Renaissance - Andrew Graham-Dixon. Chapter 4

Apocalypse.
The High Renaissance and its Enemies.
1500 -1525 is often seen as a golden age for the Italian Renaissance sometimes called High Renaissance, the time of Michelangelo and Raphael in Rome and the buildings of Bramante. But even as the Catholic church was commissioning these artists, in Northern Europe a challenge to the supremacy of the Catholic church was emerging inspired by the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536). At the same time throughout Europe there was a widespread fear of impending apocalypse - a millennial anxiety that the world was about to end.

Revelations.
From this time there dates many works that feature the last judgement, the apocalypse, the raising of the dead, and even the anti-christ as in the work of Luca Signorelli The Stories of the Antichrist (1499-1502) in Orvieto Cathedral. Here the devil is seen whispering into the ear of a christ-like figure - the anti-christ.
In Florence following the invasion of Italy by France, the Medici family were for a time deposed and the city was influenced by an extreme religious fanatic Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) who played on apocalyptic fears, he was excommunicated by the pope and a year later hanged and burnt at the stake.
From Northern Europe at this tine came works from the artist Hieronymus Bosch, showing fantastical scenes of demons torturing the damned, as seen in The Last Judgement c.1500.

Rome Rebuilt.
In 1503 Julius II became pope. He saw himself as a Caesar and led successful military campaigns to regain parts of the Italian peninsular from France and thus expanded the papal territories. He was also anxious to improve Rome itself which was something of a shantytown. One of his predecessors, pope Nicholas V, had been influenced by the ideas of Leon Baptista Alberti, and had dreamt of a Roman renaissance. Nicholas spelt out his vision in 1455 arguing that if the roman papacy were to prosper then Rome itself must be made to seem as majestic, as flawless and as permanent as the Christian faith itself. '...to create solid and stable convictions in the minds of the uncultured masses, there must be something that appeals to the eye: a popular faith, sustained only in doctrines, will never be anything but feeble and vacillating. But if the authority of the Holy See were visibly displayed in majestic buildings, imperishable memorials and witnesses seemingly planted by the hand of God himself, belief would grow and strengthen like a tradition from one generation to another, and all the world would revere it'. (p.178 Eamon Duffy Saints and Sinners (London and New Haven,1997), p.139).
Julius brought to Rome as chief architect and town planner Donato Bramante (1444-1514) to lead this rebuilding of the city.

An Ideal World.
At Bramante's prompting, Julius II brought to Rome the young artist Raffaello Sanzio,known as Raphael,whose frescoes within the Vatican are today regarded as priceless treasures. (I've seen these rooms several times and they are outstanding!). Amongst them are The School of Athens and the Disputa, showing classical and theological scenes of learning and debate. In truth however, at this time Julius II adopted a totalitarian and dictator like approach stifling debate within the Church.
Within Northern Europe the influence of Rome was on the decline as the religious culture evolved separately and distant from the papal court in Rome.

Northern Europe and its Discontents.
Behind the separate thinking of Northern Europe lay the intellectual force of Erasmus. A G-D writes: 'Like all humanist scholars, Erasmus was an intellectual heir of Petrarch. But he recast Petrarch's thought. He called not for a Renaissance of classical learning but for a spiritual Renaissance. While Petrarch had called for the rebirth of ancient Greece and Rome, Erasmus demanded the rebirth of the church'. (p.185).

Erasmus had grasped the new discipline of philology realising that language had changed over time he sought to go back to the earliest texts of the Word and to discover original and purer ideas free from the 'accretions with which they (the church of Rome) had barnacled it. He wanted to recover God's message in its purity' (p.186). This simplified piety fitted well with the feeling for a religious extremism linked to the apocalyptic expectations of the time, and becomes manifest in the stark art works such as Mathias Grunwald's Isenheim Altarpiece (closed position) c.1515, made for the leprosy hospital in the monastery of St. Anthony of Isenheim in Alsace,and in Tilman Riemenschneider's undecorated wooden carving of The Last Supper c.1499-1505.

In the city of Nuremberg at the time of the emergence of these ideas of a more austere and less ceremonial religion, there emerged the artist Albrecht Durer (1471-1528). His sense of vocation is reflected in some of his self-portraits, the most striking being painted in 1500 in which he is seen full faced, in almost Christ-like pose normally reserved for depictions of God. It could be seen as self-promoting and it can also been seen as reinforcing the more radical ideas that each Christian should have a direct relationship with God and not rely ceremony. Durer like Erasmus used the new invention of printing to spread his works to a larger audience, and many of them (such as the The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) have religious significance and subversive connotations that in judgement all will be equal.

The Divine Michelangelo.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was a young sculptor from Florence whose statue of David so impressed Julius II that he called him to Rome to work on his planned mausoleum. Michelangelo worked at this project on and off, for forty years, and it was never completed. But from it there remain several partly finished,male nude sculptures,the most complete of which is The Dying Slave now in the Louvre. Decorating Julius II's eventual tomb (a much reduced affair) is a large sculpture of Moses.
With the cancellation by Julius of the planned tomb, he managed to retain Michelangelo by giving him the commission to paint the Sistine Chapel. It took Michelangelo from 1508 - 1512 to decorate the ceiling, and the work reflects his belief that sculpture was a higher art form than painting as he creates sculptural figures in paint, and a complete trompe l'oiel architectural structure. With the numerous male nude figures (ignudi) it is as if he has created in the ceiling the temple structure that Julius had envisaged for his tomb. Within ten years after completion Pope Hadrian VI condemned it as 'a bathroom of nudes'. A G-D writes: 'Together with Giotto's paintings on the walls of the Arena Chapel, Michelangelo's paintings for the Sistine Chapel are the most celebrated frescos of the Christian painting tradition. Yet they mark a very different moment. A great gulf separates Michelangelo from Giotto. The Sistine Chapel is grander than the Arena Chapel, but it touches the heart less directly. Pathos has been replaced by aesthetic beauty. Intimacy has been replaced by sublimity'. (p.202)

Julius Triumphans
In the last years of Julius II papacy both Michelangelo and Raphael were at work within the Vatican, and some of the figures in Raphael's frescos at this time seemed to mirror the figures of Michelangelo. Raphael's frescos celebrate through allegory the success of Julius,and his final work The Liberation of St.Peter from His Chains, actually unfinished at the time of Julius's death on 21st February, 1513, shows St. Peter faintly resembling the pope. This became his epitaph, the image of Julius's final release from the prison of mortal existence into the light of God.

Julius Exclusus
After the death of Julius his successor Leo X sought to continue the rebuilding of Rome and the commissioning of large projects by selling 'indulgences' throughout Europe, promising forgiveness and redemption for hard cash. This section includes part of a witty imaginary account by Erasmus of Julius arriving at the gates of heaven and his argument with St. Peter and not gaining entry.

This anti-Rome feeling in Northern Europe fueled by the cynical sale of 'indulgences' drew the famous protest from Martin Luther (1483 - 1546) and the division of Christendom began.

Lucan Cranach the elder (1472 - 1553) a life-long friend of Luther became in effect the official artist of the Lutheran Reformation. His altarpiece of 1539 in the church of St. Mary's in Wittenberg is a visual manifesto for the reformed faith. Lucan Cranach the younger's (1515 - 1586) painting hangs in the same church and his allegory of this religious division, The Lord's Vineyard c.1569 depicts a vegetable garden half of which is in chaos and barren being managed by the pope, cardinals and priests, and the other half neat, fruitful and well managed by Luther and his colleagues.

Just as Erasmus was unable to contain the effects of the ideas he put forward, so Luther was unable to hold back or restrain the movement he had started. 'During the 1520's his ideas spread and mutated. Christendom was not merely riven in two, but split into many'. (p.209)

Rome Sacked
The anti-Catholic feeling heightened and manifested itself in works such as Erhard Schon's print Devil Playing the Bagpipes c.1530, the bagpipes in question being a caricature of a priests face. In Rome Raphael continued to paint frescos, a little seen form of propaganda against the widely distributed printed formats of the Lutherans. Works such as Fire in the Borgo continue to promote the papacy as a controlling and saving institution. Although this particular painting would seem to suggest this as ineffective, and highlights the conflagration rather than the papal miracle.

Rome came to face the effects of this division in a brutal and terrible way, when in 1527 many thousands of Charles V's imperial troops who had been based in Northern Italy invaded the city killing some 23,000 out of the total population of 55,000. Having been told that the Pope was the anti-christ many of these Lutheran soldiers believed that any associated with him must also be of the devil.

Luther's name was scratched into Raphael's fresco of the Disputa, and can still be seen today when lit correctly.


Michelangelo's Recantation.
In this section two of Michelangelo's later works are described,The Conversion of Saul 1542-5 and The Crucifixion of St. Peter c.1545-9. Gone now is the aesthetic beauty of his Sistine Chapel nudes and instead a concentration on the relationship between God and man. Nearing the end of his life Michelangelo appears to have had his own reformation in readiness for the 'beyond'. The section concludes with a translation by Elizabeth Jennings of Michelangelo's sonnet.

A Wavering Dance.
The Protestant impact on art in Northern Europe particularly in Britain was the destruction of much pre-Reformation religious imagery which they believed stood in the way of the individuals relationship with God. However, this led to the development of secular art such as landscapes as can been seen in Albrecht Altdorfer Landscape with Castle c.1520-32. Portraits, which suited Protestant introspection, historical and genre paintings. Luther believed sexual arousal was good for the soul and Lucas Cranach the elder gave this visual expression in paintings such as Eve 1528. Perhaps the greatest effect of the Reformation was to destroy the belief in the possibility of absolute truth, whether it be the aspirations of the humanists for their revival of the values of antiquity, or the early Protestants for their simplified faith.

The French essayist Michel de Montaigne 1533-92 is his essay On Books states that his library testifies to mans multifariousness and to 'the diversity of his dogmas and fantasies...Constancy itself is nothing but a languishing and wavering dance'. (p.221)

Renaissance - Andrew Graham-Dixon Chapter 3.

The Journey of the Magus.
Quote: The painter is lord of all types of people and things.
If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him it lies in his power to create them, and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful,buffoonish or ridiculous, or pitiable, he can be lord and god thereof; if he wants to produce inhabited regions or deserts or dark and shady retreats from the heat, or warm places, in cold weather, he can do so. If he wants valleys, if he wants from high mountaintops to unfold a great plain extending down to the sea's horizon, he is lord to do so; and likewise if from low plains he wishes to see high mountains...
In fact whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hand.
Leonardo da Vinci, notebook entry.

The Court and the Artist
Chapter three, takes us into the courts of the city states of Italy during the fifteenth Century,and introduces us to the rulers and families who became the patrons of artists who changed the direction of art.

The Medici as Magi.
By the 1430's Florence was effectively ruled by the Medici family and a masonic like sect based around the magi. The Medici family showed their wealth by commissioning and building the Dominican monastery of San Marco with a fresco by Fra Angelico in each cell. (Visited this monastery when in Florence a few years ago). The cell reserved for Cosimo de' Medici was decorated with a painting of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico's assistant Benozzo Gozzoli. Gozzoli also painted the fresco of The Journey of the Magi which adorns the four walls of the Medici private chapel in their palace.

The One-eyed Mercenary

One of Piero della Francesca's important patrons was Federigo da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, who was recognised as being perhaps the most outstanding military leader on the Italian Peninsula. Based in Urbino he became extremely wealthy by selling his army to opposing sides very successfully. Humanist educated, he constructed his ducal palace to reflect both his military and his intellectual prowess. The palace contains an outstanding range of art works, his studiolo containing 'intarsia' doors and panelling. Although famous in his time it is not he and his fellow rulers who have achieved the highest pinnacles of fame, but the people they employed: artists.

Piero della Francesca's portrait shows Federigo in profile, complete with warts and showing his damaged nose but hiding his missing eye. Being in profile shows him in the manner of the emperors of ancient Rome.

Artist Laureate.
Andrea Mantegna rose from a craftsman to a position of a wealthy courtier in the court of the Gonzaga in Mantua. His deep fascination with ancient Rome is reflected in his works, as can be seen in his painting of St. Sebastian c.1480 where it is unclear whether his sympathies lie with the martyred saint or the Roman ruins martyred by the Christian church. (More artworks by Mantegna in this chapter). He died in 1506 his status such that he was given one of the chapels (which is highly decorated by himself and his studio followers) in Mantua's impressive church Sant'Andrea as his own funerary chapel.

Art for Art's Sake

During the second half of the fifteenth century, there occurred something of a 'sea-change' in painting. There began to appear the idea of art as a diversion or amusement, and not only as illustrations of religious stories or promotions of persons of importance (portraits). Art for art's sake. Isabella d'Este wife of Francesco Gonzaga (Mantua) became a leading patron commissioning a multitude of paintings by leading artists on classical scenes, which she displayed in her studiolo. Mantegna contributed to her collection.

In Florence, Sandro Botticelli produced two famous paintings both of which were almost certainly commissioned to celebrate marriages. Primavera ('Spring') and The Birth of Venus.

A.G-D write of The Birth of Venus: 'It's title is misleading, because what the artist has depicted is the moment immediately after the birth of Venus. Having already been born, at sea, the goddess is about to step on to dry land. The wind, Zephyr, appears once more, again twined around his consort Chloris, this time blowing Venus to shore. An attendant, one of the three Hours, or Horae, is about to throw a cloak over the goddess's nudity. Botticelli painted the sea in an almost cursory manner, rendering it - like seas painted by children - as a pattern of wavy lines on a barely inflected ground. Venus standing in her shell, her long hair clasped to her in a gesture of modesty, is the image of fugitive, fragile innocence at the moment of its ending. She is a poetic representation of every bride to be. There is a lapidary quality to Botticelli's treatment of her, which is appropriate, since in stepping into the real world - into the world of love and marriage - she is about to step off her pedestal. He has made her a statue on the verge of becoming flesh.

The picture is about the crossing of a threshold. It is a poetic commemoration of the moment when a virgin becomes a wife and thus enters the world of procreation and reproduction. Botticelli finds cause, in this theme, for a certain wistful regret as well as for wholehearted joy in female fecundity. The Hora who is about to robe Venus's nakedness holds the mantle - the cloak of womanhood, metaphorically - between the fingers and thumb of her right hand. She does so in an arrestingly deliberate manner. The loop of red cloth thus formed, with such pointed care, takes the unmistakable shape of a woman's sex. A leaf, symbol of new growth, is folded within. Venus's golden tresses flicker out towards this charged detail like golden streaks of lightning. Lower down the picture, Botticelli arranged the strands of her hair, which Venus clasps to her modesty, to form another equally explicit image of a pudenda. These details are not so much a case of visual suggestion as of visual insistence. The Birth of Venus is about marriage - it is difficult to think of a picture which takes marriage more seriously - and sex is part of that. Its poetry is robust.

The most beautiful part of this picture is the face of Venus herself. Shaded by sadness, her expression recalls that of the Virgin Mary in much devotional art, lost in solemn contemplation of the fate which she knows will befall her son. Botticelli's Venus reflects a different kind of sadness, however. Her regret is for the loss of virginity. The translation to another stage of life carries with it the sadness for the life that was before'. (p.149-50)

These paintings mark a time of new freedom for the artist, but with this freedom came new anxieties and problems, artists had a new aim to play an active part in the life in the élite of society, which separated them from their predecessors.

Universal Man.

This section devoted to Leonardo da Vinci, contains a brilliant chapter describing many of his works, philosophies and his quest for knowledge. His belief that to be a painter was the highest calling, but that to be a painter he needed to fully understand whatever it was he was attempting to paint. This sets him aside and possibly points in the direction of scientific enquiry that was to come in later centuries.

A G-D writes : Another reason, besides, may lie behind the chronic, unproductive procrastination of his later years. This is the sense he may have had that any painting he might create would be likely to expose the gaps in his would-be universal knowledge. To attempt to paint the figure of a man might remind Leonardo that he had not yet got around to perfecting his knowledge of the way the tendons in the arm control the movement of the wrist; to attempt to paint a stretch of water in a landscape might remind him he had not yet quite got to the bottom of the dynamic principles governing the motion of whirlpools. Thus was art displaced to a life of endless study. The paradox of his position was that he had elevated painting to such a position of epistemological eminence, so far above mere craft, that he almost could not bear to practise it for fear of failing to live up to his own ideal'. (p. 169)

Self-Portrait c.1513

'In a self-portrait drawn in his old age, we see Leonardo with a long flowing beard which makes him look like the magus he had always dreamed of becoming. He even looks a little like traditional representations of God the Father. But his brow is creased and he looks infinitely sad. At the last, his ambitions for painting finally set aside, Leonardo perhaps knew enough to know that there were an infinity of things that he did not know, and could never know, about the universe in which he lived. He knew that he could not be a second God, in the end, nor even a universal man. He could only be a man. The final fruit of all his aspirations appears to have been an unshakeable melancholy'. (p.169)

Tutorials

Sample of tutorials last year:
Feb - intro tutorial 2 hrs
March - tutorial - looking at tma 1 - 2hrs
April - trip to Natioanl Gallery (this will differ around the country but is intended for you to have guided viewing of Ren Art)
late April - tutorial looking at tma 2 - 2 hrs
June - day school mainly focusing on IE's and preparation of pro form (aka tma 3)- 4hrs
July - tutorial - looking at tma 4 - 2hrs

Renaissance - Andrew Graham-Dixon. Chapter 2

The Pure Radiance of the Past.

This chapter concentrates on Florence and its pre-eminent position in the Renaissance and some of the early Renaissance artists who brought about much of the early impetus for change. Artists included in this chapter are Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Donatello.

Florence had become wealthy and influential throughout the whole of Europe and into the Byzantine east. During the 14thC in Florence schooling was given based on a curriculum from the ancient Romans. These teachers and students became known as the humanists and particularly under the influence of Petrarch there emerged a division of history into

1. The golden times of the civilisations of Greece and Rome

2. The Middle or Dark Ages.

3. The new golden era (which was to become the Renaissance)

Following taken from video:
Petrarch argued that time was not a continuous undifferentiated flow, but could be divided up into distinct periods. He believed that the classical civilisations of the ancient world had been the first age, a golden age, a pinnacle of human achievement, and that since the crumbling of the Roman Empire the world had fallen into a second dark age of barbarism and ignorance. If that barbarism and ignorance could be cast aside then the intellectual and political life of his own time would be re-awakened to bring about a third age. It was to prove an extraordinary potent idea, Petrarch wrote 'after the darkness has been dispelled our grandsons will be able to walk back into the pure radiance of the past'. In Florence, Petrarch became a cult. As an exile himself Petrarch adopted antiquity as a homeland of the mind. (AG-D)

The humanists and their curriculum based themselves around the writings of the Roman writer Marcus Tullis Cicero.

Florence's prominent position within the Renaissance can in some ways be attributed to the Swiss Professor Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) who in 1860 published The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy which together with Vasari's Lives of the Artists form the 'bible' of Renaissance studies. Burckhardt being, so to speak, the New Testament to Vasari's Old.

Florence's outstanding Renaissance landmark is Brunellesci's dome, constructed between 1420 and 1436. Although the work pays tribute to ancient Rome its size and construction is actually far greater than that of the Pantheon and was the largest dome in the world at the time. Although the dome was the largest symbol of the new Renaissance Florence, Brunelleschi's most influential work was in fact his unified square which included the city's foundling hospital Ospedale degli Innocenti. This design broke with the existing architectural vocabulary and prevailing spirit of architecture.

Within Florence, Brunelleschi was responsible for several churches and the Pazzi Chapel with its mathematical perfection ' Over the chapel floats an eight-ribbed dome with lights let into its sides and an oculus at its centre. A dome within a cube, a circle within a square, it is a geometrical figure of absolute harmony'. (p.81) 'Brunelleschi's dome is less explicit about the meaning of its geometry but it too offers the prospect of a transfiguration: an end to the ordinary and the imperfect in a vision of heavenly symmetry. It is the summary of the space, a frame for divine radiance'. (p.81).

Another outstanding Renaissance feature of Florence are the Bronze Doors cast by Ghiberti for the Baptistry that demonstrate not only advances in techniques, but even more in the way in which the artist became an agent for change. Described by Michelangelo as the 'Gates of Paradise' this work seems to demonstrate 'with exemplary clarity the coming to pass in 15thC Florence of a large change in Western art itself'. (p.88).

Three works of Masaccio from the Brancacci Chapel are discussed. The Tribute Money, St Peter Baptising the Neophytes, and the Expulsion from Paradise. 'Masaccio's Expulsion from Paradise is the most extreme expression of his uncomfortable direct imagination [...] A man and a woman have been thrust from paradise. He covers his face with remorse. Hers is tilted up towards the cold light of day - the first postlapsarian day - but her eyes are closed and her mouth is half open in an ugly agonized wail. Her hands cover her breasts and her sex, making her a fifteenth-century equivalent to Roman representations of Venus pudica, the Venus of Modesty. But her misery has over-whelmed the classical source and we do not see her as a piece of art referring to another piece of art. We do not see her as a piece of art at all, but as a woman in anguish. A strong emotion has been made visible in a way that is unforgettable. There is no more wrenching image of human sorrow'. (p.96-97).

Masaccio being his nickname roughly translates as Big Tom suggesting a large man. His full name being Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone.

Donatello

Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi was born in 1386 or 1387 and died in 1466. An outstanding sculptor of Florence he dealt in both realism and in imagination to create both religious and secular works and in them both effect many emotions and human responses and feelings. Several works described in this section reflect this e.g. Mary Magdalene, David, Judith and Holofernes.

Andrew Graham-Dixon describes Donatello's David with humour!

Quote: 'A similar, veiled, mysterious, self-conscious erotic energy characterizes the famous bronze David, now in the Bargello, commissioned by the Medici family and one of the first free-standing naked figures to have been created since antiquity. David the giant-killer was a symbol of giant-killing Florence: small yet perfectly formed, defying imperial foes against all odds. There used to be an inscription on the base of the statue proclaiming that it was a symbol of Florentine liberty, but the truth is probably a little more complicated. This cold but sexy boy, with his strangely feminine figure, is no straightforward emblem of republican resolve. The true nature of his victory is not, perhaps military but erotic. He is evidently too limp-wristed to kill anybody, let alone cut off a head as massive as the one on which he rests his left foot. The figure's kinky state of undress - he wears only a helmet and a pair of very fine boots of sensual floppy leather - makes his nakedness more alluring than would be the case were he simply nude. There is a biblical precedent for it but it's effect is to make him seem entirely lacking in innocence. The erotic decorations on the dead Goliath's helmet, which show a Triumph of Cupid, contribute to the sexual suggestiveness of the work. So too does the plume of bird's feathers on the helmet, which stroke the boy's calf and inner thigh and reaches up to his crotch. This surrogate, feathery caress - it is probably not a coincidence, as Frederick Hartt observed, that uccello or 'bird' was fifteenth-century Florentine slang for phallus - emphasises the boy's desirability but also states his unavailability. The dead man cannot of course possess him, although the expression on the grizzled features of the decapitated head suggests that he might be dreaming just such a sensual dream: and neither can the viewer. David is a tantalus, a work of art not a real boy, an eternal self-absorbed flirt who knows that he will always arouse but never be violated'. (p.105)

Half Right.

A G-D's succinct thoughts on Florence....and Burckhardt.

' Because of the volatile nature of its politics; because Petrarch's revolutionary ideas about the classical world and the need to revive it took root in Florence as nowhere else; because of the genius of its artists, inspired both by the new Petrarchan ideal of rebirth and by the continuing Franciscan imperative to make sacred story seem real; because of the competitive spirit with which life in Florence was permeated - for all these reasons, and doubtless others besides, the city witnessed an extraordinary and sudden evolution in the way men thought and saw and created. There are times and places when mankind has - through some unforeseeable mixture of genius and circumstance - made a great leap in consciousness. Florence, during the first half of the fifteenth century, was one of those places at one of those times. Quite where that leap took mankind is another question, and one that remains open to debate.

Burckhardt's big ideas about a new 'objectivity' and a new spirit of 'individualism' are still extremely influential - even if they are not totally convincing. Considering the wholly religious uses to which Florentine artists put their chief pictorial refinement, mathematically calculated perspective, Burckhardt's notions about the decline of religion require some qualification. The end result of the Renaissance may well have been a certain weakening of the bonds of religious faith, in some places, and among some people. But as the general devoutness of Florentine religious art reminds us, the process was by no means as straightforward as Burckhardt's account made out.

The other side of Burckhardt's proposition - the idea that people became more psychologically self-aware during the Renaissance - stands up better to close scrutiny. Like many bold thinkers, Burckhardt overstated his case. The assumption that people living in pre-Renaissance times did not think of themselves as individuals - that they somehow lacked an interior mental life - is evidently somewhat inhumane, and it is contradicted both by common sense and by all historical evidence. But when one looks at the body of Florentine art, in all its life and vigour, it is plain enough that Burckhardt was on to something when he wrote of Renaissance man as 'a spiritual individual' who 'recognised himself as such'.

Looking back to antiquity, perhaps what the great Florentine artists of the fifteenth century really discovered was themselves. Their legacy to the future was a heightened curiosity about character, identity and motive: an immensely richer sense of what it might mean to be a human being'. (p.109)

Dates of TMA's

TMA01 (3,000 words) 4th April 2008
TMA02 (3,000 words) 30th May 2008
TMA03 (Proforma) 4 July 2008
TMA04 (2,500 words) 1 August 2008
TMA05 (IE - 4,500 words) 19 September 2008

Renaissance - Andrew Graham-Dixon

By way of gaining a bit of background knowledge of the Renaissance before the course starts, I've commenced reading this book written by the art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon. It was written to accompany a series of BBC TV programmes. I hope to add some notes and quotes as I go along in an effort to reinforce reading and maybe possibly remember some of it!

Chapter One: In Search of Origins.

Notes: The Renaissance is not a simple straight forward event or 'rebirth' but is the point at which many strands and ideas from different cultures meet and combine in new and exploratory ways. 'a harmony of many parts' (p.57). The Renaissance is not just about the awakening to classical ideas in Northern Italy but is also the result of changes in the perception of Christianity presenting the human Christ instead of the 'Christ Pantocrator'*, the expression of naturalism, and the development of oil painting in Northern Europe and the continuing influence of Byzantine religious art, which itself traces its roots back to Egypt and even the Pharoahs.

*Christ represented triumphant, all powerful and dauntless, the master of human destiny as seen in the basilica, San Marco, Venice c. 1270

Quotes: The Roman Road - 'The way back to those [Renaissance] origins is no straight Roman Road, leading directly to the classical past, but a more winding and circuitous route'. (p.11)

Art Bleeds - 'During the thirteenth century, however, a dramatic change came over art on the Italian peninsula. Instead of depicting Christ the king, artists began to depict Christ the man, bloodied and suffering. Painting and sculpture were altered for ever. A single charismatic individual was largely responsible for bringing Christ down to earth, and for effecting this change - not an artist, but a man sometimes referred to by his followers as alter Christus, 'another Christ'. He was St Francis of Assisi'. (p.16)


'The Franciscan faith did not only revolutionise the image of Christ, it also gave an entirely new status and urgency to narrative art'. (p.24)













Right: Artist Unknown Christus Triumphans (Christ Triumphant on the Cross), late 12th century.
Left: Coppo Di Marcovaldo Christus Patiens(Christ Suffering on the Cross) c.1250-55
(click on picture to see enlarged)

Duccio - 'Two visual languages, the naturalistic and the transcendent, so to speak, could enrich and compliment each other'. (p.43)

'...a crowd of the real in a space that is ideal'(p.44)

'His clothes [Christ] have been highlighted in gold in the old Italio-Byzantine trechnique of chrysography, an effect which removes him somewhat from the world occupied by the other figures in the painting' (p.45, illustration 19, The Transfiguration, in the National Gallery, London link ).

'Divinity is communicated by design' (p.45)

A Royal Summons!

Looks like another one to visit :-)

Art of Italy, until 20th January 2008 at the Queens Gallery.
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=387

Sienna Exhibition and lecture at the National Gallery

From the OUSA AA315 conference:-
Mike Franklin (AA315 Course Manager) has asked me to put up this link :
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/renaissancesiena/default.htm
The exhibition will, I think, be a huge resource for AA315 students - and a potentially fruitful source of IE material. Chapter 4 of Book 2 is devoted to Siena, and I imagine the exhibition catalogue will be full of useful articles and a great bibliography.
The exhibition runs from 24th October to 13th January, and a series of lectures is planned by the NG over November and December, so do check out the NG site - though I'll try to keep you informed.
Of particular interest to OU students, however, is a lecture by our own Professor Diana Norman (who wrote a highly-regarded book on "Siena and the Virgin") on Monday 7th January next year at 1p.m. in the Sainsbury Wing of the NG. It's entitled "A Renaissance Tradition : Siena and the Virgin, 1430-1530"

Cast Off!

Recommended for a visit, the Cast Court Collection at the V & A
http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/sculpture/cast_collection/index.html

Size of the Elephant! What's involved?

Renaissance Period c 1420 -1520

Three themes:-
Making
Locating
Viewing (Renaissance Art)

Study works of art from
Netherlands
England
France
Crete
Italian States - Rome, Venice, Florence.

Religious purpose one of main causes.

Main Themes:-
1) The business of making works of art, workshops,
collaboration, guild control.

2) The fashion for classical antiquity.

3) Continuity with the past.

4) The circumstances of artistic commissions:
a) where made
b) who made by
c) who for
d) combined impact of above

Structure of the course
4 main parts = each part 8 weeks long
3 course books
ECA = project
Proposal for project submit during book 3

ECA = If you can't come up with an essay project title, there is a
set one to be completed.

The course guide also provides information on

Description of TMA's

TMA01 Total 3,000 words

Split Part 1 - 1,000 word essay. Part 2 - 500 word essay. Part 3 - 1,500 word essay.

TMA02 Total 3,000 words

Split Part 1 - 500 word essay. Part 2 - 1,000 word essay. Part 3 - 1,500 word essay.

TMA03 Independent Essay Proposal. Complete Proforma for submission to tutor.

TMA04 2,500 word essay.

TMA 05 The Independent Essay. 4,500 words.

Glossary

Financial Exchange Rates

Book Lists and Dictionary Lists

Photo of elephant car wash taken in Seattle, August 2007, famous as it appeared in an Elvis Presley film!

Attempting to smile my way through an art course!

This blog is dedicated to my new art course starting next year! Here I intend to post notes, comments, ideas, moans, successes, and hopefully all manner of useful information in an attempt to smile my way through an art course about Renaissance art :-)