Early Renaissance

Question 1

Italian artists at the beginning of the Renaissance

Answer 1

Giotto (painter), Masaccio (painter), Brunelleschi (architect), Donatello (sculptor)

Question 2

Brunelleschi

Answer 2

architect:

Nave of the Church of San Lorenzo, 1420

Set basic pattern for all renaissance architecture

Severely symmetrical but harmonious structures, in contrast to exuberant ornateness of the Gothic

Question 3

Answer 3

Donatello:

-Endowed figures with a sense of humanity

Mary Magdalen

Jonah (Zaccone, or squash head) 1423-5

Elderly, bony, dignified, wise

Not sacrosanct

After he finished he looked up at the figure and said, “speak, speak or the plague take you.”

Question 4

Answer 4

Masaccio:

• The Holy Trinity with the Virgin and St. John, 1425
• created illusion of depth on a flat surface according to mathematical rules
• first to employ this scientific method of depth
• first to render human anatomy convincingly
• among first to experiment with chiaroscuro

defining forms by the use of light and shadow

Question 5

Answer 5

Sandro Botticelli:

• normal human proportions, but distorts the figures fr deliberate effect
• The Birth of Venus, 1486
• Botticelli’s Venus is perhaps the greatest image of ideal beauty ever painted

Inspired innumerable nude goddesses in the next century