The Renaissance: The Beginning of Modern Painting Flashcards
When was the High Renaissance?
1500 - 1520
Fused Renaissance discoveries like composition, ideal proportions, and perspective.
Who were the Megastars of the High Renaissance?
Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael
One of the Top 4 Breakthroughs during the Renaissance
Oil on Stretched Canvas
Minerals were ground fine and mixed with turpentine and oil to be applied as oil paint. A greater range of rich colors with smooth gradations of tone permitted painters to represent textures and simulate three-dimensional form.
One of the Top 4 Breakthroughs
Perspective
Creating the illusion of depth on a flat surface. Linear perspective created the optical effect of objects receding in the distance through lines that appear to converge at a single point in the picture known as the vanishing point
One of the Top 4 Breakthroughs
The Use of Light and Shadow
Chiaroscuro, which means “light/dark” in Italian, referred to the new technique for modeling forms in painting by which lighter parts seemed to emerge from darker areas, producing the illusion of rounded, sculptural relief on a falt surface.
One of the Top 4 Breakthroughs
Pyramid Configuration
Symmetrical composition builds to a climax at the center, as in Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa”, where the focal point is the figure’s head.
When was the Early Renaissance?
15th-century
Masacio
The founder of Early Renaissance painting.
The first since Giotto to paint the human figure not as a linear column, in the Gothic style, but as a real human being.
The founder of Early Renaissance painting.
The first since Giotto to paint the human figure not as a linear column, in the Gothic style, but as a real human being.
Masaccio
Donatello
(1386-1466)
What Masaccio did for painting, Donatello did for sculpture.
His work captured the recaptured the central discovery of Classical sculpture: contrapposto.
Carved figures and draped them realistically with a sense of tehir underlying skeletal structure.
Donatello, “David,” c. 1430-32
First life-size, freestanding nude sculpture since the Classicle period.
Pioneered the Renaissance style of sculpture with rounded body masses.
Donatello, Mary Magdalen
More probing, harshly accurate, and “Real” than ancient Roman portraits. Carved the aged Magdalen as a gaunt, shrivled hag, with stringy hair and hollowed eyes. Very lifelike
Botticelli
His decorative linear syle and tiptoeing, golden-haired maidens were more a throwback to Byzantine art. Yet his nudes epitomized the Renaissance.
“Birth of Venus”
Botticelli, “Birth of Venus,” 1482
Marks the rebirth of Classical mythology.
Undulating lines and figures with long necks, sloping shoulders, and pale, soft bodies.
Leonardo Da Vinci
“Renaissance Man”
Mona Lisa
The Last Supper
The Notebooks: “In the Womb”
Leonardo, “Mona Lisa,” or “La Giocanda,” 1503-6
The world’s most famous portrait embodied all the Renaissance discoveries of perspective, anatomy, and composition.
Historically nobody important, probably the wife of a merchant.
Perspective (all lines converging in a single vanishing point behind her head.) Triangular composition (geometry). Knowledge of anatomy evident in Mona Lisa’s hands.Relaxed, natural, 3/4 pose.
Sfumato - illusion of three-dimensional figures through layers of thin, semi-transparent glaze.
Michelangelo
(1475-1564)
Pieta
The Creation of Adam
The Last Judgment
Campidoglio
Michelangelo, “Pieta,” 1498-99-1500, St. Peter’s, Rome
Groups Christ and the Virgin in a pyramidal composition.
Virgin’s face; calm idealized expressions of greek sculpture.
Accuracy of anatomy of Christ’s body is due to M’s dissection of corpses.
Michelangelo, “Creation of Adam,” detail, 1508-12, Sistine Chaple, Vatican, Rome
Used the male nude to express every human aspiration and emotion.
Michelangelo, “The Last Judgment,” detail, 1541, Sistine Chaple, Rome
Includes a martry who was flayed alive holds up his skin with a froteque self-portrait of Michelangelo.
Gloomy mood. Chirst depicted not as merciful redeemer but as an avenging Judge with such terrifying effect that Pope Paul III fell to his knees when he saw the fresco.
Human forms in motion as nearly 400 figures struggled, fought, and tumbled into hell.
Michelangelo, Campidoglio, 1538-64, Rome
Breaks Renaissance rules by designing this piazza with interlocking ovals and variatinos from right angles.
Two existing buildings already abutted together at an akward 80 degree angle. Added another building at the same angle to flank the central Palace of Senators. Redesigned the facade of the lateral buildings so they would be identical and left the fourth side open, with a panoramic view toward the Vatican.
Unifying the whole was a statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius on a pattered oval pavement. Oval was not considered stable by Renaissance artists but for Michelangelo, measure and proportion were not determined by mathematical formulae but “kept in the eyes.”
Raphael
(1483-1520)
From Leonardo he borrowed pyramidal composition and learned to model faces with light and shadow (chiaroscuro).
From Michelangelo, Raphael adapted frull-bodied, dynamic figures and the contrapposto pose.
School of Athens
Raphael, “School of Athens,” 1510-11
Embodies the High Renaissance in its balance, sculptural quality, architectural perspective, and fusion of pagan and Christian elements.
Titian, “Bacchanal of the Adrians,” 1518, Prado, Madrid
This pagan wine party contains the major ingredients of Titian’s early style: dazzling contrasting colors, ample female forms, and asymetric compositions.
Brunelleschi, Pazzi Chapel, 1440-61, Florence
Classical motifs as surface decoration.
Design illustrates the revival of Roman forms and Renaissance emphasis on symmetry and regularity.
Bramante, Tempietto, 1444-1514, Rome
Site where St. Peter was crucified.
Perfect prototype of the domed central plan church.
Expressed the Renaissance ideals of order, simplicity, and harmonious proportions.
Palladio, Villa Rotonda, begun 1550, Vicenza
Incorporated Greek and Roman details like porticos with Iconic colimns, a flatened dome like the Pantheon, and rooms arrange symmetrically around a central rotunda.
