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The Early Renaissance
(Renaissance
Art Map)
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Matteo di
Giovanni
Vecchietta
Francesco
Squarcione
See also
COLLECTION:
Fra Filippo Lippi
Domenico Veneziano
Antonio
Pollaiuolo
Neroccio di Bartolomeo
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INTRODUCTION
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The Early Renaissance
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
The term Renaissance was first used by French art historians of the late 18th
century in reference to the reappearance of antique architectural forms on
Italian buildings of the early 16th century. The term was later expanded to
include the whole of the 15th and 16th centuries and, by extension, to include
sculpture, painting, and the decorative arts. There is still considerable
disagreement among art historians as to whether the term should be restricted to
a phenomenon that had its origins in Italy and then spread through western
Europe (the point of view taken here) or whether directly contemporary
developments north of the Alps, and especially in the Low Countries, should be
included on an equal footing with what was happening in Italy.
The controversies that raged after the publication of Jacob Burckhardt's
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (English translation, 1878) have
abated, and the time span of the Renaissance is generally accepted as the period
from roughly 1400 to about 1600, although certain geographical areas and certain
art forms require greater latitude. This period is characterized as a rebirth
or, better, the birth of attitudes and aims that have their closest parallel in
the art of classical antiquity. Classical literature and, less often, classical
painting were invoked as a justification for these new aims. The theoretical
writings on art from the period indicate that man was the dominant theme. In
religious painting, drama and emotion are expressed in human terms. From the
late Middle Ages the theme of the Madonna enthroned with Christ Child is
presented in an earthly setting peopled by mortals. This strongly humanistic
trend serves to explain, at least in part, the development of portraiture as an
independent genre and the ever-increasing number of profane, usually classical
mythological, subjects in the art of the Renaissance. The painting of
landscapes, as the earthly setting of man's activity, has its first modest
beginnings in this period.
The role of art and of the artist began to take on modern form during the
Renaissance.
Leon Battista Alberti's De pictura (Della pittura), a
treatise on the theory of painting, as opposed to the techniques
of preparing and applying colours, appeared in Florence in 1435-36. The
directions that art and art theory were to follow for the next 470 years are
already present in this little book. The artist is considered to be a creator
rather than a technician because he uses his intellect to measure, arrange, and
harmonize the elements of his creation. The intellectual activity of art is
demonstrated, by a series of comparisons, to be equivalent to that of the other
liberal arts. Influences such as
Alberti's book led to a new evaluation of the
artist, with painters and their works being sought after by the rulers of Europe
(Michelangelo
and Titian
were actually ennobled); the result was that great collections containing the
works of major and minor masters were formed. At the same time the artist slowly
began to free himself from the old guild system and to band together with his
colleagues, first in religious confraternities and later in academies of art,
which, in turn, were to lead to the modern art school. During the Renaissance,
practitioners of all the arts evolved from anonymous craftsmen to individuals,
often highly respected ones. Painting became more intellectual, sometimes to its
own disadvantage, and changed from serving as a vehicle for didacticism or
decoration to becoming a self-aware, self-assured form of expression.
For the sake of convenience, painting of the Renaissance is divided into three
periods, although there is considerable overlap depending upon the painter and
the place. The early Renaissance is reckoned to cover the period from about 1420
to 1495. The High Renaissance, or classic phase, is generally considered to
extend from 1495 to 1520, the death of
Raphael. The
period of Mannerism and what has more recently been called late Renaissance
painting is considered to extend from the 1520s to approximately 1600.
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Early Renaissance in Italy
The early Renaissance in Italy was essentially an experimental period
characterized by the styles of individual artists rather than by any
all-encompassing stylistic trend as in the High Renaissance or Mannerism. Early
Renaissance painting in Italy had its birth and development in Florence,
from which it spread to such centres as Urbino, Ferrara, Padua, Mantua, Venice,
and Milan after the middle of the century.
The political and economic climate of the Italian Renaissance
was often unstable; Florence, however, did at least provide an
intellectual and cultural environment that was extremely propitious for
the development of art. Although the direct impact of humanist literary
studies upon 15th-century painting has generally been denied, three
writers of the 15th century (Alberti,
Filarete,
and Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II) drew parallels between
the rebirth of classical learning and the rebirth of art. The literature
of antiquity revealed that in earlier times both works of art and
artists had been appreciated for their own intrinsic merits. Humanist
studies also fostered a tendency, already apparent in Florentine
painting as early as the time of
Giotto, to see the world
and everything in it in human terms. In the early 15th century
Masaccio emphasized the human drama and
emotions in his painting "The Expulsion" (Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria
del Carmine, Florence) rather than the theological implications of the
act portrayed.
Masaccio
in his "Trinity" (Santa Maria Novella, Florence) and
Fra
Angelico in his San Marco altarpiece seem to be much more
concerned with the human relations between the figures in the
composition than with the purely devotional aspects of the subject. In
the same way, the painter became more and more concerned with the
relations between the work of art and the observer. This latter aspect
of early 15th-century Florentine painting relies in great part on the
invention of the one-point perspective system, which derives in turn
from the new learning and the new vision of the world. The empirical
system devised through mathematical studies by the architect
Filippo Brunelleschi
was given theoretical form and universal application by
Alberti in De
pictura. In this system all parts of the painting bear a rational
relation to each other and to the observer, for the observer's height
and the distance he is to stand from the painting are controlled by the
artist in laying out his perspective construction. By means of this
system the microcosm of the painting and the real world of the observer
become visually one, and the observer participates, as it were, in what
he observes. To heighten the illusion of a painting as a window on the
world, the Italian artists of the early 15th century turned to a study
of the effects of light in nature and how to represent them in a
painting, a study of the anatomy and proportions of man, and a careful
observation of the world about them. It is primarily these
characteristics that separate early Renaissance painting from late
medieval painting in Italy.
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Florentine painters of the mid-15th
century
Masaccio
had no true followers or successors of equal stature, though there was a
group of other Florentine painters who were about the same age as
Masaccio
and who followed in his footsteps to a greater or lesser degree:
Fra Filippo Lippi,
Fra Angelico,
and
Paolo Uccello.
Fra Filippo Lippi
was a Carmelite monk who spent his youth and early manhood at Santa
Maria del Carmine, where
Masaccio's
work was daily before his eyes. His earliest datable work, the "Madonna
and Child" (1437) from Tarquinia Corneto, relies on the Madonna from the
Pisa altarpiece, but in his Christ Child
Fra Filippo
already reveals an earthiness and sweetness unlike anything by
Masaccio.
"The Madonna and Child with Two Angels" (Uffizi, Florence)--with its
urchin-angels, lumpy Christ Child, and elegant Madonna--is perhaps one
of his best-known late works; the placement of the Madonna before an
open window is one of the key sources for later Renaissance portraiture,
including
Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," while the
elegance and sweetness of the Madonna were to have their greatest
reflection in the work of
Fra Filippo Lippi's student,
Botticelli.
Born about the same time as
Masaccio,
Fra
Angelico was a Dominican monk who lived at Fiesole (just
outside Florence) and at San Marco in Florence. His earliest documented
work, the "Linaiuoli Altarpiece" (Museum of San Marco, Florence) of
1433, continues much that is traditional to medieval art, although the
male saints in the wings (side pieces of a composite painting, typically
a tripartite altarpiece) already reveal the influence of
Masaccio.
The altarpiece that he executed between 1438 and 1440 for the high altar
of San Marco is one of the landmarks of early Renaissance art. It is the
first appearance in Florence of the sacra conversazione, a
composition in which angels, saints, and sometimes donors occupy the
same space as the Madonna and Christ Child and in which the figures seem
to be engaged in conversation. In addition to inaugurating a new phase
of religious painting, the altarpiece reveals the influence of
Masaccio
in the sculptural treatment of the figures and an accurate awareness of
the perspective theories of painting expressed by
Alberti in his
treatise. At about the same date,
Fra
Angelico was commissioned to decorate the monks' cells in San
Marco. The nature of the commission--traditional devotional images whose
execution required assistants--apparently turned
Fra
Angelico toward the religious and didactic works that
characterize the end of his career; e.g., the Chapel of Nicholas
V in the Vatican.
Paolo Uccello's reputation as a practitioner of perspective
is such that his truly remarkable gifts as a decorator tend to be
overlooked. Studies of his extant works suggest that he was more
interested in medieval optics than in the rational perspective system of
Alberti and
Brunelleschi.
His earliest documented work, the "Sir John Hawkwood" fresco of 1436 in
Florence cathedral, is a decorative work of a very high order and one
that respects the integrity of the wall to which it is attached.
Uccello is perhaps best
known for the three panels depicting "The Battle of San Romano,"
executed about 1456 for the Medici Palace (now in the National Gallery,
London; the Louvre, Paris; and the Uffizi). The paintings were designed
as wall decoration and as such resemble tapestries:
Uccello
is concerned only with creating a small boxlike space for the action,
for he closes off the background with a tapestry-like interweaving of
men and animals. His primary concern is with the rhythmic disposition of
the elements of the composition across the surface, an emphasis that he
reinforces with the repetition of arcs and circles.
Uccello's
concern with the decorative and linear properties of painting had a
great impact on the cassone (chest) painters of Florence and found its
greatest reflection and refinement in the work of
Botticelli.
Masaccio's
greatest impact can be seen in the works of three younger painters,
Andrea del
Castagno,
Domenico Veneziano, and
Piero della Francesca.
Castagno
was the leader of the group. His "Last Supper" of about 1445, in the
former convent of Sant'Apollonia in Florence, reveals the influence of
Masaccio
in the sculptural treatment of the figures, the painter's concern with
light, and his desire to create a credible and rationally conceived
space. At the same time
Castagno betrays an almost pedantic interest
in antiquity, which roughly parallels a similar development in letters,
by the use of fictive marble panels on the rear wall and of sphinxes for
the bench ends, both of which are direct copies of Roman prototypes. In
the last years of his life,
Castagno's style changed abruptly; he adopted
a highly expressive emotionalism that paralleled a similar development
in the work of his contemporaries. His "The Trinity with Saints" in the
church of the Santissima Annunziata, Florence, was originally planned
with calm and balanced figures, as the underpainting reveals. In the
final painting, however, the figures, though sculpturally conceived,
project an agitation heightened by the emaciated figure of St. Jerome
and the radically conceived figure of the crucified Christ. The
optimism, rationality, and calm human drama of earlier Renaissance
painting in Florence were beginning to give way to a more personal,
expressive, and linear style.
One aspect of this new direction is met in the work of the
enigmatic
Domenico Veneziano, the
second of the three principal painters who looked to
Masaccio.
His name indicates that he was a Venetian, and it is known that he
arrived in Florence about 1438. He was associated with Castagno, and
perhaps
Fra Angelico, and helped to train the somewhat younger
Piero della Francesca.
His St. Lucy altarpiece of about 1445-50 (Uffizi) is an example of the
sacra conversazione genre and contains references to the painting
of
Masaccio
and the early 15th-century sculpture of the Florentine
Nanni di Banco. The colour, however, is
Domenico's
own and has no relation to the Florentine tradition. His juxtaposition
of pinks and light greens and his generally blond tonality point rather
to his Venetian origins. In the painting he has lowered the vanishing
point in order to make the figures appear to tower over the observer,
with the result that the monumentality of the painting is enhanced at
the expense of the observer's sense of participating in the painting.
Piero della Francesca received his early training in Florence but spent the
active part of his career outside the city in such centres as Urbino, Arezzo,
Rimini, and his native Borgo San Sepolcro, in Umbria. His "Flagellation of
Christ" (late 1450s), in the National Gallery of the Marches, Urbino, is a
summary of early 15th-century interest in mathematics, perspective, and
proportion. The calm sculptural figures are placed in clear, rational space and
bathed in a cool light. This gives them a monumental dignity that can only be
compared to early 5th-century-BC Greek sculpture. Much the same tendency can be
seen in Piero's great fresco cycle in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo.
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See also
COLLECTION:
Fra Filippo Lippi
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Fra Filippo Lippi
born c. 1406, , Florence
died Oct. 8/10, 1469, Spoleto, Papal States
Florentine painter inthe second generation of Renaissance artists.While
exhibiting thestrong influence of Masaccio (e.g., in “Madonna and
Child,” 1437) and Fra Angelico (e.g., in “Coronation of the Virgin,” c.
1445),his work achieves a distinctive clarity ofexpression. Legend and
tradition surround his unconventional life.
Life and works
After the death of both his father and mother, the young Filippo Lippi
stayed with an aunt in Florence for some years, and in 1421 he
pronounced the vows of a Carmelite monk at Sta. Maria del Carmine. The
Brancacci chapel of this monastery was at this time being decorated with
frescoes byMasaccio. These frescoes, which were to be among the most
glorious and influential paintings of the Renaissance, were Lippi's
first important contact with art.
In 1432 Lippi left the monastery after having painted some frescoes in
the church and in the cloister. According to the Renaissance biographer
Giorgio Vasari, who wrote a lively and fanciful profile of the painter,
Lippi was abducted with some companions by the Moors on the Adriatic,
held as a slave for 18 months, and then freed after he painted a
portrait of his owner. It is known that in 1434 the artist was at Padua.
None of the works executed in the period at Padua is known, but the
effect of his presence may be recognized in the paintings of others
there, such as Mantegna.
In 1437 Lippi returned to Florence, protected by the powerful Medici
family, and was commissioned to execute several works for convents and
churches.
The qualities he acquired during his years of travel are affirmed with
clarity in two works of 1437, immediately after he returned from Padua:
“The Virgin and Child Between SS. Frediano and Augustin” and the
“Madonna and Child.” In both of these altarpieces, the influence of
Masaccio is still evident, but it is absorbed into a different style,
having the pictorial effect of bas-relief, rendered more evident by
lines, so that it resembles the reliefs of the sculptors Donatello and
Jacopo della Quercia. In these works, the colour is warm, toned down
with shadings, approaching the limpid chromatics of his great
contemporary Fra Angelico. Still further testimony of Lippi's
development is the painting “The Annunciation,” formerly believed to be
a late work but now dated between 1441 and 1443. It is composed in a new
way, using the newly discovered effects of perspective and skillful
contrasts between colour and form; the suggested movement of the light
garments of the two frightened girls atthe door is rendered with such
sensitivity as to anticipate Botticelli.
A famous altarpiece of the same time, Lippi's well-known “Coronation of
the Virgin,” is a complex work crowded with figures. The celebrated
altarpiece is so sumptuous in appearance that it seems to have been
painted in competition with Angelico; it marks a historic point in
Florentine painting in its success in uniting as one scene the various
panels of a polyptych.
The altarpieces are characterized by a solemnity of composition that is
absent from the paintings in which he developed a typical motive of
15th-century Florentine art: the Madonna with the Child at her breast.
The masterpiece ofthese is “Madonna with Child and Scenes from the Life
of Mary,” a circular painting now in the Pitti Palace in Florence; it is
a clear and realistic mirror of life, transfigured in a most intimate
way, and it had a great effect on Renaissance art.
A second “Coronation of the Virgin,” executed about 1445, displays a
marked change in the style of Lippi—from the plastic values suggested by
his study of Masaccio to the serene chromatics of Angelico.
In 1442 Lippi had been made rector of the church of S. Quirico at
Legnaia. His life, however, became constantly more eventful, and
tradition has given him the reputation (borne out in great part by
documents) of a man dominated by love affairs and impatient of
methodical or tranquil conduct. His adventures culminated in 1456 in his
romantic flight from Prato, where he was painting in the convent of
thenuns of Sta. Margherita, with a young woman of the convent, Lucrezia
Buti. The Pope later gave permission to the former priest-painter to
marry her, and from this union was born a son, Filippo, called Filippino,
who was to be one of the most noted Florentine painters of the second
half of the 15th century.
The bright and active city of Prato, a short distance from Florence, was
the second home of Filippo Lippi. He returned to Prato often, staying
there for long periods, painting frescoes and altarpieces. Accompanied
by Fra Diamante, who had been his companion and collaborator since he
was a young man, Lippi began to redecorate the walls of the choir of the
cathedral there in 1452. He returned in 1463 and again in 1464,
remaining in the city this time until 1467. At the centre of his
activity in Prato stand the frescoes of the cathedral, with the four
Evangelists and scenes from the lives of St. John the Baptist and St.
Stephen. Perhaps the most solemn scene of the life and death of St.
Stephen is the burial; at the sides of the funeral bed of the saint
stand a crowd of prelates and illustrious persons in mourning, among
them Cardinal Carlo de' Medici, Fra Diamante, and the artist himself.
In 1467 Lippi and Fra Diamante left for Spoleto, where he had received a
commission, through the Medici family, for another vast undertaking: the
decorations and frescoes of the choir of the cathedral, which included
the “Nativity,” the “Annunciation,” the “Death of Mary,” and—in the
centre of the vault of the apse—the “Coronation.” These frescoes were
Lippi's final work; they were interrupted by his death, for which there
are two documented dates—in the monks' necrology of Sta. Maria del
Carmine in Florence and the archives of Spoleto. The Medici had a
splendid sepulchre, designed by his son, erected for him in the
cathedral of Spoleto.
Assessment
Posthumous judgments of Filippo Lippi were often coloured by the
traditions of his adventurous life. Moreover, his works have been
criticized from time to time for their borrowings from other painters;
nevertheless, it has also been recognized that his art was not
diminished but rather enriched and rendered more balanced by what he
took from Masaccio and Fra Angelico. He was constantly seeking the
techniques to realize his artistic vision and the new ideas that made
him one of the most appreciated artists of his time.
The 20th-century critic Bernard Berenson, who maintained that Lippi's
true place as an artist was among the “painters of genius,” also
described him as “a high-class illustrator,” intending by this to
underline the importance of expressive content and the presentation of
reality in his works. Later critics have recognized in Lippi a
“narrative” spirit that reflected the life of his time and translated
into everyday terms the ideals of the early Renaissance.
Valerio Mariani
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See also
COLLECTION:
Domenico Veneziano
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Domenico Veneziano
in full Domenico Di Bartolomeo Da Venezia (active by 1438—d. May 15,
1461, Florence [Italy]), early Italian Renaissance painter, one of the
founders of the 15th-century Florentine school of painting.
Domenico was probably first trained in the International Gothic manner
in Venice,where it is likely he saw paintings by northern European
artists. He settled in Florence about 1439 and, except for brief
periods, worked there until his death.
Two signed works by Domenico survive. The first, a much-damaged fresco
of the Virgin and Child enthroned and two damaged heads of saints
(National Gallery, London), formed part of the “Carnesecchi Tabernacle”
and may have been the first work Domenico executed in Florence. Its
accurate perspective and the sculptural quality of the figures suggest
he was influenced by Masaccio. The second work is an altarpiece for the
Church of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli, usually called the Magnoli, or St.
Lucy, altarpiece, which was probably painted about 1445. The central
panel, the Virgin and Child with four saints (Uffizi, Florence), is one
of the outstanding paintings produced in Florence in the middle of the
15th century. It is remarkable for the soft contours of its figures, its
fresh and delicate palette, its mastery of light, and its precise and
subtle space construction. The five panels of the predella are now
dispersed. “The Annunciation” (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Eng.) is
the most successful of Domenico's experiments in rendering outdoor
light: the pale morning light fills and defines the space of the
courtyard, and the coollight on the broad plane of white wall heightens
the sense of moment and loneliness in the two figures.
A tondo of the “Adoration of the Magi” (Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin) is of uncertain date. It combines gay colour with
careful realism and has an expansive and accurately drawn landscape
background.
Domenico's two profile portraits of Matteo and Michele Olivieri
(National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Rockefeller Collection,
New York City) are in the tradition of Pisanello.
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See also
COLLECTION:
Antonio
Pollaiuolo
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Antonio
Pollaiuolo
born Jan. 17, 1432/33, Florence
died Feb. 4, 1498, Rome
born 1443, Florence
died 1496, Rome
Pollaiuolo also spelled Pollajuolo , original names Antonio e Piero di
Jacopo d'Antonio Benci Italian brothers who,as sculptors, painters,
engravers,and goldsmiths, produced myriad works together under a
combined signature. The Pollaiuolo brothers had significant influence on
the development of Florentine art, and their workshop is regarded as one
of the most important in Florence during the late 15th century.
The brothers received the name of Pollaiuolo because their father was
alleged to have been a poulterer (from pollaio, “hen coop”), though he
was probablya goldsmith. Antonio learned goldsmithing and metalworking
from either his father or Andrea del Castagno. Piero probably learned
painting from Andrea del Castagno and became his brother's associate in
goldsmithing, painting, sculpture, and engraving.
After 1460 the two collaborated consistently, and the individual
contributions of each are frequently difficult to determine. Their
Florentine commissions included the altarpiece in the Chapel of the
Cardinal of Portugal in S. Miniato al Monte and the “Martyrdom of St.
Sebastian” (1475) for the Pucci Chapel in the church of SS. Annunziata.
In 1484 they went to Rome, where their works included the tomb of Pope
Sixtus IV (1484–93) in the Vatican Grottoes of St. Peter's and, in the
final years of their lives, the tomb of Pope Innocent VIII (1493–97),
also in St. Peter's.
Antonio Pollaiuolo is recognized individually as a superb draftsman
whose mastery of line is best exemplified in his renderings of the human
figure in motion; he was among the first artists to practice anatomical
dissection in the study of the human form. His contributions to
landscape representation were also significant. Notable works include
his engraving “Battle of the Nudes” (c. 1470; see ) and the bronze
statuette “Hercules and Antaeus” (c. 1475).
The individual works of Piero are regarded as less
artisticallysignificant than those of his brother. His principal works
werehis “Coronation of the Virgin,” an altarpiece painted in 1483 (in
the choir of the cathedral at San Gimignano); his “Three Saints,” an
altarpiece; and “Prudence” (both at the Uffizi Gallery).
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Late 15th-century Florentine painters
A hiatus occurred in Florentine painting around 1465-75. All
the older artists had died, and the men who were to dominate the second
half of the century were too young to have had prolonged contact with
them. Three of these younger artists,
Antonio
Pollaiuolo,
Sandro Botticelli, and
Andrea del
Verrocchio, began their careers as goldsmiths, which perhaps
explains the linear emphasis and sense of movement noticeable in
Florentine painting of the later 15th century.
As well as being a goldsmith,
Antonio
Pollaiuolo was a painter, sculptor, engraver, and architect.
His work indicates his fascination with muscles in action, and he is
said to have been the first artist to dissect the human body. In the
altarpiece "The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian" (1475; National Gallery,
London) he presents the archers from two points of view to demonstrate
their muscular activity. His painting (formerly in the Uffizi but now
lost) and small sculpture (Bargello, Florence) of "Hercules and Antaeus,"
like the engraving of "The Battle of the Nudes", depict struggle and
violent action. "The Rape of Deianira" (Yale University Art Gallery, New
Haven, Conn.) emphasizes yet another new element in Florentine painting,
the landscape setting, in this case a lovely portrait of the Arno Valley
with the city of Florence in the background.
A similar concern with moving figures, a sense of movement
across the surface of the panel, and landscape is found in the earlier
works of
Sandro Botticelli. In his well-known painting "The Primavera"
(Uffizi) he uses line in depicting hair, flowing draperies, or the
contour of an arm to suggest the movement of the figures. At the same
time the pose and gesture of the figures set up a rising and falling
linear movement across the surface of the painting.
Botticelli's
well-known paintings of the Madonna and Child reveal a sweetness that he
may have learned from
Fra Filippo Lippi, together with his own sense
of elegance and grace. A certain nervosity and pessimistic introspection
inherent in Botticelli's early works broke forth about 1490. His "Mystic
Nativity" of 1501 (National Gallery, London) is even, in one sense, a
denial of all that the Renaissance stood for. The ambiguities of space
and proportion are directed toward the unprecedented creation of a
highly personal and emotionally charged statement.
Florentine painters active in the closing decades of the 15th
century include
Andrea del Verrocchio, who is best known as
the master of
Leonardo da Vinci and
Perugino.
There was also
Filippino Lippi, who was apparently apprenticed to
Botticelli
when his father,
Fra Filippo Lippi, died; he painted a group of madonnas that
are easily confused with
Botticelli's early work. By 1485, however, he
had developed a somewhat nervous and agitated style that can be seen in
the highly expressive "Vision of St. Bernard" in the Badia, Florence.
His last works, such as the series of frescoes he painted in Santa Maria
Novella (1502), reveal a use of colour and distortion
of form that may have influenced the later development of Mannerism in
Florence a generation or so later. Another painter active at this time
was
Domenico Ghirlandajo, whose artistic career was spent as a
reporter of the Florentine scene. The series of frescoes on the "Life of
the Virgin" in Santa Maria Novella (finished 1490) can be viewed as the
life of a young Florentine girl as well as a religious painting. His art
was already old-fashioned in his own time, but he provided a large
number of Florentine artists, among them
Michelangelo, with training in the difficult art of fresco
painting.
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Matteo
di Giovanni
(b Borgo Sansepolcro, c. 1430; d Siena,
1495).
Italian painter. His large surviving oeuvre exemplifies the
development of Sienese painting in the 15th century from an
emphasis on line and pattern to an early interest in the
innovations of contemporary Florentine art. It has been
suggested that he was first influenced by Umbrian painting of
the mid-15th century, but he was already active in Siena by the
early 1450s. This was a decade of transition in the artistic
life of the city after the death of Sassetta, Domenico di
Bartolo and Pietro di Giovanni d’Ambrogio and before the influx
of new ideas during the pontificate of Pius II. Matteo is first
documented in Siena in 1452, when he was commissioned to gild an
angel carved in wood by Jacopo della Quercia for Siena
Cathedral. In 1457 he decorated the chapel of S Bernardino
there. The modest nature of these projects suggests that he was
still an apprentice. In this period he collaborated with
Giovanni di Pietro, the brother of il Vecchietta, which supports
the hypothesis that his early training was in the circle of il
Vecchietta.
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Matteo di Giovanni
Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome,
Saint Catherine of Alexandria,
and Angels
c. 1465/1470
Samuel H. Kress Collection
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Diffusion of the innovations of the
Florentine school
The discoveries and innovations of the early 15th century in Florence began
to diffuse to other artistic centres by mid-century. Siena painters in general
continued the traditions of the 14th century except for such artists as Matteo di
Giovanni, Neroccio di Bartolomeo, and
Vecchietta, who alone in that city
were to a certain degree under Florentine influence. In Ferrara,
Cosme Tura ,
Francesco
del Cossa, and
Ercole de' Roberti felt the influence of Florence as
transmitted by
Piero della Francesca. Only in Padua and Venice, however, did painters arise who
could actually challenge the preeminence of Florence.
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Matteo di Giovanni
The Apostle St Bartholomew
about 1480
Tempera on wood, 80,5 x 48 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
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Matteo di Giovanni
Madonna with Child and Two Angels
Tempera on wood, 66 x 76 cm
Christian Museum, Esztergom
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Matteo di Giovanni
St Jerome
1460s
Tempera on wood, 42 x 25 cm
Christian Museum, Esztergom
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Matteo di Giovanni
Madonna and Child with Angels and
Cherubim
c. 1460/1465
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
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Matteo di Giovanni
Christ Crowned with Thorns
1480-95
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Matteo di Giovanni
Saint Sebastian
1480-95
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Matteo di Giovanni
The Assumption of the Virgin
1474
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Vecchietta
(bapt Siena, 11 Aug 1410; d Siena, 6 June 1480).
Italian painter, sculptor, goldsmith and architect. He was
formerly believed to have been born c. 1412 in the Tuscan
town of Castiglione d’Orcia, but del Bravo has identified him
with the Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni who was baptized in Siena
in 1410. His name appears in a list of the members of the Siena
painters’ guild in 1428. From the evidence of later works he is
generally supposed to have been apprenticed to Sassetta, but his
early work has not been identified. Between c. 1435 and
1439 he executed for Cardinal Branda Castiglione (1350–1443) a
series of frescoes at Castiglione Olona, near Varese in
Lombardy. He has been considered an assistant of MASOLINO DA
PANICALE in this enterprise, but the scenes of the martyrdoms of
SS Lawrence and Stephen in the apse of the Collegiata, below
Masolino’s vault frescoes, show that Vecchietta’s closely packed
compositional style was already fully formed. He also painted
the frescoes (partially published by Bertelli) in the chapel of
the Cardinal’s palace in the town, depicting the Evangelists
(vault) and friezes of male and female saints (side walls).
Although abraded and fragmentary, they nevertheless indicate the
naturalistic effects of atmospheric lighting and foreshortening
that, more than any other Sienese painter of his day, he had
learnt from Masolino and the Florentine painters. In 1439, aided
by Sano di Pietro, he painted the figures of a wooden
Annunciation group (untraced) for the high altar of Siena
Cathedral.
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Vecchietta
Christ Resurrected
c. 1476
Bronze
Chiesa dell'Ospedale della Scala, Siena |
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Francesco
Squarcioneborn 1397, Padua, Carrara [now in
Italy]
died c. 1468, Padua
early Renaissance painter who founded the Paduan school.
Squarcione was associated in 1434 with the influential Tuscan
painter Fra Filippo Lippi during the latter's stay in Padua. His
two extant panel paintings, a Madonna in a museum of the
Prussian Cultural Property Foundation in Berlin and a polyptych
of 1449–52 in the Civic Museum of Padua, show the influence of
the Florentine early Renaissance style, especially that of the
sculptor Donatello, who worked in Padua from 1443 to 1453. The
only record of his mature style is contained in a cycle of
frescoes of scenes from the life of St. Francis on the exterior
of San Francesco at Padua (c. 1452–66). Such compositions as
canbe reconstructed confirm the traditional view of Squarcione
as one of the channels through which the early Renaissance style
of Florence diffused in Padua. According to Scardeone (the prime
source for knowledge of the painter's work), Squarcione had 137
pupils. Among the artists he taught or influenced were Andrea
Mantegna, Marco Zoppo, Giorgio Schiavone, and Cosme Tura.
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Vecchietta
Resurrection
1472
Bronze
Frick Collection, New York |
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Andrea Mantegna was influenced by the sculpture
executed by Donatello
in Padua, the art of antiquity around him, and the teaching of his master,
Francesco Squarcione. The frescoes he completed in 1455 in
the Ovetari Chapel of the Eremitani Church in Padua (destroyed in World War II)
grew out of the traditions of Florence, traditions to which
Mantegna
gave his own special stamp, however. His space is like that devised by the
Florentines except that he lowers the horizon line to give his figures greater
monumentality. His sculptural and often stony figures descend from
Donatello
and from ancient Roman models. His use of decorative details from antiquity
reveals the almost archaeological training that he had received from
Squarcione. By 1460
Mantegna
had moved to Mantua, where he became court painter for the Gonzaga family,
executing a number of family portraits and pictures depicting ancient myths. His
altarpieces, interpretation of antiquity, and engravings made him preeminent in northern Italy and a strong influence on his contemporaries and successors.
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Francesco Squarcione
Virgin and Child
c. 1460
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
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The Bellini family of Venice forms one of the great dynasties
in painting. The father,
Jacopo,
who had been a student of
Gentile da Fabriano,
adopted a style that owed something to both that prevailing in the Low
Countries and that in Italy; he also compiled an important sketchbook
(British Museum; Louvre). A daughter of
Jacopo's
was married to
Mantegna,
and the two sons -
Gentile and, more
especially,
Giovanni Bellini--dominated Venetian painting
until the first decade of the 16th century.
Gentile
followed more closely in his father's footsteps and is perhaps best
known for his portraits of doges and sultans of Constantinople and his
large paintings of Venetian religious processions.
Giovanni early fell under the influence of
Mantegna.
The paintings each executed of "The Agony in the Garden" (both in the
National Gallery, London) indicate how close they were stylistically and
also their common reliance on
Jacopo Bellini's
sketchbook. At an unknown point in his career,
Giovanni was in addition introduced to Flemish painting.
These different influences permitted him about 1480 to evolve a highly
personal style that greatly influenced the work of subsequent Venetian
painters. This style consists above all of a softly diffused Venetian
light that can only be achieved in an oil medium.
Giovanni's work in the traditional medium for painting on
panels--egg tempera--retains the crispness of contour and tightness of
composition that the medium seems to require. The oil paintings,
however, emphasize by their use of light the textures of the objects
represented, softening the outlines and creating an elegiac mood. The
"Madonna and Child with Saints" of 1488, in Santa Maria dei Frari,
Venice, derived its composition from the Florentine sacra
conversazione and two earlier altarpieces by
Mantegna
in which the Madonna and attendant saints are located in a unified but
compartmentalized architectural setting.
Giovanni's greatest innovation is the way in which the soft
light suffuses the entire space, an effect particularly remarkable where
it strikes the golden half dome of the apse and the ample draperies of
the figures, which seem almost palpable. The "Enthroned Madonna from San
Giobbe" (Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia) of about the same date goes
even further in defining a composition and a way of painting that
endured in Venice for centuries. The painting of "St. Francis in
Ecstasy" (c. 1480; Frick Collection, New York City) adds yet
another dimension to
Giovanni's art. The observer's eye tends to
wander from the saint and his cell into the distant landscape, for
Giovanni was one of the greatest 15th-century masters of
landscape painting. Figures, animals, trees, and buildings provide a
series of guideposts leading the eye back into space.
Giovanni influenced several Venetian painters:
Lorenzo Lotto
and Vittore
Carpaccio and also, more importantly,
Giorgione
and Titian.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
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