The Renaissance in Europe Lesson 2 Ideas and Art of the Renaissance

Known as the Renaissance, the period immediately following the Eye Ages in Europe saw a great revival of interest in the classical learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. Against a properties of political stability and growing prosperity, the development of new technologies–including the printing printing, a new organization of astronomy and the discovery and exploration of new continents–was accompanied past a flowering of philosophy, literature and especially art.

The style of painting, sculpture and decorative arts identified with the Renaissance emerged in Italy in the belatedly 14th century; it reached its zenith in the belatedly 15th and early 16th centuries, in the work of Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. In addition to its expression of classical Greco-Roman traditions, Renaissance fine art sought to capture the feel of the individual and the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

Origins of Renaissance Art

The origins of Renaissance art can be traced to Italy in the tardily 13th and early on 14th centuries. During this so-chosen "proto-Renaissance" menstruation (1280-1400), Italian scholars and artists saw themselves as reawakening to the ideals and achievements of classical Roman culture. Writers such as Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) looked back to ancient Greece and Rome and sought to revive the languages, values and intellectual traditions of those cultures later the long period of stagnation that had followed the fall of the Roman Empire in the sixth century.

The Florentine painter Giotto (1267?-1337), the nearly famous artist of the proto-Renaissance, made enormous advances in the technique of representing the human torso realistically. His frescoes were said to have decorated cathedrals at Assisi, Rome, Padua, Florence and Naples, though at that place has been difficulty attributing such works with certainty.

Early Renaissance Art (1401-1490s)

In the later 14th century, the proto-Renaissance was stifled by plague and state of war, and its influences did non emerge again until the first years of the adjacent century. In 1401, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378-1455) won a major competition to pattern a new gear up of bronze doors for the Baptistery of the cathedral of Florence, chirapsia out contemporaries such every bit the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and the young Donatello (c. 1386- 1466), who would later emerge as the master of early on Renaissance sculpture.

The other major creative person working during this period was the painter Masaccio (1401-1428), known for his frescoes of the Trinity in the Church of Santa Maria Novella (c. 1426) and in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church building of Santa Maria del Reddish (c. 1427), both in Florence. Masaccio painted for less than half dozen years only was highly influential in the early on Renaissance for the intellectual nature of his work, as well as its caste of naturalism.

Florence in the Renaissance

Though the Cosmic Church remained a major patron of the arts during the Renaissance–from popes and other prelates to convents, monasteries and other religious organizations–works of art were increasingly deputed past civil government, courts and wealthy individuals. Much of the art produced during the early Renaissance was deputed past the wealthy merchant families of Florence, most notably the Medici family.

From 1434 until 1492, when Lorenzo de' Medici–known every bit "the Magnificent" for his strong leadership as well as his support of the arts–died, the powerful family unit presided over a golden age for the urban center of Florence. Pushed from power by a republican coalition in 1494, the Medici family spent years in exile but returned in 1512 to preside over some other flowering of Florentine art, including the array of sculptures that at present decorates the urban center'due south Piazza della Signoria.

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High Renaissance Art (1490s-1527)

Past the end of the 15th century, Rome had displaced Florence as the primary middle of Renaissance art, reaching a loftier point under the powerful and aggressive Pope Leo X (a son of Lorenzo de' Medici). Three great masters–Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael–dominated the period known as the High Renaissance, which lasted roughly from the early 1490s until the sack of Rome by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Espana in 1527.

Leonardo (1452-1519) was the ultimate "Renaissance homo" for the breadth of his intellect, interest and talent and his expression of humanist and classical values. Leonardo's all-time-known works, including the "Mona Lisa" (1503-05), "The Virgin of the Rocks" (1485) and the fresco "The Last Supper" (1495-98), showcase his unparalleled power to portray lite and shadow, likewise equally the concrete relationship between figures–humans, animals and objects alike–and the mural effectually them.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) drew on the human body for inspiration and created works on a vast scale. He was the dominant sculptor of the High Renaissance, producing pieces such equally the Pietà in St. Peter'southward Cathedral (1499) and the David in his native Florence (1501-04). He carved the latter by paw from an enormous marble block; the famous statue measures five meters high including its base. Though Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor start and foremost, he achieved greatness equally a painter as well, notably with his giant fresco covering the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, completed over four years (1508-12) and depicting various scenes from Genesis.

Raphael Sanzio, the youngest of the three bang-up High Renaissance masters, learned from both da Vinci and Michelangelo. His paintings–nigh notably "The School of Athens" (1508-xi), painted in the Vatican at the same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel–skillfully expressed the classical ideals of beauty, serenity and harmony. Among the other great Italian artists working during this period were Sandro Botticelli, Bramante, Giorgione, Titian and Correggio.

Renaissance Art in Practise

Many works of Renaissance fine art depicted religious images, including subjects such as the Virgin Mary, or Madonna, and were encountered by contemporary audiences of the period in the context of religious rituals. Today, they are viewed as groovy works of fine art, merely at the time they were seen and used mostly as devotional objects. Many Renaissance works were painted as altarpieces for incorporation into rituals associated with Cosmic Mass and donated past patrons who sponsored the Mass itself.

Renaissance artists came from all strata of social club; they usually studied every bit apprentices before being admitted to a professional gild and working under the tutelage of an older master. Far from being starving bohemians, these artists worked on commission and were hired by patrons of the arts considering they were steady and reliable. Italy'due south rise middle form sought to imitate the aristocracy and drag their ain condition by purchasing fine art for their homes. In add-on to sacred images, many of these works portrayed domestic themes such as marriage, nascency and the everyday life of the family.

Expansion and Refuse

Over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries, the spirit of the Renaissance spread throughout Italian republic and into French republic, northern Europe and Spain. In Venice, artists such as Giorgione (1477/78-1510) and Titian (1488/xc-1576) further developed a method of painting in oil straight on canvas; this technique of oil painting immune the artist to rework an image­–as fresco painting (on plaster) did non–and information technology would boss Western art to the present 24-hour interval.

Oil painting during the Renaissance tin can exist traced back even further, all the same, to the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck (died 1441), who painted a masterful altarpiece in the cathedral at Ghent (c. 1432). Van Eyck was one of the most important artists of the Northern Renaissance; later masters included the High german painters Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) and Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543).

By the afterward 1500s, the Mannerist style, with its emphasis on artificiality, had developed in opposition to the idealized naturalism of Loftier Renaissance art, and Mannerism spread from Florence and Rome to become the dominant style in Europe. Renaissance art continued to be celebrated, however: The 16th-century Florentine artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari, author of the famous work "Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects" (1550), would write of the Loftier Renaissance as the culmination of all Italian art, a procedure that began with Giotto in the late 13th century.

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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/renaissance-art

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