Renaissance art. A very short introduction. Geraldine Johnson.

Art has to be contextualised through a 'period-eye' to allow us to 'see' it.

Renaissance= when 'Art' and 'art for art's sake' emerged. Also, artistic originality, creative genius and aesthetic criteria as a means of judgement.

'Renaissance'= rebirth, but has come to equally be associated with revival/ innovation.

Burkhardt's 'The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy' (1860)- 'uomo universale' (universal man). New emphasis upon individuality.

Great religious change with the Prot reformation (C16).

Artists members of guilds (then, state-approved academies); conformity ensured contracts and stability; patrons dictated art. A small number of 'superstars' emerged (Durer, Michelangelo).

Most pieces of 'art' had a function; aesthetic=secondary consideration.

...Change and continuity...

Altarpieces not static 'Art'; intended to be actively incorporated into masses.

C15 stylistic transition of altarpieces-move towards naturalism:

-C14/15- individuals, gilding, prescious materials, polytychs

-C15/16- single, unified, narrative scene set upon a naturalistic landscape. Ungilded.

-C15/ 16 artists in DE/ low counties innovated naturalism in altarpieces, but retained polytychs.

Transition to oil (tempera) on altarpieces.

Altarpiece tradition came to an abrupt end with Prot ref and iconoclasms. Altarpiece tradition continued to thrive in Caholic counties, however.

Secular and religious tales alike (e.g. 'The Golden Legend').

Reflection of 'real-life' in tableaux to appeal to audience.

Prots argued that such 'graven images' (Exodus)= sacriligeous. In C7, Pope Gregory decreed that such images could be created as aids to worship, and for the illiterate.

Frescoes advanced with new visual strategies (linear perspective) and emphases upon naturalism.

Storytelling= one of the primary functions of Renaissance art, but inevitably reflected the ideals of their patrons.

Renaissance valued an artist's ability to mimic the real world with accuracy, as in classical art.

Fashion for trompe l'oeil topi as relayed in Pliny's account of Zeuxis and Parrhasios (e.g. 'Portrait of an Artists and his wife' (the master of Frankfurt).

Renaissance artists sought not just to recreate nature and evoke classical art, but to surpass it.

Objects referential to antiquity were valued simply because they were reminiscent of this 'golden age', such was popular nostalgia (e.g. Medici motto: 'le temps revient', Isa d'E)

Italian artists particularly concerned with perfect rendering of human body e.g. 'Four Sequential studies of the superficial anatomy' (DaVinci); northern artists particularly concerned with naturalistic depiction of nature and everday minutiae.

De Pictura (On Painting) (1435) (Alberti)- sought to mathematically codify the principles of linear perspective (though artists intuitively depicted 3D spaces since Giotto).

Renaissance artists willing to modify reality for own purposes (e.g. St Lucy altarpiece, Last Supper (in these instances, to achieve a sense of narrative urgency and dramatic tension)).

Burkhardt- Renaissance= emergence of the 'individual' > 'Renaissance man'/ 'uomo universale'.

Rise in populaity of portraiture.

Portraiture's demographic= expanded e.g. 'Portrait of an Artists and his Wife', Isabella d'Este (woman) (Titian).

best to assess portraits in quality of image a/o likeness due to use of flattery e.g. (Isa d'E, E1).

Portaiture more valued in the North a/o to Italy where it was looked down upon as a genre.

Before Durer, DE artists considered 'hand artists', he was the first artistic 'superstar' (1500 self-potrait (and van Eyck Arnolifini portait and Ghent altarpiece=superstar too)).

Joan Kelly Gadol (1977)- no. Women economically dependent on men; their rights transferred from Father to husband.

Women as subjects of art: Prevalence of male gaze and unequal power dynamic (e.g. Venus d'Urbino (Titian)).

Some women exerted power through patronage (e.g. Atalanta Baglioni, Isa d'E). Most female patronage= funereal.

Most female patrons= widows/ nuns.

Such women used art to reinforce their position e.g. Isa d'E and E1.

Emergence of women artists, notably Lavinia Fontana. 'Self Portrait with a Maidservant, Keyboard and Cassone' (1577)=reinforces her position.

Majority of works produce in this period were small-scale, intended for decor/ everday life.

Such objets, seen with a modern eye as 'Art', were not contemporarily viewn as such. Aestheic consideretions were not exempt and iconography was important.

Marian reliefs= one of the largest surviving categories of art; multifaroius purpose, primarily devotional, then talsimanic (sympathetic magic and maternal imagnation). Reliefs became favoured as distance between image and beholder perceived as less.

Home inventories did not usually bother to list authorship of objects, proof that the question of authorship was not of primary importance to owners.

By end of C15, such reliefs regarded as primarily aesthetic (stored in the studiolo).

Busts became popular among rich families.

Fashion for landscape/ genre scenes in N Europe.

The 'Piazza della Signoria' poignantly illustrates the power of art in the Renaissance period, acting at various points as a propaganda tool to Republican forces, the Medicis and the Signori, before finally resting in the hands of the Medicis at the end of the Renaissance period.

Erection of the Marzocco as a means to corroborate the rule of the new government (the Signori).

The transformation of a Medicean idol ('Judith decapitating Holofernes') into an anti-Medicean sentiment with its relocation and addition of Cellini's 'Perseus holding the head of Medusa'. Afterwards its replacement by David (Michelangelo) as a statement of patriarchy and misogynist sentiment.

Finally, the transforomation of the square into a sculpture garden, a tribute to Medicean power. In effect, re-contextualisng all the statues to fit a Medicean purpose.

Giorgio Vasari's 'Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects' (1550, 68) constructed an artistic canon and shaped the study of AH. Probably the world's first AH.

Vasari presented these four main ideas: 'art for art's sake'; the artist as a creative and visionary genius; goal of art is to imitate natural world; notion of artistic 'progress'.

Origins of the modern notion of the artist, and of artistic 'superstars' in the Renaissance (signatures embelmatic of this).

The Vasarian notion of artistic progress.

Vasari clearly had an agenda, but his value remains and he employs many of the analytical tools we still use today, and he is a large reason for the survival of today's cult of Michelangelo.

Durer- 'here I am a Gentleman'.