1.

Gothic
Is an art movement that developed according to Roman art in France in the 12th to
15th centuries, developing at the same time as Gothic architecture. The main
components include sculpture, painting, painted glass, frescoes and manuscript
decoration. The first Gothic works were sculptures, on the walls of monasteries or
cathedrals. Christian statues often reflect biblical stories.

This period is divided into Early Gothic (1150-1250), High Gothic (1250-1375) and
International Gothic (1375-1450). Primarily an overtly Christian art form. It initially
flourished in the Ile de France and the surrounding area during the period 1150-1250.
And then spread throughout Northern Europe.

Gothic art, is exclusively religious art. This art gave strong tangible force to the growing
strength of the Church in Rome.

This not only inspired the public, as well as secular leaders, but also established a
strong link between religion and the arts. It was one of the cornerstones of the Italian
Renaissance (1400-1530). Among the famous medieval artists in the Gothic style are
Giovanni Pisano and Simone Martini of the Sienese School of Painting.

Duccio
Duccio di Buoninsegna was born in Tuscan city, Italy between 1255-1260. Like some
painters of 700 years ago, not many details have been saved about his life. However,
compared with his contemporaries (including some members of the Sienese School of
painting, founded by Guido da Siena (after 1250) and Coppo di Marcovaldo (1225-
1274), Duccio received more the most interest, therefore, his biography is also recorded
and saved more than his contemporaries.
This work was commissioned for a
huge altarpiece for the Cathedral
of Siena. This nativity scene is
from the predella, or platform on
which the altar stands. The
central panel shows Mary—
rendered larger than the other
figures to show her importance—
reclining in the safety of the
manger walls. The vibrant colors
of red, blue, and purple against a
glowing golden backdrop create a
sensitive and reverent composition. The prophets Isaiah (left) and Ezekiel (right) hold scrolls
that portend the birth of Christ.

There are three characteristics that help define

Duccio's style: attention to detail, delicate and
delicate brushstrokes, combined with
humanitarianism. All three characteristics appear
throughout his works, most prominently in the
masterpiece Maestà, the most successful work of
the artist's career.

Duccio completed Maestà in 1308 with the

original purpose of decorating the Cathedral of
Siena. Maestà is essentially a relief that tells a
biblical story through many individual paintings.
In the center of the bas-relief is the image of
Mary holding her child Jesus, surrounded by
many saints and angels, including the patron
saint of Siena. The remaining picture boxes in
turn depict the image of the Virgin Mary next to Jesus' childhood and maturity.

Although Maestà is both Byzantine (Greek Religious Painting during the Eastern Roman Empire)
and contemporary Italian Painting, it is Duccio's unique approach that makes the work
successful, help us understand a little more about the painting style of the talented artist.

Duccio's style

Elaboration in every detail

Duccio's work is always full of details. Artists often

use glue colors for small and intricate details. For
example, in the painting Maestà, Duccio depicts
every little detail such as the facial expressions of
each saint, the folds of each character's clothes, or
most prominently, the intricate and dense
decorations on the throne. of Mother Mary.

In addition, Duccio also uses different materials for

each detail. Similar to Byzantine painting, he used
gold leaf to adorn the clothes and jewelry of each
character.
 Unlike Byzantine painting, Duccio did not use thick
brushstrokes. Instead, he used palettes of color,
light, and shadow to accentuate the meandering
lines. This approach results in thin and soft
strokes, as in Maestà.

It can be said that Duccio's soft brushstrokes

signaled a great change in Italian painting. “During
the Middle Ages, Italy maintained political relations
and cultural exchanges with the Roman Empire,
and Italian painting reflected this: stylized figures
stand out against a golden background, with ch
The garment consists of many folds,” explains
Phaidon Publishing in his book The Art Museum.
“Around the end of the 13th century, the element
of depth became more important in painting,
painters began to depict characters with more
emotion and move ment than before.”

Cimabue
Cimabue (c. 1240 – 1302) also known as Cenni di Pepo or Cenni di Pepi was
an Italian painter and designer of mosaics from Florence.
Although heavily influenced by Byzantine models, Cimabue is generally regarded as one
of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-
Byzantine style. While medieval art then was scenes and forms that appeared
relatively flat and highly stylized, Cimabue's figures were depicted with more advanced
lifelike proportions and shading than other artists
of his time. According to Italian painter and
historian Giorgio Vasari, Cimabue was the
teacher of Giotto, the first great artist of the
Italian Proto-Renaissance. However, many
scholars today tend to discount Vasari's claim by
citing earlier sources that suggest otherwise.

The Crucifix by Cimabue at Santa Croce (c. 1265) is

a very large wooden crucifix, painted
in distemper, attributed to the Florentine painter and mosaicist Cimabue, one of
two large crucifixes attributed to him. The work was commissioned by the Franciscan
friars of Santa Croce and is built from a complex arrangement of five main and eight
ancillary timber boards. It is one of the first Italian artworks to break from the late
medieval Byzantine style and is renowned for its technical innovations
and humanistic iconography.
The gilding and monumentality of the cross link it to the Byzantine tradition. Christ's
static pose is reflective of this style, while the work overall incorporates newer,
more naturalistic aspects. The work presents a lifelike and physically imposing
depiction of the passion at Calvary. Christ is shown nearly naked: his eyes are
closed, his face lifeless and defeated. His body slumps in a position contorted by
prolonged agony. A graphic portrayal of human suffering, the painting is of seminal
importance in art history and has influenced painters
from Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Velázquez to Francis Bacon. The work has
been in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence since the late thirteenth century,
and at the Museo dell'Opera Santa Croce since restoration following flooding of the
Arno in 1966. It remains in poor condition despite conservation efforts.
The work is considered to be from around
1280, thus preceding the Santa Trinita
Maestà. It is also stylistically earlier to that
work, being painted without pseudo-
perspective, and having the angels around
the Virgin simply placed one above the other,
rather than being spatially arranged. The
throne is similar to the Maestà painted by
Cimabue in the Basilica of San Francesco di
Assisi (1288–1292). This work established a
new canon for the Madonna with Child
theme, which was subsequently used by
other painters, such as Duccio di
Buoninsegna in his Rucellai Maestà. The
painter Cimabue also collaborated closely
with contemporary artists. He is famous for
painting Maestà, originally displayed on the
altar in the church of Santa Trinità, Florence.
The word Maestà means "majesty", to draw
the Mother and the Son, the Mother sitting
on the throne, the saints standing around.
The Maestà, Cimabue went far beyond the
rigid style of the Byzantine iconography.
Arrange the character's costumes for
softness, along with the application of three-dimensional open space when inlaid on the
throne of the Mother and the Son. It's something new and exciting.
 The Enthroned Madonna with
Baby Jesus on her lap is
flanked by two highly
venerated saints, Francis of
Assisi (1181c. - 1226) and
Dominic de Guzmán (1170-
1221), founders of the
religious orders that bear
their names. Both saints
wear robes typically
associated with the two
orders. Saint Francis, whose
hands and feet are marked
by stigmata, wears a brown
habit, while Saint Dominic
wears a white tunic under a
black cloak. Christ Child is
dressed like an eminent man
of antiquity and gives a blessing as he looks at Saint Francis, who humbly lowers his
gaze while crossing his hands over his chest, a gesture indicating his submission to the
divine will. The Assisian saint takes the place of honour to the right of Mary and Jesus.
The throne is depicted using oblique projection. This technique was used by painters in
the second half of the thirteenth century to depict three-dimensionality and to create
depth. The material concreteness of the throne is emphasised by the two angels resting
their hands on its back. The painting is attributed to Cimabue, a painter also mentioned
in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Cimabue helped guide painting towards naturalism, paving
the way for his pupil, Giotto. However, there is no consensus on this attribution – which
is also hindered by the painting’s poor state of conservation. The work could therefore
be attributed to one of Cimabue’s collaborators or followers, perhaps the painter of the
frescoes of St. Michael in the Velluti Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce in
Florence.Before appearing in the Contini Bonacossi collection, the painting belonged to
Edward Hutton’s collection in London. Hutton was an English writer and lover of Italy,
where he lived for a long time.

Sculpture
Sculpture was an important element of Gothic architecture. Its intent was present the
stories of the Bible in vivid and understandable fashion to the great majority of the
faithful who could not read.[100] The iconography of the sculptural decoration on the
façade was not left to the sculptors. An edict of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787
had declared: "The composition of religious images is not to be left to the inspiration of
artists; it is derived from the principles put in place by the Catholic Church and religious
tradition. Only the art belongs to the artist; the composition belongs to the Fathers.

Gallery of Kings and Saints

on the façade of Wells
Cathedral (13th century)

Monsters and devils

tempting Christians - South
portal of Chartres
Cathedral (13th century)
Amiens Cathedral, tympanum detail – "Christ in majesty" (13th century)

2. Renaissance art
(1350 – 1620 AD) is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the period of
European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style
in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred
in philosophy, literature, music, science, and technology. Renaissance art took as
its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, perceived as the noblest of ancient
traditions, but transformed that tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of
Northern Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Along
with Renaissance humanist philosophy, it spread throughout Europe, affecting
both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic
sensibilities. For art historians, Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from
the medieval period to the Early Modern age.
The body of art, painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature identified as
"Renaissance art" was primarily produced during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in
Europe under the combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of
classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man. Scholars no longer believe
that the Renaissance marked an abrupt break with medieval values, as is suggested by
the French word renaissance, literally meaning "rebirth". In many parts of Europe, Early
Renaissance art was created in parallel with Late Medieval art.
The Renaissance was a cultural movement spanning the 14th to 17th centuries,
beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and then spreading to the rest of Europe. The
term 'renaissance' comes from the French word for 'rebirth'. The defining concept of the
Renaissance was humanism. Humanism was a distinct movement because it broke with
the medieval tradition of pious religious motives to create art or literary work.
Renaissance humanism was a collection of Greek and Roman teachings, practiced by
scholars, writers, and civic leaders who were known as humanists. literature of the
Renaissance. During the Renaissance, secularism manifested itself as people showed a
greater interest in human achievements and how these achievements responded to
their world. In addition, secularism, in the Renaissance, manifested itself in the
development of humanism, when people began to pay more attention to the cultural
achievements of people and the ability to perform. them in this world.

Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci[b] (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an
Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a
painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.[3] While
his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known
for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects,
including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology.
Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance
humanist ideal,[4] and his collective works comprise a contribution to later
generations of artists matched only by that of his younger
contemporary, Michelangelo.
The Mona Lisa bears a strong resemblance to
many Renaissance depictions of the Virgin
Mary, who was at that time seen as an ideal for
womanhood. The woman sits markedly upright
in a "pozzetto" armchair with her arms folded, a
sign of her reserved posture. Her gaze is fixed
on the observer. The woman appears alive to an
unusual extent, which Leonardo achieved by his
method of not drawing outlines (sfumato). The
soft blending creates an ambiguous mood
"mainly in two features: the corners of the
mouth, and the corners of the eyes".
The depiction of the sitter in three-quarter
profile is similar to late 15th-century works
by Lorenzo di Credi and Agnolo di
Domenico del Mazziere. Zöllner notes that
the sitter's general position can be traced back
to Flemish models and that "in particular the
vertical slices of columns at both sides of the
panel had precedents in Flemish
portraiture."[40] Woods-Marsden cites Hans
Memling's portrait of Benedetto Portinari (1487) or Italian imitations such
as Sebastiano Mainardi's pendant portraits for the use of a loggia, which has the
effect of mediating between the sitter and the distant landscape, a feature missing from
Leonardo's earlier portrait of Ginevra de' Benci.
The painting was one of the first portraits to depict the sitter in front of an imaginary
landscape, and Leonardo was one of the first painters to use aerial perspective. The
enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open loggia with dark
pillar bases on either side. Behind her, a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains.
Winding paths and a distant bridge, giving only the slightest indications of human
presence. Leonardo has chosen to place the horizon line not at the neck, as he did
with Ginevra de' Benci, but on a level with the eyes, thus linking the figure with the
landscape and emphasizing the mysterious nature of the painting. The bridge in the
background was identified by Silvano Vincenti as the four-arched Romito-bridge
from Etruscan-Roman times near Laterina, Arezzo over the Arno river.[44] Other
bridges with similar arches suggested as possible locations had more arches.
Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes, although Vasari describes the
eyebrows in detail. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra-high
resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona Lisa was originally painted
with eyelashes and eyebrows, but that these had gradually disappeared over time,

perhaps as a result of overcleaning. Cotte discovered that the painting had been

reworked several times, with changes made to the size of the face and the direction of
gaze. He also found that in one layer the subject was depicted wearing numerous
hairpins and a headdress adorned with pearls which was later scrubbed out and
overpainted.
The Last Supper is the final meal that, in the Gospel accounts, Jesus shared with
his apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. The Last Supper is commemorated
by Christians especially on Holy Thursday. The Last Supper provides the scriptural
basis for the Eucharist, also known as "Holy Communion" or "The Lord's Supper".
The First Epistle to the Corinthians contains the earliest known mention of the Last
Supper. The four canonical gospels state that the Last Supper took place in the week
of Passover, days after Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and before Jesus
was crucified on Good Friday. During the meal, Jesus predicts his betrayal by one
of the apostles present, and foretells that before the next morning, Peter will
thrice deny knowing him.
The three Synoptic Gospels and the First Epistle to the Corinthians include the
account of the institution of the Eucharist in which Jesus takes bread, breaks it and
gives it to those present, saying "This is my body given to you". The Gospel of John
tells of Jesus washing the feet of the apostles, giving the new
commandment "to love one another as I have loved you", and has a
detailed farewell discourse by Jesus, calling the apostles who follow his teachings
"friends and not servants", as he prepares them for his departure.
Some scholars have looked to the Last Supper as the source of early Christian
Eucharistic traditions. Others see the account of the Last Supper as derived from 1st-
century eucharistic practice as described by Paul in the mid-50s
The Lady with an Ermine is a portrait painting widely attributed to the Italian
Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. Dated to c. 1489–1491, the work is painted
in oils on a panel of walnut wood. Its subject is Cecilia Gallerani, a mistress
of Ludovico Sforza ("Il Moro"), Duke of Milan; Leonardo was painter to the Sforza
court in Milan at the time of its execution. It is the second of only four surviving
portraits of women painted by Leonardo, the others being Ginevra de' Benci, La
Belle Ferronnière and the Mona Lisa
The subject has been identified with reasonable
certainty as Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of
Leonardo's Milanese employer, Ludovico
Sforza. She looks to her left at something out of
frame, toward the light, where the
biographer Walter Isaacson suggests Ludovico
is. Following the marriage of Isabella of Aragon,
Duchess of Milan and Gian Galeazzo Sforza,
her 'Spanish style' dress would have been
particularly fashionable. She has a silk sbernia on
over her left shoulder, though Leonardo has
simplified the traditional manner of wearing—
where it would be draped over both shoulders—
potentially to avoid too much complication in the
various elements of the painting. Her right shoulder
shows a ornately embroidered gold band over
a velvet dress. Again, Leonardo has simplified the
design, by having the left shoulder band covered by the sbernia, so as to not take away
from the animal's detailed head. Her coiffure, known as a coazone, confines her hair
smoothly to her head with two bands of it bound on either side of her face and a long
plait at the back. Her hair is held in place by a fine gauze veil with a woven border of
gold-wound threads, a black band, and a sheath over the plait.
As in many of Leonardo's paintings, the composition comprises a pyramidic spiral and
the sitter is caught in the motion of turning to her left, reflecting Leonardo's lifelong
preoccupation with the dynamics of movement. The three-quarter profile portrait was
one of his many innovations. Il Moro's court poet, Bernardo Bellincioni, was the first
to propose that Cecilia was poised as if listening to an unseen speaker. This work in
particular shows Leonardo's expertise in painting the human form. The artist painted
Cecilia's outstretched hand with a lot of detail, including the shape of each fingernail,
the lines around her knuckles, and even the way the tendon in her bent finger moved
as it bent.
The animal resting in Cecilia's arms is usually known as an ermine. Commentators
have noted that it is too large to be an actual ermine, but its size is explained by its
being of a largely symbolic nature. The art historian Luke Syson notes that
"Naturalism is not the point here; Leonardo has created a mythical beast, the composite
of several animals he drew at this time". There are several interpretations of the
ermine's significance and they are often used in combination with each other. In its
winter coat, the ermine was a traditional symbol of purity and moderation, as it was
believed it would face death rather than soil its white coat.

Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445[1] – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro
Botticelli , was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous
reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered by the Pre-
Raphaelites who stimulated a reappraisal of his work. Since then, his paintings have
been seen to represent the linear grace of late Italian Gothic and some Early
Renaissance painting, even though they date from the latter half of the Italian
Renaissance period.
In addition to the mythological subjects for which he is best known today, Botticelli
painted a wide range of religious subjects (including dozens of renditions of
the Madonna and Child, many in the round tondo shape) and also some portraits. His
best-known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera, both in
the Uffizi in Florence, which holds many of Botticelli’s works. Botticelli lived all his life
in the same neighbourhood of Florence; his only significant times elsewhere were the
months he spent painting in Pisa in 1474 and the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1481–82.

Primavera
Primavera (meaning
"Spring"), is a large panel
painting in tempera pain
t by the Italian
Renaissance painter San
dro Botticelli made in the
late 1470s or early 1480s
(datings vary). It has been
described as "one of the
most written about, and
most controversial paintings in the world", and also "one of the most popular paintings
in Western art".
The painting depicts a group of figures from classical mythology in a garden, but no
story has been found that brings this particular group together. Most critics agree that
the painting is an allegory based on the lush growth of Spring, but accounts of any
precise meaning vary, though many involve the Renaissance Neoplatonism which
then fascinated intellectual circles in Florence. The subject was first described
as Primavera by the art historian Giorgio Vasari who saw it at Villa Castello, just
outside Florence, by 1550.
Although the two are now known not to be a pair, the painting is inevitably discussed
with Botticelli's other very large mythological painting, The Birth of Venus, also in the
Uffizi. They are among the most famous paintings in the world, and icons of
the Italian Renaissance; of the two, the Birth is even better known than
the Primavera. As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large
scale, they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity.
The history of the painting is not certainly known; it may have been commissioned by
one of the Medici family, but the certainty of its commission is unknown. It draws
from a number of classical and Renaissance literary sources, including the works of the
Ancient Roman poet Ovid and, less certainly, Lucretius, and may also allude to a
poem by Poliziano, the Medici house poet who may have helped Botticelli devise the
composition. Since 1919 the painting has been part of the collection of the Uffizi
Gallery in Florence, Italy.

The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus is
a painting by the Italian
artist Sandro Botticelli,
probably executed in the mid
1480s. It depicts the
goddess Venus arriving at the
shore after her birth, when she
had emerged from the sea
fully-grown (called Venus
Anadyomene and often
depicted in art). The painting is
in the Uffizi
Gallery in Florence, Italy.
Although the two are not a
pair, the painting is inevitably discussed with Botticelli's other very large mythological
painting, the Primavera, also in the Uffizi. They are among the most famous paintings
in the world, and icons of the Italian Renaissance; of the two, the Birth is better
known than the Primavera. As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a
very large scale they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical
antiquity, as was the size and prominence of a nude female figure in the Birth. It used
to be thought that they were both commissioned by the same member of the Medici
family, but this is now uncertain.
They have been endlessly analysed by art historians, with the main themes being: the
emulation of ancient painters and the context of wedding celebrations (generally
agreed), the influence of Renaissance Neo-Platonism (somewhat controversial), and
the identity of the commissioners (not agreed). Most art historians agree, however, that
the Birth does not require complex analysis to decode its meaning, in the way that
the Primavera probably does. While there are subtleties in the painting, its main
meaning is a straightforward, if individual, treatment of a traditional scene from Greek
mythology, and its appeal is sensory and very accessible, hence its enormous
popularity
The painting is large, but slightly smaller than the Primavera, and where that is a panel
painting, this is on the cheaper support of canvas. Canvas was increasing in
popularity, perhaps especially for secular paintings for country villas, which were
decorated more simply, cheaply and cheerfully than those for city palazzi, being
designed for pleasure more than ostentatious entertainment.
The painting is on two pieces of canvas, sewn together before starting, with
a gesso ground tinted blue. There are differences to Botticelli's usual technique,
working on panel supports, such as the lack of a green first layer under the flesh areas.
There are a number of pentimenti revealed by modern scientific testing. The Hora
originally had "low classical sandals", and the collar on the mantle she holds out is an
afterthought. The hair of Venus and the flying couple was changed. There is heavy use
of gold as a pigment for highlights, on hair, wings, textiles, the shell and the landscape.
This was all apparently applied after the painting was framed. It was finished with a
"cool gray varnish", probably using egg yolk.
As in the Primavera, the green pigment – used for the wings of Zephyr, Zephyr's
companion, and the leaves of the orange trees on the land – has darkened considerably
with exposure to light over time, somewhat distorting the intended balance of colours.
Parts of some leaves at the top right corner, normally covered by the frame, have been
less affected. The blues of the sea and sky have also lost their brightness.

Venus and Mars 

Venus and Mars (or Mars and Venus) is a panel painting of about 1485 by the Italian
Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. It shows the Roman gods Venus, goddess
of love, and Mars, god of war, in an allegory of beauty and valour. The youthful and
voluptuous couple recline in a forest setting, surrounded by playful baby satyrs.
The painting was probably intended to commemorate a wedding, set into panelling or a
piece of furniture to adorn the bedroom of the bride and groom, possibly as part of a
set of works. This is suggested by the wide format and the close view of the figures. It
is widely seen as representation of an ideal view of sensuous love. It seems likely that
Botticelli worked out the concept for the painting, with its learned allusions, with an
advisor such as Poliziano, the Medici house poet and Renaissance
Humanist scholar.
The exact date of Venus and Mars is not known, but the National Gallery's dated the
painting to "c. 1485" in 2017. Scholar Ronald Lightbown dates it to "probably around
1483", while art historians Leopold and Helen Ettlinger date the painting to "the latter
half of the 1480s". All dates depend on analysis of the style, as the painting has not
been convincingly tied to a specific date or event, such as a wedding. It likely comes a
few years after the Primavera and Pallas and the Centaur (both about 1482) and
around the time of The Birth of Venus (c. 1486). It is the only one of these paintings
not in the Uffizi in Florence; it has been in the National Gallery in London since
1874.

Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known
as Michelangelo , was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High
Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models
from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's
creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an
archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo
da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and
reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century.
He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.
Michelangelo achieved fame early; two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David,
were sculpted before the age of thirty. Although he did not consider himself a painter,
Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art:
the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The Last
Judgment on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian
Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio
da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo
transformed the plan so that the western end was finished to his design, as was the
dome, with some modification, after his death.
Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was
alive. In fact, three biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them,
by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist
living or dead, and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three."
In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one").His
contemporaries often admired his terribilità—his ability to instill a sense of awe in
viewers of his art. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate[9] the expressive
physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism, a short-lived
movement in Western art following the High Renaissance.

Pietà
The Madonna della Pietà (1498–1499)
informally known as La Pietà is a Roman
Catholic dolorous image of Jesus and Mary
at Mount Golgotha representing the "Sixth
Sorrow" of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a
key work of Italian Renaissance
sculpture carved by Michelangelo
Buonarroti, now enshrined within Saint
Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. It is the first
of a number of works of the same subject by
the Florentine artist.
The statue was originally commissioned for
a Cardinal of France, Jean Bilhères de
Lagraulas, a serving French ambassador in
Rome. The Carrara marble sculpture was
made for the cardinal's funeral monument, but was moved to its current location, the
first chapel on the north side after the entrance of the basilica, in the 18th century. It is
the only piece Michelangelo ever signed.
The sculpture captures the moment when Jesus, taken down from the cross, is given to
his mother Mary. Mary looks younger than Jesus; art historians believe Michelangelo
was inspired by a passage in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy: "O virgin mother,
daughter of your Son...your merit so ennobled human nature that its divine Creator did
not hesitate to become your creature" (Paradiso, Canto
XXXIII). Michelangelo's aesthetic interpretation of the Pietà is unprecedented in
Italian sculpture[3] because it balances the Renaissance ideals of classical
beauty with naturalism.
Pope Urban VIII granted the venerated Marian image a Pontifical decree
of canonical coronation via his Papal bull "Domina Coronatum Est" signed and
notarized on 14 August 1637 and granted to its patronal donor, Lord Ascanio Sforza y
Pallavicini and Canon priest of the Vatican Chapter, Monsignor Ugo Ubaldini. The
levitating diadem was manufactured by the Italian artisan, Fantino Taglietti, who
charged 564 Italian scudo coins at the time. The official rite of coronation was
executed on 31 August 1637. The cherubic angels were added in 1713 by his
descendant, later relocated to the "Chapel of the Holy Choir" within the basilica in 1749.
The image was vandalized on Pentecost Sunday of 1972 by a mentally disturbed man
who infiltrated the unsecured altar at the time.

David
David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture,
created from 1501 to 1504 by
the Italian artist Michelangelo. With a height of 5.17-
metre (17 ft 0 in), the David was the first
colossal marble statue after antiquity, a precedent
for the 16th century and beyond. David was originally
commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets
to be positioned along the roofline of the east end
of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in the
public square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria,
the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was
unveiled on 8 September 1504. In 1873, the statue was
moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, and
in 1910 replaced at the original location by a replica.
The biblical figure David was a favoured subject in the
art of Florence.[1] Because of the nature of the figure
it represented, the statue soon came to symbolize the
defence of civil liberties embodied in the Republic of
Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all
sides by more powerful rival states and by
the hegemony of the Medici family.

Dying Slave

The Dying Slave is a sculpture by the Italian

Renaissance artist Michelangelo. Created between
1513 and 1516, it was to serve with another figure,
the Rebellious Slave, at the tomb of Pope Julius II. It is a marble figure 2.15
metres (7' 4") in height, and is held at the Louvre, Paris.
In 1976 the art historian Richard Fly wrote that it "suggests that moment when life
capitulates before the relentless force of dead matter". However, in a recent scholarly
volume entitled The Slave in European Art, Charles Robertson discusses the Dying
Slave in the context of real slavery in Italy during the era of the Renaissance.
Fourteen reproductions of the Dying Slave adorn the top storey of the 12th
arrondissement police station in Paris. Although Art Deco in style, the building was
designed in 1991 by architects Manuel Núñez Yanowsky [es] and Miriam
Teitelbaum.

3. Mannerism
Mannerism is a style of art that was created in the Late Renaissance period, from
about 1520 until about 1600. The Mannerist style of painting or sculpture often
shows figures that are "elongated" (made longer) and "distorted" (made into strange
shapes"). The aim of the Mannerist artist was usually to make art that looked "elegant".

The Mannerist style began in Italy, where the artists were influenced by the figures
that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling and in the "Last Judgement" in the Sistine
Chapel. During the Renaissance, artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael had
tried very hard to learn from nature, and to paint things in a way that was very realistic.
These two famous painters both died around 1520. Many artists then decided that they
were going to use the art of painting to "express themselves". They were not going to
follow the rules of anatomy and perspective in the way that Leonardo and Raphael
did. Mannerist paintings are often full of figures that seem to be twisting, writhing or
fighting. The faces of the figures often show strong emotions such as sadness, fear,
hatred or sexual feelings.

Not all the painters who were working during the Mannerist period painted in the
Mannerist style. Many artists continued to work in the style of the High Renaissance.
Painters in the Mannerist style were Tintoretto, Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino,
Parmigianino and Rosso Fiorentino. Giambologna and Benvenuti Cellini were Mannerist
sculptors. Giulio Romano was a Mannerist architect.

Mannerism spread from Italy to France, Germany and Spain. One of the most

famous Mannerist painters was El Greco who worked in Spain. Some other artists who
worked in the Mannerist style are the French sculptor Jean Goujon, the Dutch painter
Abraham Bloemaert and the German painter Bartolomeus Spranger. Possibly the
strangest paintings from this time were by Giuseppe Arcimboldo who did pictures in
which people's faces seem to be made from fruit, flowers, fire and even fish.
Parmigianino
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (11 January 1503 – 24 August 1540), also known
as Francesco Mazzola or, more commonly, was an Italian Mannerist painter
and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma.
His work is characterized by a "refined sensuality" and often elongation of forms and
includes Vision of Saint Jerome (1527) and the iconic if somewhat
anomalous Madonna with the Long Neck (1534), and he remains the best known
artist of the first generation whose whole careers fall into the Mannerist period.
His prodigious and individual talent has always been recognised, but his career was
disrupted by war, especially the Sack of Rome in 1527, three years after he moved
there, and then ended by his death at only 37. He produced outstanding drawings, and
was one of the first Italian painters to experiment with printmaking himself. While his
portable works have always been keenly collected and are now in major museums in
Italy and around the world, his two large projects in fresco are in a church in Parma
and a palace in a small town nearby. This in conjunction with their lack of large main
subjects has resulted in their being less well known than other works by similar artists.
He painted a number of important portraits, leading a trend in Italy towards the three-
quarters or full-length figure, previously mostly reserved for royalty.

Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror

Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (c. 1524) is a

painting by the Italian
Mannerism artist Parmigianino. It is housed in
the Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna, Austria. The painting
depicts the young artist (then twenty one) in
the middle of a room, distorted by the use of
a convex mirror. The hand in the foreground
is greatly elongated and distorted by the mirror.
The work was painted on a specially-prepared
convex panel in order to mimic the curve of the
mirror used.

The Bardi Altarpiece (Italian: Pala di Bardi), is

an Italian Mannerist painting by the Italian
painter Parmigianino, dating from c. 1521 and housed in the
church of Santa Maria at Bardi, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Bardi Altarpiece
The Bardi Altarpiece (Italian: Pala di Bardi), is an Italian Mannerist painting by
the Italian painter Parmigianino, dating from c. 1521 and housed in the church of
Santa Maria at Bardi, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

The work depicts the mystical marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, set a in a

fake niche with a colonnade surmounting the background curved wall. The scheme is
that of the Holy Conversation. In the middle is the Virgin sitting on a tall throne,
above a historiated section of column (decorated with a barely visible putto), giving the
Child to St. Catherine, on the left, who receives the symbolic marriage ring. At the sides
are two saints, St. John the Evangelist (with a chalice full of snakes, a hint to his alleged
miraculous discovery and healing of a poisoned drink) and St. John the Baptist, who
holds his typical attributed, a tall and slim cross. Catherine's attributed are shown in the
low foreground, including a broken wheel and the martyrdom palm.

Madonna with the Long Neck

The Madonna with the Long Neck  also known
as Madonna and Long Child with Angels and St.
Jerome, is an Italian Mannerist oil painting
by Parmigianino, dating from c. 1535-1540 and
depicting Madonna and Child with angels. The
painting was begun in 1534 for the funerary chapel
of Francesco Tagliaferri in Parma, but remained
incomplete on Parmigianino's death in
1540. Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of
Tuscany, purchased it in 1698 and it has been on
display at the Uffizi since 1948

The painting depicts the Virgin Mary seated on a

high pedestal in luxurious robes, holding a large
baby Jesus on her lap. Six angels crowded
together on the Madonna's right adore the Christ-
child. In the lower right-hand corner of the painting
is an enigmatic scene, with a row of marble
columns and the emaciated figure of St. Jerome.
A depiction of St. Jerome was required by the
commissioner because of the saint's connection
with the adoration of the Virgin Mary.

The painting is popularly called Madonna of the Long Neck because "the painter, in his
eagerness to make the Holy Virgin look graceful and elegant, has given her a neck like
that of a swan." On the unusual arrangement of figures, Austrian-British art historian E.
H. Gombrich writes:
Instead of distributing his figures in equal pairs on both sides of the Madonna, he
crammed a jostling crowd of angels into a narrow corner, and left the other side wide
open to show the tall figure of the prophet, so reduced in size through the distance that
he hardly reaches the Madonna's knee. There can be no doubt, then, that if this be
madness there is method in it. The painter wanted to be unorthodox. He wanted to
show that the classical solution of perfect harmony is not the only solution
conceivable ... Parmigianino and all the artists of his time who deliberately sought to
create something new and unexpected, even at the expense of the 'natural' beauty
established by the great masters, were perhaps the first 'modern' artists.
Parmigianino has distorted nature for his own artistic purposes, creating a
typical Mannerist figura serpentinata. Jesus is also extremely large for a baby, and
he lies precariously on Mary's lap as if about to fall at any moment. The Madonna
herself is of hardly human proportions—she is almost twice the size of the angels to her
right. Her right foot rests on cushions that appear to be only a few inches away from
the picture plane, but the foot itself seems to project beyond it, and is thus on "our"
side of the canvas, breaking the conventions of a framed picture. Her slender hands
and long fingers have also led the Italian medical scientist Vito Franco of
the University of Palermo to diagnose that Parmigianino's model had the genetic
disorder Marfan syndrome affecting her connective tissue

Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Giuseppe Arcimboldo  also spelled Arcimboldi) (1526 or 1527 – 11 July 1593) was
an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely
of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books.
These works form a distinct category from his other productions. He was a
conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna
and Prague, also producing religious subjects and, among other things, a series of
coloured drawings of exotic animals in the imperial menagerie. He specialized
in grotesque symbolical compositions of fruits, animals, landscapes, or various
inanimate objects arranged into human forms.
The still-life portraits were clearly partly
intended as whimsical curiosities to amuse the
court, but critics have speculated as to how
seriously they engaged with Renaissance Neo-
Platonism or other intellectual currents of the
day.

Vertumnus
Vertumnus is an oil painting produced
by Giuseppe Arcimboldo in 1591 that consists
of multiple fruits, vegetables and flowers that
come together to create a portrait of Holy
Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Although Arcimboldo's colleagues commented
that Vertumnus was scherzo, or humorous, there were intentional political meanings
behind the piece, particularly regarding the choice of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
Arcimboldo's choice to include these items was also an intentional reference to the
Roman god, Vertumnus.
Vertumnus was presented to Rudolf II after its completion. Its ownership shifted to the
Swedish army after the Thirty Years' War. Although art historians lost track
of Vertumnus after this shift, it reappeared in 1845 in Sweden in Skokloster Castle,
where it is currently located. During Arcimboldo's time in Rudolf II's court, he was able
to refine his unique style that would lead many to later regard Arcimboldo's approach as
"typical...of mannerism." Mannerism is a particular art style that lasted from the 1530s
to the 1600s. Mannerist artists focused on greatly displaying their technique, their
exaggeration of figures, and decorative elements resulting in extremely stylized and
hyperbolic pieces. Contemporarily, Arcimboldo is thought of as one of the first pioneers
of the Mannerist art style especially due to his unique use of still life images.

Spring, 1563 Real Academia de Bellas

Artes de San Fernando, Madrid
The Seasons or The Four Seasons is a set of four paintings produced in 1563, 1572 and
1573 by the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. He offered the set to Maximilian
II, Holy Roman Emperor in 1569, accompanying The Four Elements. Each shows a
profile portrait made up of fruit, vegetables and plants relating to the relevant season.
The set was accompanied by a poem by Giovanni Battista Fonteo (1546–1580)
explaining their allegorical meaning.
Only Winter and Summer survive from the original work – these are now in
the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The Louvre has a full set of the copies
made by the painter for Maximilian to send to Augustus of Saxony – these have a
floral frame not used in the original version. Spring also survives from a set copied
for Philip II of Spain – it is now in the Real Academia de San Fernando in Madrid.

Spring is represented by the image of a woman made up of a

wide variety of flowers, with her head facing left. The whole
figure is composed of flowers, the skin of the face and lips are
rose petals and buds, the hair is a colorful and lush bouquet,
the eyes are belladonna berries. A daisy necklace adorns the
neck, while the body is covered in a vast jungle of leaves of
different shapes.
 Summer is also depicted by a woman who, unlike Spring, is
facing right and is made up, not of flowers, but of fruits and
vegetables. Cherries adorn the border of her hair and also make up her upper lip; her
cheek is made of a peach, her nose of a cucumber, her ear of an eggplant and her
eyebrow of an ear of wheat. Her dress is made of straw, with, on the Louvre copy, the
inscription GIUSEPPE ARCIMBOLDO F (F standing for FECIT) on the collar and the
year 1563 on the shoulder. An artichoke decorates her chest

Sculpture
As in painting, early Italian Mannerist sculpture was very largely an
attempt to find an original style that would top the achievement of
the High Renaissance, which in sculpture essentially meant
Michelangelo, and much of the struggle to achieve this was played
out in commissions to fill other places in the Piazza della
Signoria in Florence, next to Michelangelo's David. Baccio
Bandinelli took over the project of Hercules and Cacus from
the master himself, but it was little more popular then than it is
now, and maliciously compared by Benvenuto Cellini to "a sack
of melons", though it had a long-lasting effect in apparently
introducing relief panels on the pedestal of statues. Like other
works of his and other Mannerists, it removes far more of the original block than
Michelangelo would have done. Cellini's bronze Perseus with the
head of Medusa is certainly a
masterpiece, designed with eight
angles of view, another Mannerist
characteristic, and artificially stylized
in comparison with the Davids of
Michelangelo and Donatello. Originally
a goldsmith, his famous gold and
enamel Salt Cellar (1543) was his
first sculpture, and shows his talent at its best.
Small bronze figures for collector's cabinets, often mythological
subjects with nudes, were a popular Renaissance form at which Giambologna,
originally Flemish but based in Florence, excelled in the later part of the century. He
also created life-size sculptures, of which two entered the collection in the Piazza della
Signoria. He and his followers devised elegant elongated examples of the figura
serpentinata, often of two intertwined figures, that were interesting from all angles

4.Baroque
The Baroque is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry,
and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In
the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including the Iberian Peninsula it
continued, together with new styles, until the first decade of the 19th century. It
followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (in the past
often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by
the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity
of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed
in parts of Europe as well.
The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur,
and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century
in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain, and Portugal, then to
Austria, southern Germany, and Poland. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more
flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and Central
Europe until the mid to late 18th century.
In the decorative arts, the style employs plentiful and intricate ornamentation. The
departure from Renaissance classicism has its own ways in each country. But a general
feature is that everywhere the starting point is the ornamental elements introduced by
the Renaissance. The classical repertoire is crowded, dense, overlapping, loaded, in
order to provoke shock effects. New motifs introduced by Baroque are: the cartouche,
trophies and weapons, baskets of fruit or flowers, and others, made
in marquetry, stucco, or carved.

Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Lomi or Artemisia Gentileschi (8 July 1593 – c. 1656) was an
Italian Baroque painter. Gentileschi is considered among the most accomplished
seventeenth-century artists, initially working in the style of Caravaggio. She was
producing professional work by the age of 15. In an era when women had few
opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, Gentileschi was
the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del
Disegno in Florence and she had an international clientele.
Many of Gentileschi's paintings feature women from myths, allegories, and the Bible,
including victims, suicides, and warriors. Some of her best known subjects are Susanna
and the Elders (particularly the 1610 version in Pommersfelden), Judith Slaying
Holofernes (her 1614–1620 version is in the Uffizi gallery), and Judith and Her
Maidservant (her version of 1625 is in the Detroit Institute of Arts).
Gentileschi was known for being able to depict the female figure with
great naturalism and for her skill in handling colour to express dimension and drama.
Her achievements as an artist were long overshadowed by the story of Agostino
Tassi raping her when she was a young woman and Gentileschi being tortured to give
evidence during his trial. For many years Gentileschi was regarded as a curiosity, but
her life and art have been reexamined by scholars in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is
now regarded as one of the most progressive and expressive painters of her
generation, with the recognition of her talents exemplified by major exhibitions at
internationally esteemed fine art institutions, such as the National Gallery in London

Judith and Her Maidservant

Judith and Her Maidservant is one of four
paintings by the Italian baroque
artist Artemisia Gentileschi that depicts
the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes.
This particular work, executed in about
1623 to 1625, now hangs in the Detroit
Institute of Arts. The narrative is taken
from the deuterocanonical Book of
Judith, in which Judith seduces and then
murders the general Holofernes. This
precise moment illustrates the maidservant
Abra wrapping the severed head in a bag,
moments after the murder, while Judith
keeps watch. The other three paintings are
now shown in the Museo di
Capodimonte in Naples, the Palazzo Pitti
in Florence, and the Musée de la Castre in
Cannes.
The 2001 exhibition catalogue on Artemisia
Gentileschi and her father Orazio remarked
that "the painting is generally recognized as
Artemisia's finest work".[1] Others have concurred, and the art historian Letizia Treves
concluded that, with this painting, "Artemisia rightly takes her place among the leading
artists of the Italian Baroque."
Susanna and the Elders

Susanna and the Elders is a 1610 painting by

the Italian Baroque artist Artemisia
Gentileschi and is her earliest-known signed
and dated work. It currently hangs in
the Schloss Weißenstein collection,
in Pommersfelden, Germany. The work shows
an uncomfortable Susanna with the two men
lurking above her while she is in the bath. This
was a popular scene to paint during the time of
the Baroque period. This subject matter for
this painting comes from
the deuterocanonical Book of Susanna in
the Additions to Daniel. Susanna and the
Elders was one of Gentileschi's signature works,
with Gentileschi painting a variation of the scene
a number of times at the beginning of her
career. .
The painting is a representation of a biblical
narrative featured in chapter 13 of the Book of
Daniel according to the text as maintained by
the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, though not generally by Protestants.
Two elderly men are shown spying on a young married woman named Susanna.
Susanna had gone out to the garden one day for a bath when her housekeeper let the
two elders in. The elders spied on Susanna and then demanded sexual favors from
her, which she refused. The men threatened to ruin her reputation, but Susanna held
fast. The two elders then falsely accused Susanna of adultery - a crime which was
punishable by death. It is only when a young Hebrew wise
man named Daniel questioned them separately did he observe that details in the two
elders' stories did not match up. Their conflicting stories revealed the falsehood of their
testimony, thus clearing Susanna's name.
The subject was relatively common in European art from the 16th century, with
Susanna exemplifying the virtues of modesty and fidelity. In practice however, it
allowed artists the opportunity to display their skill in the depiction of the female nude,
often for the pleasure of their male patrons
Judith Slaying Holofernes
Judith Slaying Holofernes c. 1620, now at
the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is the
renowned painting
by Baroque artist Artemisia
Gentileschi depicting the assassination of
Holofernes from the apocryphal Book of
Judith. When compared to her earlier
interpretation from Naples c. 1612, there
are subtle but marked improvements to the
composition and detailed elements of the
work. These differences display the skill of a
cultivated Baroque painter, with the adept
use of chiaroscuro and realism to
express the violent tension between Judith,
Abra, and the dying Holofernes. Gentileschi
centers her work on the labor of the killing,
which forces the gaze to start amid the
tangle of blood, limbs, and metal. Her
ability to display brutal realism is shown
particularly in the details, such as the arc of
carotid blood that spatters across the frame. This scene displays the use of chiaroscuro,
or the drastic contrast between light and dark, both literally and figuratively.
Holofernes struggles in vain to press against Abra as the two women force him down
with distinctly strong arms. Their sleeves are rolled up, as though they are performing
an unavoidable domestic chore, and their faces express a staunch resolve. Judith drives
the sword, which is noticeably vertical and shaped in a way that alludes to a cross, into
flesh with an exertive force. Abra is depicted as almost a mirror to Judith, with a
youthful appearance that departs from earlier portrayals of her character. She holds
firm to the left arm of her fellow victim as he pushes against her breast in desperation.
Holofernes, whose blood puddles and spurts a deep red to contrast the white sheets of
his deathbed, is overpowered and without hope

Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as
simply Caravaggio 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active
in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life he moved
between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been
characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both
physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence
on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use
of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique a
dominant stylistic element, transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light and darkening
shadows. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring
violent struggles, torture, and death. He worked rapidly with live models, preferring to
forgo drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His inspiring effect on the
new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound. His influence can
be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de
Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Rembrandt. Artists heavily under his influence
were called the "Caravaggisti" (or "Caravagesques"), as well as tenebrists
or tenebrosi ("shadowists").
Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan before moving to Rome when he was in his
twenties. He developed a considerable name as an artist and as a violent, touchy and
provocative man. A brawl led to a death sentence for murder and forced him to flee to
Naples. There he again established himself as one of the most prominent Italian
painters of his generation. He travelled to Malta and on to Sicily in 1607 and pursued a
papal pardon for his sentence. In 1609 he returned to Naples, where he was involved in
a violent clash; his face was disfigured, and rumours of his death circulated. Questions
about his mental state arose from his erratic and bizarre behavior. He died in 1610
under uncertain circumstances while on his way from Naples to Rome. Reports stated
that he died of a fever, but suggestions have been made that he was murdered or that
he died of lead poisoning.
Caravaggio's innovations inspired Baroque painting, but the latter incorporated the
drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism.[dubious – discuss] The
style evolved and fashions changed, and Caravaggio fell out of favour. In the 20th
century, interest in his work revived, and his importance to the development of Western
art was reevaluated. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy [fr] stated:
"What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting."

The Calling of St
Matthew

The Calling of Saint Matthew is a

painting by Caravaggio, depicting
the moment at which Jesus
Christ inspires Matthew to
follow him. It was completed in
1599–1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San
Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it remains. It hangs alongside two other paintings
of Matthew by Caravaggio, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (painted around the
same time as the Calling) and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew (1602).
The three adjacent Caravaggio canvases in the Contarelli chapel represent a decisive
shift from the idealising Mannerism of which Cesari was the last major practitioner, to
the newer, more naturalistic and subject-oriented art represented by Caravaggio
and Annibale Carracci: they were highly influential in their day.
In some ways, most of the plebeian, nearly life-sized inhabitants of Levi's money table
are the equivalent of, if not modeled by, those persons in other Caravaggio paintings,
including Caravaggio's famous secular genre painting of The Cardsharps (1595).
In this painting, the gloom and the canvassed window appears to situate the table
indoors. Christ brings the true light to the dark space of the sitting tax-collectors. This
painting records the collision of two worlds — the ineluctable power of the immortal
faith, and the mundane, foppish world of Levi. Jesus spears him with a beam of light,
with an apparent effortless hand gesture he exerts an inescapable sublime gravity, with
no need for wrenching worldly muscularity. Jesus' bare feet are classical simplicity in
contrast with the dandified accountants; being barefoot may also symbolize holiness, as
if one is on holy ground. Similarly to his treatment of Paul in the Conversion on the
Way to Damascus, Caravaggio chronicles the moment when a daily routine is
interrupted by the miraculous. Around the man to become Matthew are either the
unperceptive or unperturbed bystanders.
Caravaggio's audience would have seen the similarity between the gesture of Jesus as
he points towards Matthew and the gesture of God as he awakens Adam
in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Following the line of Christ's left arm, it seems that
Matthew is being invited to follow him into the world at large. "This clear legibility, so
different from many Mannerist paintings, ... accounted for the work's enormous
popularity." The position of Christ's hand, however, reflects that of Adam's in the Sistine
Chapel; the Church considered Christ to be the Second Adam. But instead of being
gifted life, as the first Adam was, Christ is instead the one who bestows it, calling Levi
to a new life as Matthew
Conversion on the Way to Damascus
The Conversion on the Way to
Damascus (Conversione di San Paolo) is a
work by Caravaggio, painted in 1601 for
the Cerasi Chapel of the church
of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome.
Across the chapel is a second Caravaggio
depicting the Crucifixion of Saint
Peter. On the altar between the two is
the Assumption of the Virgin
Mary by Annibale Carracci.
Well-established iconographic tradition
stipulated how the Conversion of Paul
should be depicted in Renaissance and
Baroque art. Its characteristic elements
were a rearing, panicked horse—although
there is no mention of a horse in the
Bible—with Saul lying on the ground,
Jesus appearing in the sky and a retinue
of soldiers reacting to the events. This is
how Taddeo Zuccari, one of the most
renowned painters in Caravaggio's Rome,
portrayed the scene on a large altarpiece
in the Church of San Marcello al
Corso around 1560. The figure of Paul in
the Cerasi Conversion was derived from a model by Raphael via Zuccari. Raphael's
version was part of his series of tapestries created for the Sistine Chapel in 1515–
16.
"If we could turn Raphael's Saint Paul in such a way that his head would touch the
lower frame and the length of his body would be directed more or less orthogonally
inward, we would have a figure similar to that in Caravaggio's painting", observed
Walter Friedlaender. He also suggested that the inspiration for the horse was Albrecht
Dürer's most famous print, The Large Horse (1505), whose main subject has the same
bulky, powerful hindquarters and the rest of its body is seen from a similar oblique
angle.
Another possible source for the painting is a four-block woodcut attributed to Ugo da
Carpi (c. 1515–20) whose central detail depicts Saul on the ground and a groom trying
to calm his panicked horse and leading the animal away. This is the only known
example among the antecedents which represents exactly the same moment as
Caravaggio's painting. A more obvious, although less close precursor was
the Conversion of Saint Paul by Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel (1542–45)
where a rearing horse and a soldier holding its bridle are conspicuous elements in the
middle of the crowded scene. A painting that Caravaggio must have known was a very
unusual Conversion which Moretto da Brescia painted for the Mint of Milan in 1540–
41. This scene consists only two figures: Saul and his horse, and the horse strangely
dominates the painting. Moretto was probably inspired by a
similar Conversion attributed to Parmigianino (1527).
Although some details and motifs may have been borrowed or inspired by these
artworks, it is important to note that the pared-down composition and the intense
spiritual drama of the Cerasi Conversion was a novelty without any direct iconographic
precedent at the time. It represented a break with the tradition that even Caravaggio's
own previous version more or less followed.

Crucifixion of Saint Peter 

The Crucifixion of Saint Peter is a work
by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio,
painted in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of Santa
Maria del Popolo in Rome. Across the chapel
is a second Caravaggio work depicting
the Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to
Damascus (1601). On the altar between the
two is the Assumption of the Virgin
Mary by Annibale Carracci. The painting
depicts the martyrdom of St. Peter. According
to ancient and well-known tradition, Peter, when
he was condemned to death in Rome,
requested to be crucified upside-down because
he did not believe that a man is worthy to be
killed in the same manner as Jesus Christ.
"But now it is time for thee, Peter, to deliver up
thy body unto them that take it. Receive it then,
ye unto whom it belongeth. I beseech you the
executioners, crucify me thus, with the head
downward and not otherwise: and the reason wherefore, I will tell unto them that hear"
– Acts of Peter
The large canvas shows the three executioners fighting to straighten the cross. Peter is
already nailed to the rafters, his hands and feet are bleeding. The apostle is practically
naked, which emphasizes his vulnerability. He is an old man, with a gray beard and a
bald head, but his aging body is still muscular, suggesting considerable strength. He
rises from the cross with great effort, turning his whole body, as if he wants to look
towards something that is out of the picture (God). His eyes do not look at the
executioners but he has a lost look. 
The lifting of the cross requires the efforts of three men. One is pulling it up with ropes
while his helpers try to raise the heavy equipment with their arms and shoulders. The
yellow-breeched workman, who is crouching under the cross, grabs a shovel that was
used to dig a hole into the rocky ground for the stake. The whole process seems
disorganized and chaotic as if the sudden heaviness of the cross caught the
executioners off-guard. Their faces are largely shielded from the viewer making them
characterless executors of an unjust act ordered by an invisible authority. The
background of the scene looks like a wall of impenetrable darkness but it is in fact a cliff
of rock. This is an allusion to the meaning of Peter's name: the "rock" upon which Christ
declared his Church to be built (Gospel of Matthew 16:18).

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo) Bernini ; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 1598 –
28 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the
world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his age, credited
with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one scholar has commented,
"What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European
sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision,
and whose influence was inordinately powerful ..." In addition, he was a painter (mostly
small canvases in oil) and a man of the theater: he wrote, directed and acted in plays
(mostly Carnival satires), for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery. He
produced designs as well for a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps,
tables, mirrors, and even coaches.
As an architect and city planner, he designed secular buildings, churches, chapels, and
public squares, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture,
especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a whole series of
temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals. His broad
technical versatility, boundless compositional inventiveness and sheer skill in
manipulating marble ensured that he would be considered a worthy successor
of Michelangelo, far outshining other sculptors of his generation. His talent extended
beyond the confines of sculpture to a consideration of the setting in which it would be
situated; his ability to synthesize sculpture, painting, and architecture into a coherent
conceptual and visual whole has been termed by the late art historian Irving Lavin the
"unity of the visual arts".
Apollo and Daphne (Bernini)
Apollo and Daphne is a life-sized marble sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo
Bernini, which was executed between 1622 and 1625.
It is regarded as one of the artistic marvels of
the Baroque age. The statue is housed in the Galleria
Borghese in Rome, along with several other examples
of the artist's most important early works. The sculpture
depicts the climax of the story of Apollo and
Daphne (Phoebus and Daphne), as written
in Ovid's Metamorphoses, wherein the nymph
Daphne escapes Apollo's advances by transforming into
a laurel tree.
Apollo and Daphne was the last of a number of
important works commissioned by Cardinal Scipione
Borghese from Gian Lorenzo Bernini that helped to
define Baroque sculpture. Thereafter, Bernini served a
succession of popes. Apollo and Daphne was
commissioned after Borghese had given an important
work of his patronage, Bernini's The Rape of
Proserpina (1621-22), to Cardinal Ludovico
Ludovisi. Through this generous gesture, Borghese hoped to ingratiate himself to the
favored nephew of the new pope, Gregory XV.[2]
Much of the early work on Apollo and Daphne was done in 1622–23,
but Bernini's work on his sculpture of David (1623-24) interrupted its completion.
Bernini finished Apollo and Daphne in 1625, and it was moved to the Cardinal's Villa
Borghese in September of that year. Bernini did not execute the sculpture entirely by
his own hand. As was the common practice at that time, he had help from his
workshop. Giuliano Finelli, who was a very gifted sculptor, undertook the finer details
that show Daphne's conversion from human to tree, such as the twigs and leafs
springing from her hands, and her windswept hair. Some art historians, however,
discount the importance of Finelli's contribution, since he was merely realizing Bernini's
creative vision. Apollo and Daphne's enthusiastic reception began as soon as the work
was unveiled.
David (Bernini)
David is a life-size marble sculpture by Gian Lorenzo
Bernini. The sculpture was one of many commissions
to decorate the villa of Bernini's patron
Cardinal Scipione Borghese – where it still resides
today, as part of the Galleria Borghese. It was
completed in the course of seven months from 1623 to
1624.
The subject of the work is the biblical David, about to
throw the stone that will bring down Goliath, which
will allow David to behead him. Compared to earlier
works on the same theme (notably the David of
Michelangelo), the sculpture broke new ground in its
implied movement and its psychological intensity.
The Baroque saw significant changes in the art of
sculpture; Bernini was at the forefront of this. The
statues of the Renaissance masters had been strictly
frontal, dictating the spectator to view it from one side,
and one side only. Bernini's David is a three-dimensional work that needs space around
it and challenges the viewer to walk around it, in order to contemplate its changing
nature depending on the angle from which it is seen. The sculpture relates to an
unseen entity – in the form of Goliath, the object of David's aggression – as well as to
the spectator, caught in the middle of the conflict. The warrior even literally oversteps
the boundaries between life and art, putting his toes over the edge of the plinth. The
conventions of time, as well as space, were challenged. Instead of the serene constancy
of, for example, Michelangelo's David, Bernini has chosen to capture a fraction of time
in the course of a continuous movement. Thus the latent energy that permeates
Michelangelo's David is here in the process of being unleashed.
On an emotional level, Bernini's sculptures were revolutionary for exploring a variety of
extreme mental states, such as the anger seen here.[18] David's face, frowning and
biting his lower lip, is contorted in concentrated aggression. Baldinucci and Gian's
son tells an anecdote of how Barberini would hold a mirror up to Bernini's face so the
artist could model the sculpture on himself. This bears witness to Bernini's working
methods, as well as to the close relationship he enjoyed with the future pope.
In addition to attempts at realism, David also followed contemporary conventions about
how a military figure should be portrayed. As Albrecht Dürer previously had
postulated, the vir bellicosus—the "bellicose man"—was best represented with the
rather extreme proportions of a 1:10 head-to-body ratio. Furthermore, the warrior
has a facies leonina, or the face of a lion, characterized by a receding forehead,
protruding eyebrows, and a curved nose (David was later to become the "Lion of
Judah")

The Rape of Proserpina

The Rape of Proserpina (Italian: Rapimento di
Proserpina), more accurately translated as the
Abduction of Proserpina, is a
large Baroque marble group sculpture by Italian
artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, executed between
1621 and 1622, when Bernini's career was in its
early stage. The group, finished when Bernini was
just 23 years old, depicts the abduction of
Proserpina, who is seized and taken to the
underworld by the god Pluto. It features Pluto
holding Proserpina aloft, and a Cerberus to
symbolize the border into the underworld that
Pluto carries Proserpina into.
Cardinal Scipione Borghese commissioned the
sculpture and gave it to the newly
appointed Cardinal-nephew, Ludovico
Ludovisi, possibly as a means of gaining favor.
The choice to depict the myth of Proserpina may
relate to the recent death of Pope Paul V, or to
the recent empowerment of Ludovico. Bernini
drew heavy inspiration from Giambologna and Annibale Carracci for the sculpture,
which is also the only work for which preparatory material survives. The Rape of
Proserpina is made of rare Carrara marble, and was originally placed on a since-
destroyed pedestal with a poem by Maffeo Barberini. It has been praised for its
realism, as the marble mimics other materials like flesh. The detail is notable; for
instance, a trickle of tears contributes expressiveness to Proserpina's face.

5.Rococo
Rococo, less commonly Roccoco, also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally
ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines
asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding,
and trompe-l'œil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It
is often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement.
The Rococo style began in France in the 1730s as a reaction against the more formal
and geometric Louis XIV style. It was known as the "style Rocaille", or "Rocaille
style". It soon spread to other parts of Europe, particularly northern Italy, Austria,
southern Germany, Central Europe and Russia. It also came to influence the other arts,
particularly sculpture, furniture, silverware, glassware, painting, music, and theatre.
Although originally a secular style primarily used for interiors of private residences, the
Rococo had a spiritual aspect to it which led to its widespread use in church interiors,
particularly in Central Europe, Portugal, and South America
Rococo features exuberant decoration, with an abundance of curves, counter-curves,
undulations and elements modeled on nature. The exteriors of Rococo buildings are
often simple, while the interiors are entirely dominated by their ornament. The style
was highly theatrical, designed to impress and awe at first sight. Floor plans of
churches were often complex, featuring interlocking ovals; In palaces, grand stairways
became centrepieces, and offered different points of view of the decoration. The main
ornaments of Rococo are: asymmetrical shells, acanthus and other leaves, birds,
bouquets of flowers, fruit, musical instruments, angels and Chinoiserie (pagodas,
dragons, monkeys, bizarre flowers and Chinese people).
The style often integrated painting, moulded stucco, and wood carving,
and quadratura, or illusionist ceiling paintings, which were designed to give the
impression that those entering the room were looking up at the sky, where cherubs and
other figures were gazing down at them. Materials used included stucco, either painted
or left white; combinations of different coloured woods (usually oak, beech or walnut);
lacquered wood in the Japanese style, ornament of gilded bronze, and marble tops of
commodes or tables. The intent was to create an impression of surprise, awe and
wonder on first view.

François Boucher
François Boucher ( 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter,
draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his
idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories,
and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist
of the 18th century. Boucher took inspiration from artists such as Peter Paul
Rubens and Antoine Watteau. Boucher's early works celebrate the idyllic and
tranquil portrayal of nature and landscape with great elan. However, his art typically
forgoes traditional rural innocence to portray scenes with a definitive style
of eroticism as his mythological scenes are passionate and intimately amorous rather
than traditionally epic. Boucher's paintings of a flirtatious shepherd and shepherdess in
a woodland setting, featured in The Enjoyable Lesson (The Flute Players) of 1748
and An Autumn Pastoral (The Grape Eaters) of 1749, were based upon characters in a
1745 play by Boucher's close friend Charles-Simon Favart. Boucher's characters in those
paintings later inspired a pair of figurines created by the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory,
c. 1757–66. Marquise de Pompadour (mistress of King Louis XV), whose name
became synonymous with Rococo art, was a great admirer of his work.[9] Marquise de
Pompadour is often referred to as the "godmother of Rococo" and Boucher's portraits
were central to her self-presentation and cultivation of her image. For instance,
Boucher's 'Sketch for a Portrait of Madame de Pompadour', displayed in the
Starhemburg room at Waddesdon Manor, acts as a surviving example of the oil
preparation prior to the, now lost, portrait. In one hand she holds her hat, in the other
she picks up a pearl bracelet with a portrait of the king – symbolising the relationship
upon which her status depends.

Leda and the swan

Leda and the Swan is a story and

subject in art from Greek
mythology in which the god Zeus, in
the form of a swan, seduces or
rapes Leda. According to later Greek
mythology, Leda
bore Helen and Polydeuces,
children of Zeus, while at the same
time
bearing Castor and Clytemnestra,
children of her husband Tyndareus,
the King of Sparta. According to
many versions of the story, Zeus took the form of a swan and had sexual intercourse
with Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus. In some
versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. In other versions, Helen is
a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those
suffering from the pride of Hubris.
Especially in art, the degree of consent by Leda to the relationship seems to vary
considerably; there are numerous depictions, for example by Leonardo da Vinci, that
show Leda affectionately embracing the swan, as their children play.
The subject was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a
representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in modern times
to Timotheus (compare illustration, below left); small-scale sculptures survive showing
both reclining and standing poses, in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and
terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius it was a
well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently as a
classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.

Rinaldo And Armida

The subject was inspired by the 16th-century epic poem 'Gerusalemme Liberata'
(Jerusalem Delivered) by Torquato Tasso (1544-95). Rinaldo and Armida are a pair of
lovers in the poem which is an idealized account of the first Crusade which ended with
the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and the establishment of a Christian kingdom. Armida,
a beautiful virgin witch, had been sent by Satan (whose aid the Saracens had enlisted0
to bring about the Crusaders' undoing by sorcery. She sought revenge on the Christian
prince Rinaldo after he had rescued his companions whom she had changed into
monsters. The pastoral story of hate turned of love, of the lovers' dalliance in Armida's
magic kingdom, and Rinaldo's final desertion of her, forms a sequence of themes that
were widely popular with Italian and French artists in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Diana Bathing (Boucher)

Diana Bathing or Diana Getting out of her

Bath (French: Diane sortant du bain) is an
oil-on-canvas painting by French
artist François Boucher, created in 1742.
It depicts the Roman goddess Diana, with a
nymph as her companion. The painting was
acquired in 1852 by the Louvre, in Paris.
The painting depicts in the foreground, the
naked goddess Diana, having just coming
out from her bath, with a female companion.
Diana is recognizable by the crown of pearls
that she wears, with a crescent-shaped
jewel, and is in the company of a nymph
kneeling at her feet. The goddess is nude, sitting on silks that enhance her fair
complexion and blonde hair; the nymph, to her right, and left of the canvas, has dark
hair, and observes the legs of the goddess. The bright skin tones acquire reddish
reflections, in contrast to the bluish green of the landscape.
The fact that the naked woman represented is the goddess of hunting is evidenced by
her attributes, such as the quiver with the arrows, the two hunting dogs, and some
prey. Diana sits on a silk fabric that symbolizes luxury and contrasts with the rural
hinterland. Among the hunted animals there are two doves – symbols of love – which
were often an attribute of Venice. Boucher used a similar motif in his work
representing Venus Consoling Love. On the left there are two dogs, one drinks water
from the pond where the goddess has just emerged, while the other turns his head

Nicolas Lancret
Nicolas Lancret (22 January 1690 – 14 September 1743) was a French painter. Born
in Paris, he was a brilliant depicter of light comedy which reflected the tastes and
manners of French society during the regency of the Duke of Orleans and, later,
early reign of King Louis XV.
Lancret completed numerous paintings, a significant proportion of which (over eighty)
were engraved. Although he completed several portraits and historical pieces his
favourite subjects were balls, fairs, village weddings and so forth. In this respect he was
typical of Rococo artists. Some have claimed Lancret's work is significantly inferior to
that of Watteau. In drawing and in painting his touch is often considered intelligent but
dry; art historian Michael Levey remarked that Lancret was 'no poet but a charming
essayist'. Lancret's characteristics are due possibly to the fact that he had been for
some time in training under an engraver.
It is generally considered that the artist produced his best work towards the latter end
of his life, displaying, in the minds of several art historians, an increasing ability to
create a sense of harmony between art and nature, as in Montreir de lanterne magique,
and a willingness to lend his, now bulkier, figures a firmer place in his compositions.
These changes displayed the influence of later Watteaus like L'Enseigne de Gersaint.
Lancret's last painting, Family in a Garden, The National Gallery, is considered by
Levey to be his 'masterpiece'. The scene, which depicts a family taking coffee, has an
intimacy and hint of humour that are considered captivating. The work's flowing lines,
Rococoesque harmony of pastel colours, painterly style and charming subject matter (of
a wide eyed young girl, surrounded by her happy family and natural, yet un-threatening
setting, trying her first taste of coffee) are seen to display a delicate sense of vitality
and freshness that anticipate the works of both Thomas Gainsborough and Jean-
Honoré Fragonard.
The British Museum possesses an admirable series of studies by Lancret in red chalk,
and the National Gallery, London, shows four paintings—the "Four Ages of Man"
(engraved by Desplaces and l'Armessin), cited by d'Argenville amongst the principal
works of Lancret.

The Four Ages of Man

Lancret treats the traditional

subject of The Four Ages of
Man as a series of
contemporary genre scenes
– Childhood, Adolescence,
Youth and Old Age.

In Childhood (L'Enfance), a
group of wealthy children
play boisterous games in an
open-air loggia watched by their nurse and governess. In Adolescence (L’Adolescence),
a young woman admires herself in a mirror while her hair is decorated with ribbons and
flowers. Instead of depicting the third age as a time of maturity and showing a middle-
aged married couple, Lancret paints several pairs of lovers in a woody glade, and
entitles the picture Youth (La Jeunesse). In Old Age (La Vieillesse), he dispenses with the
usual depiction of old people warming themselves indoors before an open fire to take
the scene outdoors

The Swing

Lancret is regarded alongside Jean-

Baptiste Pater as the most important
representative of the many artists
influenced by Watteau, most of whom
chose individual motifs or groups from
his "fete galante" and made them
independent themes. This process
alone is indicative of a specific
tendency in Rococo: the tendency
towards small scale, intimate scenes.
In Lancret's painting The Swing we find
a highly popular motif of the time,
treated not only by Fragonard, Boucher and Pater, but also by lesser painters of the
era. Just what made the swing such a popular theme becomes clear here.
It is not only the erotic aura, whose "moment of happiness" is to be found in a
glimpse under the petticoats, but also the fact that the swing is a metaphor of an
interim realm belonging neither to the earth nor to the air. It remains intangible,
allocated neither to an element nor to a physical place. Non-committal
coquettishness, the freedom of intimacy, the bonds that do not tie: all these are
evoked by the rope with which the desiring cavalier is moving the swing, not as a
symbol, but certainly as an obvious suggestion.

The lady having a coffee with children

Edmé Bouchardon
Edmé Bouchardon (29 May 1698 – 27 July 1762) was a French sculptor best known
for his neoclassical statues in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, his medals,
his equestrian statue of Louis XV of France for the Place de la Concorde (destroyed
during the French Revolution); and for the Fountain of Four Seasons in Paris. He
was also a draftsman and painter, and made celebrated series of engravings of
working-class Parisians.

6.Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in
the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that
drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was
born in Rome largely thanks to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, at
the time of the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but its popularity spread
all over Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand
Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-
Roman ideals. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age
of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing
with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th and
up to the 21st century.

European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c. 1760 in opposition to the then-

dominant Rococo style. Rococo architecture emphasizes grace, ornamentation and
asymmetry; Neoclassical architecture is based on the principles of simplicity and
symmetry, which were seen as virtues of the arts of Rome and Ancient Greece, and
were more immediately drawn from 16th-century Renaissance Classicism. Each
"neo"-classicism selects some models among the range of possible classics that are
available to it, and ignores others. The Neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and
collectors, artists and sculptors of 1765–1830 paid homage to an idea of the generation
of Phidias, but the sculpture examples they actually embraced were more likely to be
Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the
works of Late Antiquity. The "Rococo" art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation,
through engravings in Wood's The Ruins of Palmyra. Even Greece was all-but-unvisited,
a rough backwater of the Ottoman Empire, dangerous to explore, so Neoclassicists'
appreciation of Greek architecture was mediated through drawings and engravings,
which subtly smoothed and regularized, "corrected" and "restored" the monuments of
Greece, not always consciously.
The Empire style, a second phase of Neoclassicism in architecture and
the decorative arts, had its cultural centre in Paris in the Napoleonic era. Especially
in architecture, but also in other fields, Neoclassicism remained a force long after the
early 19th century, with periodic waves of revivalism into the 20th and even the 21st
centuries, especially in the United States and Russia

Pompeo Batoni
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (25 January 1708 – 4 February 1787) was an Italian painter
who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous
allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors travelling
throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their "Grand Tour" led the artist to
specialize in portraits.
Batoni won international fame largely thanks to his customers, mostly British of noble
origin, whom he portrayed, often with famous Italian landscapes in the background.
Such Grand Tour portraits by Batoni were in British private collections, thus ensuring
the genre's popularity in Great Britain. One generation later, Sir Joshua
Reynolds would take up this tradition and become the leading English portrait painter.
Although Batoni was considered the best Italian painter of his time, contemporary
chronicles mention his rivalry with Anton Raphael Mengs.
Diana and Cupid
Sir Humphrey Morice, a businessman and the
then Governor of the Bank of England,
purchased the work from Batoni on April 1,
1762. Morice, an animal lover, commissioned
Batoni to portray an allegory of himself resting on
the Roman countryside in a form of a dog and
mythical figures of Greek god and goddess
namely Cupid and Diana respectively. The
allegory illustrates where Diana snatches the bow
of Cupid in order to make him rest for a while.
The portraiture of Diana is based from a sleeping statue of Ariadne in the Vatican
City. The painting is a counterpart for Anton Raphael Mengs Neoclassical type
paintings.

Marriage of Cupid and Psyche

Achilles at the Court of Lycomedes

Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David (French: [ʒaklwi david]; 30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825)
was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent
painter of the era. In the 1780s, his cerebral brand of history painting marked a
change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity and severity and
heightened feeling, harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien
Régime.
David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend
of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts
under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he
aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release: that of Napoleon,
the First Consul of France. At this time he developed his Empire style, notable for its
use of warm Venetian colours. After Napoleon's fall from Imperial power and the
Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels, then in the United Kingdom of
the Netherlands, where he remained until his death. David had many pupils,
making him the strongest influence in French art of the early 19th century, especially
academic Salon painting.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (also known
as Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard
Pass or Bonaparte Crossing the Alps; listed as Le
Premier Consul franchissant les Alpes au col du
Grand Saint-Bernard) is a series of five oil on
canvas equestrian portraits of Napoleon
Bonaparte painted by the French
artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and
1805. Initially commissioned by the King of
Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized
view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his
army made across the Alps through the Great St
Bernard Pass in May 1800.
It has become one of the most commonly
reproduced images of Napoleon.

The Intervention of the Sabine Women

The Intervention of the Sabine Women is
a 1799 painting by the French
painter Jacques-Louis David, showing a
legendary episode following
the abduction of the Sabine
women by the founding generation of
Rome.
Work on the painting commenced in
1796, after his estranged wife visited him
in jail. He conceived the idea of telling the
story, to honour his wife, with the theme being love prevailing over conflict and the
protection of children. The painting was also seen as a plea for the people to reunite
after the bloodshed of the revolution. Its realization took him nearly four years. The
painting depicts Romulus's wife Hersilia – the daughter of Titus Tatius, leader of the
Sabines – rushing between her husband and her father and placing her babies between
them. A vigorous Romulus prepares to strike a half-retreating Tatius with his spear, but
hesitates.
The rocky outcrop in the background is the Tarpeian Rock, a reference to civil
conflict, since the Roman punishment for treason was to be thrown from the rock.
According to legend, when Tatius attacked Rome, he almost succeeded in capturing the
city because of the treason of the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius
Tarpeius, governor of the citadel on the Capitoline Hill. She opened the city gates
for the Sabines in return for "what they bore on their arms". She believed that she
would receive their golden bracelets. Instead, the Sabines crushed her to death and
threw her from the rock, later named for her.
The towering walls in the background of the painting have been interpreted as an
allusion to the Bastille, whose storming on 14 July 1789 marked the beginning of
the French Revolution

The Death of Socrates

The Death of Socrates (French: La
Mort de Socrate) is an oil on canvas
painted by French painter Jacques-
Louis David in 1787. The painting was
part of the neoclassical style, popular
in the 1780s, that depicted subjects
from the Classical age, in this case
the story of the execution of
Socrates as told by Plato in
his Phaedo. In this story, Socrates has
been convicted of corrupting the youth
of Athens and introducing strange
gods, and has been sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock. Socrates uses his
death as a final lesson for his pupils rather than fleeing when the opportunity arises,
and faces it calmly. The Phaedo depicts the death of Socrates and is also Plato's fourth
and last dialogue to detail the philosopher's final days, which is also detailed
in Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito.
Jean-Antoine Houdon
Jean-Antoine Houdon (French: (20 March 1741 – 15 July 1828) was a
French neoclassical sculptor.
Houdon is famous for his portrait busts and statues of philosophers, inventors and
political figures of the Enlightenment. Houdon's subjects included Denis
Diderot (1771), Benjamin Franklin (1778-1809), Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1778), Voltaire (1781), Molière (1781), George Washington (1785–
1788), Thomas Jefferson (1789), Louis XVI (1790), Robert Fulton (1803–04),
and Napoléon Bonaparte (1806).

Bust of Voltaire, 1778

Bust of Armand Thomas Hue de Miromesnil, 1775

Bust of Madame Récamier after Joseph Chinard