Beginning of Renaissance
-extracts from
<A World History of Art>-
"The whole idea of Renaissance or 'rebirth'
of Classical culture, with dark Middle Ages
intervening between it and the fall of the
Roman empire, was largely a myth propagated
in Classical scholars - humanists in the
original meaning of the word. 'When the darkness
breaks, the generations to come may contrive
to find their way back to the clear splendor
of the ancient past', wrote the poet Petrarch
(1304-74) shortly before the middle of the
fourteenth century."
"...the Classical heritage survived
throughout the Middle Ages. Greek as well
as Latin literature continued to be read.
There were many medieval artists who were
neither blind to the beauty of Classical
art nor indifferent to Classical legends
and history. But the humanists of the Renaissance
differed from medieval theologians and others
who had studied Aristotle, Cicero and the
Neoplatonists. The humanists found in Classical
antiquity absolute standards by which cultural
and, indeed, all human activities could be
judged. They created, or re-erected, a structure
of values different from that on which medieval
ideals of chivalry and nobility were based
-- one in which birth, for example, counted
for less than individual prowess and intellectual
ability. Humanism was nurtured in the Italian
city-sates, which could trace their history
back to ancient Roman times and, with their
republican (not clerical or aristocratic)
governments, epitomized the new ideals of
self-reliance and civic virtue --civic and
mundane, not chivalric or contemplative."
"...Although humanist were not initially
anti-clerical, still less anti-Christian,
they were preoccupied by problems of the
here and now rather than of the hereafter.
The visual arts remained largely religious
both in Italy and northern Europe. For the
fifteenth century was the golden age of Flemish
as well as Florentine painting, and only
towards its end did Italian art acquire international
prestige -- at least partly because of its
association with humanist thought."
Architecture
"The Pazzi Chapel in Florence and the
choir of St Lorenz in Nuremberg are almost
exactly contemporary, though they might seem
to belong to different work's and different
centuries. ... The architects of the choir
of St Lorenzo developed the High Gothic style
... to create a space of great complexity
and apparent freedom, one that is by no means
easy to comprehend. Although the plan is
symmetrical and mathematically determined,
a series of subtly differing patterns of
lines soaring up to the intricate tracery
of the vault is presented from every view
point. In Pazzi Chapel there are no mysterious
depths or soaring heights, no sense of the
beyond. Space is precisely defined in cubes,
half-cubes and hemispheres. Horizontal and
vertical axes are held in balance and the
effect is supremely simile, lucid and static.
It is almost severely tectonic, a construct
without any suggestion of organic growth.
... The Pazzi Chapel is ascetic and spiritual
in its renunciation of superfluous ornament
and in its concentration on the purity of
geometrical volumes. Simple proportional
relationships, mathematically determined
and emphasized by the articulation of the
wall and even the grid of the inlaid marble
floor, have metaphysical significance, reflecting
the perfection of God and the divinely ordered
cosmos. As one of Bunellischi's Florentine
contemporaries, Gianozzo Manetti (1396-1459),
declared, the truths of the Christian religion
are self-evident as the axioms of mathematics."
The Pazzi Chapel was build by Filippo Brucelleschi
(1377-1446), "the first of a new type
of architect, ... who was praised in the
fifteenth century both for his engineering
skill and his revival of antique architectural
forms. ... Brunelleschi probably went to
Rome early and may well have been the first
architect or artist since ancient times to
go there to study its ancient monuments."
The tendency towards simplicity and restraint
in Florentine art and especially architecture
may perhaps have been partly economic in
origin. In terms of materials and man-hours,
a building in the Renaissance style was certainly
a less expensive undertaking than a Gothic
one with its myriad decorations, and an altarpiece
painted simply in tempera or oils than one
with much use of gold and lapis lazuli (the
costliest blue pigment ) set in an elaborately
carved and gilded frame.The shift in attention
from the value of materials to the skill
of the artists coincided with ... a shortage
of gold and silver, which became increasingly
acute in the course of the century. ... Several
.. leading Florentine artists began their
careers as goldsmiths and then turned to
painting, notably Verrocchio, Botticelli
and Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Paintings
"Brunelleschi's contemporaries credited
him with another achievement of equally great
and far-reaching effect: the invention of
linear perspective. Various devices had previously
been used to suggest distance in pictures
and drawings, but Brunelleschi worked out
a system by which it could be rendered in
a scientifically measurable way. ...if a
picture is regarded as a window between the
viewer and what he sees, the objects on it
can be made to obey the same laws. The key
to his system lay in the observation that
all parallel lines running into space at
right angles to the 'window' will seem to
converge on a central vanishing-pint at the
viewer's eye-level. ... it had raised the
art of painting to a science, It opened the
door ... to the idea of a picture as an illusionistic
representation of objects in space seen from
a fixed viewpoint. More important, it seemed
to impose order -- a rational order -- on
the visible world."
"The architectural style and the system
of perspective developed by Brunelleschi
were very quickly taken up by other artists,
notably by Masaccio (1401-28) in his fresco
of the Holy Trinity" Masaccio took modelling
of figures and the construction of objects
in nature from the sculptor Donatello who
made an achievement from study of classical
sculpture. "Masaccio's major achievement,..
was to revitalize the human figure with the
robustness it had had in the frescoes of
Giotto and to create an illusion of tangibility
by means of chiaroscuro (the manipulation
of light and shade). ... Masaccio completed
on great cycle of frescoes" in Brancacci
Chapel, S Maria del Carmine, which influenced
15th c. artists of Florence.
Religious paintings
"There were three reasons why religious
images were introduced into churches, a popular
Franciscan preacher remarked in the mid-fifteenth
century:
'First, on account of the ignorance of simple
people, so that those who are not able to
read the scriptures can yet learn by seeing
in pictures the sacrament of out salvation
and faith ... Second, on account of our emotional
sluggishness; so that men who are not aroused
to devotion when they hear about the histories
of the Saints may at least be moved when
they see them, as if actually present in
pictures. For our feelings are aroused by
things seen more than by things heard ...
Third. Images were introduced because many
people cannot retain in their memories what
they hear, but they do remember if they see
images. (Fra Michele da Carcano...)'