Renaissance Art

What is a Painting?
 What is a Painting?
• It is a layer of pigments applied to a surface
• It is an arrangement of shapes and colors
• It is a projection of the personality of the person who painted it
• It is a statement of philosophy of the age that produced it
• It can have any meaning beyond anything concerned with one
person or only one period
• It is a picture of something!
 Four Questions To ask When Looking At A
Painting
• What purpose does this painting serve?
• What can we learn about the society in which this was
created?
• How realistic is this painting?
• What are the design elements of this painting?
 Design Elements
• form & composition
• material & technique
• Line
• Color
• Texture
• Space
• Perspective & foreshortening
• Proportion & scale
• It’s about geometry
• Guiding the viewer's vision
When looking at a work of art, the viewer should consider the
following elements, which artists use to create their intended
effects:

1. composition

2. movement

3. unity & balance

4. color& light / dark contrast

5. mood
 Form & Composition
• Form - objects shape and structure

• Composition - how an artist organizes forms in an

artwork by placing shapes on a flat surface or arranging
forms in space
 1326
Simone Martini
Hans Holbein (the younger)
(1497-1543)
Pieta
 Material & Technique
• Every material has its own potentialities and limitations

• Technique: the personal and distinctive ways an artist

handles material
 Line
• Artists make a line concrete by drawing it on a plane, a
flat and two dimensional surface. It may be thin or thick or
broken.
• When a continuous line defines an object’s outer shape,
it is called a contour line
Line or color?
 Color
• Paint pigments produce their individual colors by
reflecting a segment of the color spectrum whiling
absorbing all the rest.
• Green pigment subtracts or absorbs all the light in the
spectrum except that seen as green, which it reflects to
the eye.
 Power of Color
• Objects may be defined by color rather than line for
special softer effects
• Warm and cool colors:
• Blue used in background for perspective & distance
• Red - brings the object closer
 Texture
• Surface of the artwork is important for impact
• Actual vs... represented textures
• Collage - mixed media technique of mixing wood,
newspaper, fabric with pigment
• Texture: How is the paint Applied?
Thick or Thin?
 Impasto
Impasto is a technique
used in painting, where
paint is laid on an area of
the surface very thickly,
usually thick enough that
the brush or painting-knife
strokes are visible. Paint
can also be mixed right
on the canvas. When dry,
impasto provides texture,
Still Life: Vase with Pink Roses is an
the paint appears to be oil painting on canvas completed by
coming out of the canvas. Vincent van Gogh in 1890, which
makes extensive use of the impasto
technique
 Impasto
Impasto serves several purposes. First, it makes the light reflect in a particular
way, giving the artist additional control over the play of light on the painting.
Second, it can add expressiveness to the painting, the viewer being able to
notice the strength and speed applied by the artist. Third, impasto can push a
painting into a three-dimensional sculptural rendering. The first objective was
originally sought by masters such as Rembrandt, Titian, and Vermeer, to
represent folds in clothes or jewels: it was then juxtaposed with more delicate
painting. Much later, the French Impressionists created entire canvases of rich
impasto textures. Vincent van Gogh used it frequently for aesthetics and
expression.
 “Flatness”
(especially poplar in modern art)
flatness described the smoothness and absence of
curvature or surface detail of a two-dimensional work of art.
 Flatness & Modern Art
“Jasper Johns's subjects are flat. Under an enormous literal representation of
an unmistakable pipe Magritte wrote Ceci n'est pas une pipe. And to the
puzzled spectator who mistakes the image for the reality, he would have said -
Try to smoke it." - Leo Steinberg,( from "Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of
His Art”)
 Space
• Space-depicting a three-dimensional object on a two-
dimension plane
• Is the painting “crowded” or is the subject matter very
close to the viewer?
• What impact does this have on the viewer?
Space, Perspective & Foreshortening

Creating the illusion of depth and space on

a two-dimensional surface
 Proportion & Scale
• Proportion: the relationships (in terms of size) of objects
in the painting

• Disproportion & Distortion deliberately used for

expressive effects
 It’s all about geometry

Most artist realize and utilize the power of

geometric shapes to create their work.
Painters use their artistic techniques to
guide your eye
Art is often representative of historical,
cultural, and intellectual time periods

• Egyptian

• Humanism

• Romanticism

• World War I
Analyze the ways in which the two works of art below
represent the values of Italian Renaissance culture?
Artist as Social Critic
The White
Crucifixion
 Artist as a Philosopher

"La Trahison des

Images" ("The
Treachery of Images")
(1928-9) or "Ceci
n'est pas une pipe"
("This is not a pipe").
By René Magritte,
1898-1967
Thinking
Feeling
&
Painting
Moonlight over the sea
 Characteristics & Key terms of Renaissance
Art
• Classical Compositions & Themes
• Dominance of Religious Themes
• use of allegories: synthesis of pagan & religious
themes
• Chiaroscuro
• foreshortening
• linear & atmospheric perspective
 Characteristic of Renaissance Art
Continued
• Recognizable landscapes
• free standing sculpture
• free standing sculpture
• Fresco
• Tempera
• Geometric designs (science & art united)
• anatomic realism
Early Italian Paintings

1240s - 1300s
 Giotto
1266-1337
 Early Renaissance:

15th Century Italian Painting

Medieval Sculpture
Donatello’s
St. George

(1386-1466)
1401-1428
Masaccio
St Peter Healing with his Shadow
by Masaccio
(1425026)
Tribute Money
The Trinity
Decoding Renaissance
Paintings
Decoding Renaissance
Paintings
The Annunciation:
Three Mysteries

• Angelic Mission
• Angelic Salutation
• Angelic colloquy
– Disquiet
– Reflection
– Inquiry
– Submission
– Merit
Domenico Veneziano (1445-48)
disquiet? reflection? inquiry? submission?
Angelic Mission
Angelic Salutation
Angelic colloquy
Disquiet
Reflection
Inquiry
Submission
Merit
 Movements of the Soul Recognized
in Body Movements

• Affirmation: lift arms gently , back of hand faces the beholder

• Demonstration: opening palm of hand towards beholder or object
• Grief: pressing the breast with the palm of the hand
• Shame: covering eyes with fingers
• Melancholy: resting chin on hand
• Devotion: hold up your hands!

• Secular gesture: indicate "invitation”

Hundreds of symbols!!!!
The Last Supper, ca. 1520, by
Giampietrino (Giovanni Pietro
Rizzoli), after Leonardo da
Vinci, oil on canvas, (26.26 x 9.78 ft)
Composition as Structure
Philosophers pictured include Plato and Aristotle, center, and roughly from left to
right: Zeno, Epicurus, Averroes, Pythagoras, Alcibiades, Xenophon, Aeschines,
Parmenides, Socrates, Heraclitus, Diogenes, Euclid, Zoroaster and Ptolemy.

Artists pictured include Michelangelo Buonarroti (as Heraclitus), Leonardo da

Vinci (as Plato), Donato Bramante (as Euclid), Raphael and Sodoma.
Epicurus
Averroes
Diogenes
Parmenides Xenophon
Pythagoras
Socrates
Heraclitus
Zeno
Zoraster & Ptolemy
Sistine
Chapel
Creation of the Sun, Moon,
& Planets
Expulsion From Garden of Eden
Titian (1477-1576)
Bacchus and Ariadne
Titian (1522-23)
Renaissance Architecture
Palazzo
Vecchio
Andrea Palladio
(1508-1580)
Pallazzo Chiericati
 NORTHERN
RENAISSANCE
Robert
Champin

(1406-44)
 Antonello
Da
Messina

(1430-1479)
Albrecht
Durer

1500
Albrecht
Altdorfer

1529
Arnolfini Wedding
by Jan van Eyck

1434
 Hieronymus Bosch
Garden of Earthly Delights
1510
Bosch's most famous and unconventional picture is The Garden of
Earthly Delights which, like most of his other ambitious works, is a
large, 3-part altarpiece, called a triptych. This painting was probably
made for the private enjoyment of a noble family. It is named for the
luscious garden in the central panel, which is filled with cavorting
nudes and giant birds and fruit. The triptych depicts the history of
the world and the progression of sin. Beginning on the outside
shutters with the creation of the world, the story progresses from
Adam and Eve and original sin on the left panel to the torments of
hell, a dark, icy, yet fiery nightmarish vision, on the right. The
Garden of Delights in the centre illustrates a world deeply engaged
in sinful pleasures.
The enigmatic and strange fantasies that people the work of Bosch earned him
enormous fame even in his own lifetime, and his creations were widely imitated.
But nothing either in his own or in his contemporaries' work equals the
inventionof the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, justly his most famous
painting.

Various attempts have been made to relate these fantasies to the realities of his
own day. For instance, some of the sexually related visions have been related to
the creed of the Adamites, a hereticel sect of the day advocating, at least in
theory, sexual freedom like that in Eden. But the most promising line has been
to recognize many of them as illustrations of proverbs: for instance, the pair of
lovers in the glass bubble would recall the proverb 'Pleasure is as fragile as
glass'. This approach also provides a link between these fantasies and Bosch's
other work, such as the Cure of Folly or Haywain, and between Bosch's later
work and Bruegel's in the middle of the sixteenth century: though without
Bosch's satanic profusion, Brueghel also made illustrations of proverbs in this
way.
The Hay Wain by Bosch
Pieter Brueghel
(1525-1569)
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
If Pieter Brueghel the Elder enjoyed a solid reputation during his lifetime,
his paintings were "even more sought after following his death" (in 1569),
as Provost Morillon wrote to Cardinal de Granvelle as early as 1572. It is
probably this constant demand which led the famous painter's oldest son,
registered as a master in the Antwerp guild in 1584/85, to specialize in
copying his father's works. The Battle of Carnival and Lent, the original of
which is conserved in Vienna, is a very fine example of this. The subject
matter can be found in medieval literature and plays.
In the foreground, two opposing processions, the one to the left led by the
replete figure of Carnival and the one to the right by the haggard figure of Lent,
are about to confront each other in a burlesque parody of a joust. Here, on
either side of the picture, are feasting and fasting, winter and spring (the trees
to the left are leafless, those to the right have leaves), popular jollity and well-
ordered charity, the ill-famed tavern and the church as the refuge of the pious
soul. Whilst the father's work was not lacking in humor, the son's emphasizes
the encyclopedic aspect: the many scenes accompanying the "battle" are all
ceremonies or customs attached to the rites of carnival and lent, which
succeed each other from Epiphany until Easter. One intriguing element for
which no satisfactory explanation has yet been found is the fool guiding a
couple with a torch in broad daylight in the center of the composition. The
group is walking towards the right, but with its back turned both to Carnival and
the viewer.
Mad Meg
“Mad Meg”
Hans Holbein (the younger)
(1497-1543)