 12 Monkeys and the video game, Assasins Creed 2.
Leonardo Da Vinci
One of the three greatest artists of the Renaissance came next. Transcending their art, place and time to become universal examples of greatness and genius.
The first one was the Polymath, Lionardo di Ser Piero Da Vinci, or to us, Leonardo Da Vinci. (1452-1519) His fields of expertise included invention, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time, despite only 15 of his paintings having survived.
Born to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and Caterina, in Vinci, in the region of Florence, Italy, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Italian painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan, and he later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice. He spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519.
Leonardo is renowned primarily as a painter. The Mona Lisa is the most famous of his works and the most popular portrait ever made.
The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is regarded as a cultural icon as well. Salvator Mundi was sold for a world record $450.3 million at a Christie's auction in New York, 15 November 2017, the highest price ever paid for a work of art.
Leonardo's paintings and preparatory drawings, together with his notebooks, which contain sketches, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary Michelangelo.
Although he had no formal academic training, many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the "Universal Genius" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination." He is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote. Scholars interpret his view of the world as being based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his time.
Two of my favorites are in the Ufizzi, the Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation. He also left us with hundreds of drawings, notes and letters, another favourite of mine is the ‘cartoon’ or preparatory drawing for the Virgin and child with Saint Anne and John the Baptist in the National Gallery in London.
Pienza - A Renaissance city
Pienza is an “Ideal City", built mostly from 1459 to 1462, to plans by Bernardo Rossellino. It’s a very small city in the Val d'Orcia region of Tuscany, close to San Quirico, Montalcino and Montepulciano.
In the Middle Ages, the village became a fiefdom of the Piccolomini family. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II, was born there in 1405. A formidable scholar, writer and patron of the arts, once he became Pope, he proceeded to turn his village of origin into a "città ideale" in the new Renaissance spirit. The Florentine architect Bernardo Rossellino, a student of Leon Battista Alberti, was hired to come up with a harmonious master plan and designs for the main buildings, mainly the church and a number of palazzi. The village, which had hitherto been called Corsignano, was then renamed "Pienza": The city of Pius.
Pienza was the first of a number of humanist urbanism projects, and inspired many Renaissance architects and urbanists.
The main piazza is now a major tourist attraction, as it allows you to feel as if you were standing in the middle of one of those well-known "città ideale" vedutas. The Duomo is a gem, one of the most beautiful examples of humanist architecture. The interior is a wonderful mixture of late Gothic and early Renaissance elements.
In 1996, UNESCO declared the town a World Heritage Site, and in 2004 the entire valley, the Val d'Orcia, was included on the list of UNESCO's World Cultural Landscapes.
History
Before the village was renamed to Pienza its name was Corsignano. It is first mentioned in documents from the 9th century. Around 1300 parts of the village became property of the Piccolomini family after Enghelberto d'Ugo Piccolomini had received the fief of Montertari in Val d'Orcia from the emperor Frederick II in 1220. In the 13th century Franciscans settled down in Corsignano.
In 1405 Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was born in Corsignano, a Renaissance humanist born into an exiled Sienese family, who later became Pope Pius II. Once he became Pope, Piccolomini had the entire village rebuilt as an ideal Renaissance town and renamed it after himself to Pienza which mean "city of Pius". Intended as a retreat from Rome, it represents the first application of humanist urban planning concepts, creating an impetus for planning that was adopted in other Italian towns and cities and eventually spread to other European centers.
The second of the three geniuses is my personal favourite, Michelangelo di Lodovico di Buonarotti Simoni, known to the world as Michelangelo (1475-1564).
Was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. His artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival, the fellow Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci. Several scholars have described Michelangelo as the greatest artist of his age and even as the greatest artist of all time.
He was born in Caprese, actually in the province of Arezzo, although his family moved to Florence almost immediately to the small town of Settignano, famous for its stonecutters, who Michelangelo claimed gave him his sculptural inspiration. In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one" His contemporaries often admired his terribilità, his ability to instil a sense of awe. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned, highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
It seemed he was born to sculpt and in fact painting was just an unwanted distraction to him. Ironic for the person responsible for arguably the greatest fresco painting of all time, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The output of his work was prodigious. He was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, a famous artist in his own right at age 13 and at 14 went to live with Lorenzo de’ Medici in his newly formed sculpture garden where he produced many small sculptural works.
At 21 years old he carved a series of masterpieces starting with Bacchus a marble sculpture. The statue is somewhat over life-size and depicts Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness. Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario’s banker and a friend to Michelangelo. It is now in the Bargello in Florence.
In 1492 his protectorate Lorenzo de’Medici died and two years later the Medici were expelled from Florence. Michelangelo left Florence too first going to Bologna and then in November 1497 to Rome. Where he was commissioned to carve a Pietà, a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of Medieval Northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal. The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion. It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh." It is now located in St Peter's Basilica.
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499 and was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of David, in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square.
Michelangelo's David has become one of the most recognized works of Renaissance sculpture, a symbol of strength and youthful beauty. The colossal size of the statue alone impressed Michelangelo's contemporaries. Vasari described it as "certainly a miracle that of Michelangelo, to restore to life one who was dead," and then listed all of the largest and most grand of the ancient statues that he had ever seen, concluding that Michelangelo's work surpassed "all ancient and modern statues, whether Greek or Latin, that have ever existed."
After the failed ‘Battle of Cascina’ fresco competition with Leonardo for the Palazzo Vecchio he was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a "Holy Family" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the Doni Tondo and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery.
In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years. Under the patronage of the pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks.
Once such ‘interruption’ was a commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which was to take four years to complete (1508–1512). According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St. Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament. Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Cumaean Sibyl.
Of course the fresco has been synonymous with decorating, with many a reference to any challenging job of considerable size with “well it’s difficult, but it’s not the Sistine Chapel!”
And millions have come and marveled and left quotes, here are two:
“This work has been and truly is a beacon of our art, and it has brought such benefit and enlightenment to the art of painting that it was sufficient to illuminate a world which for so many hundreds of years had remained in the state of darkness. And, to tell the truth, anyone who is a painter no longer needs to concern himself about seeing innovations and inventions, new ways of painting poses, clothing on figures, and various awe-inspiring details, for Michelangelo gave to this work all the perfection that can be given to such details.”
Giorgio Vasari
“Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving.”
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 23 August 1787
Afterwards his attention was turned back to the Julius tomb. Although Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516.
Of the other statues intended for the tomb, such as the slaves or prisoners and the Genius of Victory are in Florence and the two known as the Rebellious Slave and the Dying Slave, are now in the Louvre.
Michelangelo was to go on to carve the Medici tombs and Laurentian Library in Florence, fresco the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, design the Campidoglio and Dome of St Peter’s in Rome as well as a handful of sculptures and other projects until his death at 89 years old, but these works were to be created in the new Mannerist style.
The next great painter hailed from Venice. Giorgione, born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (1477/78–1510). Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are firmly attributed to him and he died during the plague, while he was still young. The uncertainty surrounding the identity and meaning of his work has made Giorgione one of the most mysterious figures in European art.
Together with Titian, who was slightly younger, he founded the distinctive Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painting, which achieves much of its effect through colour and mood, and is traditionally contrasted with Florentine painting, which relies on a more linear disegno-led style.
His masterpiece was The Tempest, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, it has been called the first Landscape painting in Western art. It depicts a soldier and breast feeding woman and is in Venice in the Accademia.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, (1483-1520)
Known as just Raphael, was a painter and architect and considered to be the third greatest artist of the Renaissance, after Michelangelo and Leonardo. He was born in Urbino and despite only living 37 years left quite a body of exceptional work and even spawned a new art movement, the. Pre-Raphaelites. He was orphaned at 11 and apprenticed to Perugino, where he developed a similar style of painting. Here he created the Wedding of the Virgin altarpiece, now in the Brera Milan. He moved on to Florence where he met and was inspired by Leonardo’s three quarter length female portraits including the Mona Lisa. In fact it was here he produced the Madonna of the Meadow and Madonna of the Golfinch both in a pyramidal composition. As well as his St Catherine inspired by Leonardo’s now lost Leda and the Swan.
He then moved on to Rome where he carried out his masterpiece, School of Athens fresco alongside Parnassus and the Disputation in the Vatican.
His later works cemented his place as one of the true masters of the Renaissance, with the Sistine Madonna (1512) and those angels, now in Dresden and the Triumph of Galatea (1515) with the flying Cupids in the Villa Farnesina, two of the last great paintings of the Renaissance.
His last work, the Transfiguration (1520) in the Vatican (considered one of the first great paintings of the Mannerism movement). Raphael died in 1520, the date that the Renaissance ended.
The last great artist of the Renaissance was Tiziano Vercelli, or Titian (1485-1576) He came from the small town of Pieve di Cadore, Belluno near Venice. At around 10-12 years old he and his brother were sent to stay with an uncle in Venice and apprenticed to Giovanni Bellini.
Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, exercised a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.
His career was successful from the start, and he became sought after by patrons, initially from Venice and its possessions, then joined by the north Italian princes, and finally the Habsburgs and papacy. Along with Giorgione, he is considered a founder of the Venetian School of Italian Renaissance painting.
He produced several portraits and then became assistant to Giorgione. After the death of Bellini and then Giorgione, Titian was left as the unrivaled master in Venice. Masterpieces started to come in 1515 with five idealized women, including Flora and then from 1515-1528 with the Assumption of the Virgin and the Pesaro Madonna in the Frari church in Venice.
During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically, but he retained a lifelong interest in colour. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone were without precedent in the history of Western painting.
One of his most famous canvases, Bacchus and Ariadne 1520-23 (actually part of a cycle of paintings) is now in the National Gallery in London. It depicts Theseus leaving Ariadne on the island of Naxos and Bacchus arriving and raising her to heaven. The canvas could be considered the last great painting of the Renaissance. Even if Titian continued, here is where the Renaissance ends.
And so in 1520, the year that the 37-year-old Raphael died and 1 year after the death of Leonardo, the Renaissance had reached its apex, there was nothing else to prove or say. Michelangelo was still 45 years old, Titian 35 and there were a group of young artists, eager to emulate their heroes and make a name for themselves and so a new art movement was born, Mannerism.
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