Reviving Antiquity: An Introduction to Early Renaissance Art and Architecture
- 2 days ago
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Explore the brilliant new techniques of early Renaissance painting, the rise of Florence as a cultural centre and the powerful Medici family in this introduction to the early Renaissance! Part two in our Introduction to Art series.
In our last post, we introduced the art and architecture of medieval Europe. We saw that medieval art of the Byzantine style favoured devotional, Christian subjects, lavish use of gold and flattened, elongated figures who were often depicted face-on, to engage people with God. Gothic painting featured more naturalism, but it wasn’t until the Renaissance that artists tried to make their subjects look part of our physical world.
Paintings in the early Renaissance in Italy were painted with tempera (pigments were diluted in water and then mixed with egg yolk). Renaissance art aimed at more human-orientated depictions of reality, using techniques to create volume and spatial depth, such as linear perspective, foreshortening, and chiaroscuro. Artists also included emotion, gesture, lifelike faces and realistic landscapes in their work.
We saw that artists like Duccio had already started using some of these techniques in medieval Sienna. Ideas about drawing from real life had also been developed in the medieval period, for instance by Giotto di Bondone in his fresco cycles in the Arena Chapel in Padua, but it is in the Renaissance that these ideas were realised.
Introducing the Renaissance
The Early Renaissance is usually considered to span roughly 1300-1490, part of a wider period known as the Renaissance. Historians date the Renaissance from roughly 1300-1600. It began with the traumatic events of the Black Death, swept across Europe in the late 1340s, killing millions over the next two centuries, and the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), a series of battles between France and England that reduced the importance of castles and feudal lords.
It is a period that saw the rise in importance of Florence, the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of Constantinople, Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, Columbus’ discovery of the Bahamas, Marco Polo’s travels and the Peace of Augsburg. The Renaissance had some of history’s most innovative philosophers, like Erasmus, Thomas Moore and Machiavelli. The Renaissance was a time of extraordinary innovation in science and engineering, seen in the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Paracelsus and Leonardo da Vinci. Great works of literature of the Renaissance include those of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare. Religious history saw devotions, prayers, pilgrimages, mystical writings and the scandal of indulgences, the Reformation, the Council of Trent and the Wars of Religion.
Religion was still a feature of Renaissance life, and there were a number of important religious divides and debates in the period. The schism (division) of 1054 was the result of the Eastern rejection of Roman Catholic teaching about the universal jurisdiction of the pope and the theological disagreement about the nature of the Trinity. The Protestant Reformation of the 1500s saw Martin Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. The Council of Trent held 25 sessions between 1545 and 1563 and laid the foundations for the Catholic Counter-reformation and modern Catholicism. Following the Peace of Augsburg (1555), there was co-existence of Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire.
Additionally, the important philosophical movement of humanism shaped the Renaissance, with thinkers like Erasmus (1467-1536) and Thomas Moore leading the way. This was characterised by an interest in the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome, with a focus on human potential and civic virtue rather than religion (humanism did not say that religion should be neglected and humanists could be Protestant or Catholic). It originated in fourteenth century Italy with thinkers like Petrarch and by the fifteenth century had spread throughout Europe.
As scholars from the Metropolitan Museum of Art point out, medieval scholars had interpreted classical texts to clarify Christian theology (as Thomas Aquinas did with his work on Greek philosopher Aristotle), but thinkers and artists of the Renaissance took classical works as philosophical models of reason, intelligence, and taste to be applied in the material world.
The renewed interest in the classical world led Giorgio Vasari, in his The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects to coin the idea of a Renaissance (rebirth): “let us come to the clearer matters of their perfection, ruin, and restoration, or rather resurrection (Renaissance) whereof we will be able to discourse on much better grounds.”
The Rise of Florence
In the years before 1400, Florence had grown in importance as a political force, having become extremely wealthy due to manufacture, wool and banking. Leonardo Bruni’s Panegyric to Florence (1403) praised the city for its republicanism, beauty and civic virtues. It was in Florence where much of the art of the early Renaissance was made.
Giovanni de Medici created the Medici Bank in 1397. This allowed the Medici family to acquire huge amounts of wealth and power. Although the family’s status within Florence had its ups and downs, they were hugely influential on Renaissance Florence, because most high art at the time was made on commission in a system called patronage.
One of the greatest symbols of the Medici’s wealth was Michelozzo di Bartolomeo’s Palazzo Medici, commissioned in Florence by Cosimo de’Medici, in 1444. This had a view of some of the most important religious sites in the city, like the Duomo (cathedral), baptistry and San Marco monastery. It also imitated certain aspects of the fortress-like Palazzo Vecchio (town hall).
The stone at the bottom of Palazzo Medici uses rusticated masonry—rough, unpolished stone. There are also references to the classical world in the Palazzo’s Roman arches, Corinthian columns, egg-and-dart and dentil motifs and cornice (horizontal moulding on top of the building). There is even a courtyard inside the Palazzo, which is another Roman feature.
Palazzo Medici was a place of business as well as a family home and it was important for Cosimo de’Medici to associate himself with public life in Florence, as well as to display his wealth, power and patronage.
Cosimo commissioned sculptor Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (better known as Donatello) to create a bronze statue of David to display near the main entrance of his Palazzo. David, the biblical hero who slew the giant Goliath, was beloved in the Florentine Republic.
This sculpture is an example of the early Renaissance trend of freestanding nude sculpture—an ancient tradition with a Christian theme. David is portrayed as vulnerable, adolescent, with accurate anatomy. He is also in the contrapposto stance, with most of his weight on one leg, which is a stance associated with ancient sculpture. David’s sword, hat, and sandals are depicted in the Florentine fashion—so the sculpture is a typical Renaissance mix of ancient and contemporary influences.
Painting in the Early Renaissance
We can see a good example of early Renaissance art in Giotto di Bondone’s Ognissanti Madonna (1310), which abandons the Byzantine style.
Giotto also experimented with foreshortening (compressing or distorting a figure to create depth and distance). You can see this in the heads of the central figures, making the painting look more natural. He also uses elementary perspective on the steps and canopy and the throne projects toward the viewer. Giotto used white highlights on Mary’s lap and chest to give her a more physical presence. The angels each have a different expression.
Fra Filippo Lippi was one of the first Florentine artists to use perspective. His Madonna and Child with Stories from the Life of St. Anne (c.1406) is one of the earliest known tondos (circular painting or relief). It shows the Virgin holding the child with scenes from her life in the background. On the right are her parents, Anne and Joachim, and her birth is depicted on the left.
Lippi uses spatial perspective to create the illusion of depth and alternates open space with volume. Lippi created depth using a grid on which all lines meet at a vanishing point near the Virgin’s right eye. A beam of light from a window at the upper left also follows this perspective.
Fra Angelico was a Dominican monk who had renounced worldly possessions. He was active mainly in Florence, and painter to the Popes in Rome. His Annunciation fresco is in the Monastery of San Marco in Florence (supported by Cosimo de’ Medici), near to the monks’ cells. The frescos on these walls were there to help the monks contemplate the divine.
The Annunciation depicts the archangel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will bear the son of God. The figures are depicted among classical architecture and there is a hortus conclusus (an enclosed garden), a symbol of Mary’s virginity.
Fra Angelico illuminated the left of the columns, not the right, showing a consistency in his treatment of light; we also see this on Mary’s stool. The pointed arch above Mary’s head suggests that light is coming from the angel. Fra Angelico mixed silica in with the fresco to make the angel’s wings shimmer.
Some people think that Fra Angelico’s choice not to use strict linear perspective or detailed facial features would have helped the monks imagine the scene themselves.
In many ways, Fra Angelico’s work retains features of the medieval period. His The Virgin of Humility (c. 1433-1435) uses gold and blue lapis (a mineral mined in Afghanistan), which was common in medieval art, although Fra Angelico uses folds whereas material in medieval art wad depicted as flat.
Another artist who worked for the Medici family was Sandro Botticelli. Botticelli’s La Primavera (“Spring; 1477-1482) shows the Roman goddess Venus in her sacred grove.
This is typical of the Renaissance as it is a pagan subject—Venus; her son, Cupid; the Three Graces; Mercury (the messenger god); Zephyr (god of the wind); Chloris and Flora (goddesses of flowers and nature. Chloris was transformed into Flora by Zephyr).
Botticelli’s Three Graces in particular allows him to show the human body from three sides simultaneously, which was actually a popular technique in Roman statues.
Unlike other acclaimed paintings of the time, there is minimal use of linear perspective (although there is atmospheric perspective—mimicking the way the atmosphere scatters light—in the traces of landscape between the trees). Also unusual for the early Renaissance—but typical of Botticelli, the figures are elongated, weightless, and in unrealistic positions.
This is because Botticelli meant this as a meditation on different kinds of beauty rather than a true depiction of reality. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus evokes similar themes.
Find out about the High Renaissance in our next post in the series!
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Our History and Art History blog has a series on Art History! Dr. Orton has written posts on the botanical illustrations of Enlightenment entomologist Maria Sybilla Merian, Joris Hoefnagel’s botanical illuminations, Ingres’ portrait of Louis-Francois Bertin and the Art History of Siena! She also has a post on the philosophy of Wittgenstein and more philosophical topics on our Philosophy blog.
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