The High Renaissance

Rome took over from Florence as the center of art--from 1495 until its sacking in 1527 was the High Renaissance

Painting and sculpting finally got on par with poetry as fine arts

LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519)-- "Modeling with light and shadow and the expression of emotional states were, for Leonardo, the heart of painting"

Virgin of the Rocks--1485--the interplay of action--hands and looking--brings new emotion to the images

High Reniassance Manner-- "stable without being static, varied without being confused, and dignified witout being dull."

First great artsitic personality fo the 16c.

"first great figure composition of the High Reaissance and the definitive interpretation of its theme."

great emotional moment when Jesus decalares that one of them will betray me

all perspective lines center on Jesus

window and doorway behind him give him a halo

Judas is not placed away as in typical iconography

the emotions and responses of the disciples are increadiably detailed and varied

Christ is calm in the midle of it all

perfect ballance of visual perception and underlying structure make this the first piece of the High Renaissance style in Italy durring the early 16c.

DONATO D’ANGELO BRAMANTE (1444-1514)--High Renaissance architecture in the form of the central-plan church

Tempietto--1502--best example of High Reniassance architecture--Emphasis on the sculptural handeling of solids and voids rather than on decoration for effect

Designed a plan for a new St. Peters in the Vatican--extermely complex, huge

High Renaissance Classical ideals: order, clarity, lucidity, simplicity, harmony, and proportion--balanced and symetrical

ANTONIO DA SANGALLO THE YOUNGER (1483-1546)--designed the Palazzo Farnese, Rome (1530-1546)--complex but not monotonous, in harmony--centralized

RAFFAELLO SANZIO "RAPHAEL" (1483-1520)--most typical of the High Renaissance--strong classical influence

Madonna with the Goldfinch--1505-1506--copied the pyramid idea from Leonardo--subtle chiaroscuro

Raphael didn’t like the dark mystery of Leonardo and instaed prefered, "grace and dignity, sweetness and lofty idealism"

Philosophy (School of Athens)--1509-1511--many different groups all expressing ehtier own appropriate emottions and actions--includes himself in this work of all great artists and scientists--stage like setting with many players and it all works perfectly--perfect union of picotral science and mathematics

Brings back mythology for purely artistic playful reasonos--from now on it will be a prominent theme in all art

MICHAELANGELO BUONARROTI (1475-1564)--belived that sculpture was higher than painting because the painters merely copied what was already there rather than creating something--he did not use mathematical methods to get things perfect but rather distrusted them and belived that the eye should be capable of figuring out what was perfect--led to "a style of vast, expressive strength with complex, eccentric, often titanic forms that loom before us in tragic grandeur."

Pietá--1498-1500--masterpiece--youthful Mary and dead Christ

David--1501-1504--quite built up tension--unlike previous (DONATELLO and VERROCCHIO) ones, Michelangelo does his David before killing Goliath--pent-up passion--connection to something not in the statue in the way he looks off toward Goliath

Moses--1513-1515--dramatic pent-up enengergy--never to be released--unlike the calm of Pietá

The nudes are represented in an unembellished simple form on a neutral background with simple drapings if any

Creation of Adam--bridge between the christian and pagan view of creation--almost Zeus and Prometheus

Not picture windows but rather story frames

Tombs of the New Sacristy--1519-1534--integration of sculptue and architecture pointed the way to Baroque art--tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici--twisting painful figures of Night and day show the badness of life-- *** "Michaelangelo suggests powerful psychic forces that cannot be tanslated into action but are ever on the berge of it. His prevaling mood is tension and constraint, evn in the figures that seem to aspire to the ideal, to the timeless, perfect and unmoving. Michelangelo’s style was born to disturb. It brings the serene, brief High Renaissance to an end."

The Last Judgment--Sistine Chapel, 1534-1541--Micchelangelo turns religious and preocupied with the fate of his soul and of humanity--this painting has none of the wonder of the redeemer’s arrival of the ceiling--damnationa dn destruction--Christ is portrayed as willing to destroy everything

Applied the same symetric ideals of people to the Capitoline Hill--new concept--uses an oval ground pattern in the middle of the trapezoidal building arrangment--the oval was shuned as being an imperfect shape but it became very popular in the Baroque period

Took Bramante’s original plan for the new St. Peter’s and unified the design without destroying the central features

Laurentian Library--breaks with the classical ideals of Bramante and sculpts the interior space that, "conveys all the strains and tensions owe find in his statuary and in his painted figures."

ANDREA DEL SARTO--(1486-1531)--Madonna of the Harpies--imposing pyrimidal construction--excellent use of strong color

ANTONIO ALLEGRI DA CORREGGIO--(c. 1489-1534)--original painting perspective twisting ceilings--influenced the Baroque--excellent at erotic mythological subjects

Jupiter and Io--proto-baroque--soft, smokey modeling, glowing color, exquisit subtlty

Mannerism

An excessive or affected adherence to a distinctive manner--Late Renaissance, after Raphael’s death in 1520

Mannerism--the issues of perfect rendition had been solved by the study of the High Renaissance artists--the Mannerists copied them and studied their work and worked from Classical images and ideals

"the typical Mannerist picture or statue looks like an original essay in human form somewhat removed from nature."

"commonest expression is in paintings of numerous figures preforming what appears to be a complicated dance and pantomine"--delieberately intracate--studied and artificial--seeks instability rather than the High Renaissance’s balance--restlessness, distortions, exaggerations--cultivating the nature of art, not the knowledge of nature

JACOPOP DA PONTROMO (1494-1557)--Descent from the Cross--crowded compsition, blotting out the stting, void at the center (High Reniassance artists had concentrated the mass at the center), no focal point, figures swing around, ambigous represntation of space--akward colors--psychic dissonance--compressed space, the figures would not fit into the apparent depth of the canvas

ROSSO FIORENTION (1494-1540)--Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro--poses are resminiscent of the Sistene Chapel ceiling, but the purpose is merely inventive of athletic poses--rejection of accurate protrayal of deptha and perspective

PARMIGIANINO (1503-1540)--Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola--Madonna with the Long Neck--elegance figures, but ghastly excesses in the atistocratic amplification of current tastes: long neck, long hand, huge child--pillars in the background have no realtion in size and scale and depth, person in the lower right is not in the same perspective system at all--still elegant.

BRONZINO (1503-1572)--Angnolo di Cosimo--Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time or Exposure of Luxury--intraicate allegory--everything has some significance--the space is non existant

"The sophisticated elegance sought by the Mannerists painter was most often achieved in portraiture"

BRONZINO--Portrait of a Young Man--1550-- "austere and incommunicative formality… asserts the rank and station of the subject but not his personality." --"aloof formality"

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA--(1527-1625)-- "uses the strong contours, muted tonality, adn smooth finish familiar in Mannerist portrains." -- charm--started the genre painting painting scenes from everyday life.

BENVENUTO CELLINI (1500-1572)--Genius of Fontainebleau--epitemy of Manerism sculputre--symbolic and almost impresionistic--Classical personification--exaggerateed characteristics

GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA (1529-1608)--most important sculpture of 16c. italy after Michelangelo-Abducton of the Sabine Women (1583)--figues do not break out of the column, not Baroque--first modern piece meant to be seen from all sides---almost the Michelangelesque action effect

16c architecture--manerismim

High Renaissance--balance, order, stability, effects of mass

GIULIO ROMANO (c. 1492-1546)--Palazo del Té--trying to baffle and confuse--architectual humor--not ballanced--excessive--ineffeciencies are made fun of--including the paintings inside, designed to break the Classical virtues of order, stablity, and symmetry to startle and shock the viewier--uneasy tension and ambiguities characteristic of Mannerist painting and architecture

Venetian Art and Architecture

JACOPO SANSOVINO (1486-1570--State Library (1536)--elegance and grandure--hides the structural work--columns serve to emphisize the vertical height, which are then re-emphisized by the statues at the top--large numbers of decorative panels

ANDREA PALLADIO (1508-1580)--suceeded SANSOVINO as chief Venetian architect

Villa Rotonda (c. 1566-1570)--extremely elegant skyline--elegant proportions--not really manerism, nor characteristic of PALLADIO--elegant symetry and mathematical relationships--Classical facades copied from Roman temples

San Giorgio Maggiore (1565)--west facade uses a tall and narrow Classical porch on a low and wide one for and impressive if somewhat disjointed Mannerist effect

GIOVANNI BELLINI (c. 1430-1516)--developed teh Venetian sytle--soft, coored light, relaxes severe lines--learned to use mixed oils--sensuous, coloristic manner

San Giobbe Altarpiece c. 1490--somewhate idsorderd groupings, characters seem like individuals rather than a whole--warm colors, harsh lines--depth not great, most of the figures are right at the front

San Zaccaria Altarpiece 1505--fewer figures than the San Giobbe Altarpiece and more unified groupings--depth works well--cohesive gropuings--High Renaissance--calm--softer painting replacing lines with color as the main function

*** "Thus, with Bellini, Venetian art becomes the great complement of the schools of Florence and Rome. The Venetians’ instrument is color; that of the Florentines and Romans is sculpturesque form. These two schools run parallel - sometimes touching andengaging - through the history of Western art from teh Reaissance on. Their themes are different. Venice paints the poetry fo the sensees and delights in the eauty fo nature and the pleasures of humanity. Flroecna dn Rome attempt the sterner, ntellectual themes - the epic of man, the masculine virtues, the grandure of the ideal, the lofty conceptions of religion as the involve the heroic and sublime. Much of the history of later Western art can be broadly udnerstood as adialogue between these two traditions." *** p. 777

GIORGIONE DA CASTELFRANCO (c. 1477-1510)--student of Bellini--Pastoral Symphony c.1508--epitemy of the Venetian type--dark shadow with soft glowing emergence of the figures--abundence of nature in the fatish women--soft forms and soft light--mysterious--rich--"landscape of a lost but never forgotten paradise"--

TIZIANO VECELLI "TITAN" (c 1490-1576)

Sacred and Profane Love c. 1515--enigmatic figures--simmilar background as GIORGIONE--not glowing figures--but coor takes precidence over form--a truth the Veneians wer the first to grasp

Madonna of the Pesaro 1519-1526--elegant arrangement in an agled line from the lower lef to the mid right--the flag ballences it--great use of color--idea of moevement rather than purely pictoral design

Venus of Urbino 1538--the definitive reclining nude--soft curves--contrast with the drape in the background put her definitively in the foreground--lap dog at bottom ballances the image--color used for organizational effect by placing th red couch visible in the left bottom and on the servant in the upper right

Man with the Glove 1519--portrait--positioning of hands and expression on face give us an idea of the person’s sould--teh ideal Renaissance man

JACOPO ROBUSTI "TINTORETTO" (1518-1594)--Venetian representative of Mannerism--strove to combind eht drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titan--not really Mannerists

Miracle of the Slave 1548--counterpoint of motion characteristc of Mannerism--motioned comtained with in the frame--clearly composed figures and musculature and solid structure have little to do with mannerism--forerunner of the Baroque--with the Venetian deep colors

Last Supper--dark and glowing--intense color--Christ is not identified by central placement but rather by a glowing halo--change from the purely mathematical forms of the Reaissance towars the "dynamic perspectives and dramatic chiaroscuro of the Baroque"

PAOLO VERONESE (1528-1588)--magnificent pagentry in supurb color with "majestic, Classical archtecture."