Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HUMAN
HUMAN
Renaissance
Mike Venegas
11/21/2018 1
Outline
• I will focus on the visual arts of the Early
Renaissance period.
• What the Renaissance was?
• How it started?
• Where it started?
• How Early Renaissance art was created
• The Workshop system
• Innovations of Early Renaissance art
• Early Renaissance artists and sculpture
11/21/2018 2
Renaissance
• A period from the early 1300’s to roughly
1600 when there was a renewed interest in
history literature and art.
• Renaissance = “Rebirth”
• Europe’s economic recovery
• Renewed study of ancient Greece and
Rome
11/21/2018 3
Humanism
o The birth of humanism
o Humanism was an ideal that focused on
the world of mankind as much as a
concern for the hereafter.
o Rejected medieval view of humanity
and focused on the goodness of
mankind
11/21/2018 4
Humanism (cont.)
11/21/2018 5
Early Renaissance
11/21/2018 6
Workshop system
• Collaboration of masters and
apprentices
• Family-based
• Run like a business
11/21/2018 7
Workshop
• Art was commissioned
• Apprentice started in early teens
• Studied under master for several
years
11/21/2018 8
Products of the workshop system
• Michaelangelo
• Master – Domenico Ghirlandaio
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Master- Andrea del Verocchio
11/21/2018 9
Innovations
11/21/2018 10
Innovations
• Chiaroscurro- use of shadows to
show balance of light and dark
• Science
• Linear perspective- allowed artist
to represent objects in relative sizes
11/21/2018 11
Giotto
• Giotto is considered to be the most influential
artist on Renaissance painting.
• Father of the Renaissance
• Giotto’s dignified figures seemed to displace
space, to stand upon the ground with real
substance and weight.
• The figures seem to extend both backward, into
the picture, and forward, toward the spectator’s
space.
11/21/2018 12
slide
11/21/2018 13
Filippo Bruneleschi
(1337-1446)
11/21/2018 14
One point linear perspective
Pierro della Francesca “View of an Ideal City”
11/21/2018 15
Masaccio
(1401-1428)
• One of first artists to apply the new method of
linear perspective in his fresco of the Holy
Trinity
• Used a barrel vaulted ceiling to imitate with
precision the true appearance of architectural
space
• Figures depict accurate human anatomy
11/21/2018 16
The Holy Trinity
11/21/2018 17
Pierro della Francesca
(1416-1492)
11/21/2018 18
Carefully analyzed perspective
and geometry
• The Discovery and Proving of the True Cross
11/21/2018 19
Donatello
(1386-1466)
11/21/2018 20
11/21/2018 21
Andrea Mantegna
(1430-1506)
• Created unusual vantage points
• Looking at figures from below
• Lamentation of the Dead Christ the viewer is
looking from the feet of the subject.
• Deep foreshortening
• Effectively placed the viewer at the scene,
adding to the sense of empathy
11/21/2018 22
Lamentation of the Dead Christ
• Use of unusual vantage points
11/21/2018 23
Sandra Boticelli
(1445-1510)
• First artist to paint a full-length female
nude
• In Birth of Venus the figure occupies the
center of the work which was traditionally
reserved for the Virgin. This work is
possibly the most pagan image of the
entire Renaissance.
11/21/2018 24
11/21/2018 25
11/21/2018 26
Literature in the Early
Renaissance
Jennifer Montes
11/21/2018 27
Before the Renaissance
• Christian Age
• Literary production limited
• Important original books of the time
– Exameron by St. Ambrose
– City of God and the Confessions by St. Augustine
– Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
11/21/2018 28
Characterized by:
• Large collections of church hymns
• Didactic poems of relative significance
• Sermons
• Theological treatises
• Legends of various saints
• Fables
• Historical chronicles beginning with Creation
11/21/2018 29
Rise of Humanism
• Involved the modern discovery or rediscovery
of those fields we now call the humanities
– History, moral and political philosophy, poetry,
literature, rhetoric, grammar, and linguistic study and
interpretation.
• Humanism was a deliberate revival, renascence,
or "renaissance" of the arts and humanities.
11/21/2018 30
Humanism
• Humanists took Christian ideas and secular and
pagan (Greek and Roman) ideas to gain
knowledge useful in making them better people
– Virtuous, responsible, educated citizens, aware of
what had been thought and done at other times and
places.
• The humanists sought to understand what it was
to be fully human.
11/21/2018 31
Early Renaissance affected by:
• Works of Dante
• Works of Petrarch
• Invention and widespread use of movable
type
11/21/2018 32
Dante Alighieri
• Born in Florence, Italy in 1265
• Son of Alighiero di Bellincione Alighieri and his
first wife Bella
• Wrote his first book “Vita Nuova” (New Life) in
1294
• Exiled in 1302
11/21/2018 33
Exile
• De Vulgari Eloquentia –treatise on his native
language
– Never completed
• Il Convivio –collection of verse
– Never completed
• Began writing the Commedia (Divine Comedy)
in 1306
11/21/2018 34
La Divina Commedia
• The Divine Comedy
• Completed in 1321
• Narrative poem
• Written in terza rima (third rhyme)
– a verse form consisting of tercets
– rhyme scheme (aba, bcb, cdc)
– Form modified by Dante
11/21/2018 35
Divine Comedy
• Allegory of human life written to convert the
corrupt to righteousness
• Represents three realms of the Christian afterlife
– Inferno (Hell)
– Puragatorio (Purgatory)
– Paradiso (Heaven
11/21/2018 36
Influences of Dante
• Virgil
• Lucan
• Theological Influences
– St. Thomas Aquinas
– Sts. Gregory, Isidore, Anselm, and Bonaventure
– Boethius
11/21/2018 37
Influenced by Dante
• Artists
– Giotto
• “Cimabue thought/To lord it over painting’s field; and
now/ The cry is Giotto’s, and his name eclipsed.”
(Purgatorio, canto XI)
– Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Last Judgement
– Salvadore Dali
11/21/2018 38
Michelangelo
11/21/2018 39
Dali’s representation of Dante
11/21/2018 40
Influenced by Dante
• Authors
– Shelley
– Byron
– Yeats
– T.S. Eliot
11/21/2018 41
Francesco Petrarca
• Born in Arezzo in 1304
• Son of a Ser Petracco
• 1341 crowned poet laureate in Rome
• Created works in Latin
• Most popular are those written in Italian
• Trionfi—allegorical and moral
– Written in terza rima
11/21/2018 42
Canzoniere
• “Song Book”
• Considered Petrarch’s masterpiece
• Contains mostly sonnets
– To a lesser degree canzoni, sestine, ballate, and
madrigals
11/21/2018 43
Canzoniere
• Inspired by the lady, Laura
• Deals with Love, political and patriotic feeling,
and issues of morality
• Unrequited Love
– Seeing her brings him joy
– Creates unfulfilled desires
11/21/2018 44
Laura
• First saw his “muse”, Laura, April 6, 1327
(Good Friday) in the church of Sainte-Claire d’
Avignon
• Some doubt her existance
• Others believe she may have been the wife of
Hugues de Sade
11/21/2018 45
The Petrarchian Sonnet
• Now known also as the Italian Sonnet
• 14 lines
• Consists of 2 divisions
– First eight lines (octet)
– Second six lines (sestet)
• Rhyme Scheme
– Abbaabbacdecde
11/21/2018 46
Sonnet 140
11/21/2018 48
Influenced by Petrarch
• Chaucer makes reference to Petrarch in the
prologue to the Clerk’s Tale in his Canterbury
Tales
– "Francis Petrarch, the laureate poet/
Was this clerk's name, whose rhetoric so sweet/
Illumed all Italy with poetry”
11/21/2018 49
Petrarchanism
• French and Italian poets imitated his style
indirectly
• Bembo called for poets to imitate the original
only
11/21/2018 50
Rejecters of Petrarchanism
• The English rejected Petrarch’s form
• Elizabethan sonnet writers thought it was
obsolete and created their own style
• No direct imitation of Petrarch in England
– Marked avoidance
• Canzioniere not published in England until
1850’s
11/21/2018 51
Impact of Movable Type
• Invented in 1440 By Johannes Gutenberg
• Led to a great demand for books in the mid 15th
century
– Printers met the high demand by printing an over-
abundance of books.
– Prices plummeted (20% less than a manuscript)
11/21/2018 52
Gutenberg’s Press
11/21/2018 53
Movable type
• Aided in political and religious revolution
• Humanist movement fueled its success.
– Canterbury Tales and Dante’s Divine Comedy were
some of the first printed
• Led to the rise of the vernacular (non-Latin)
literary text
11/21/2018 54
Early Renaissance
• The style and ideas from the Early Renaissance
carried throughout the renaissance period and
left a lasting impact on modern culture.
11/21/2018 55
11/21/2018 56