Lecture 1

Notes from lecture 1
THESE ARE ROUGH NOTES!!! not very well written in many cases, and certainly not for quoting! They are just a reminder of what we do in the lecture and they should not replace your own writing/thinking about the topic.

Cimabue, Giotto and Duccio are all in fact exploring the psychology of the figures they are painting and whatever one chooses to call this period in art, it is now evident that the ideas of Renaissance Humanism are taking hold in society.

At first glance Cimabue's Madonna and angels do look rather stylized and abstracted, the faces are all similar and elongated, the angels hover weightlessly stacked on top of one another.  However in comparison with Byzantine models his figures are more filled out and have realistic folds in their drapery.  There is an expressive and inquisitive look in each face of Cimabue's work.  Byzantine icons are beautiful works of art, but were created for spiritual reasons and were never meant to reflect naturalism.

While Giorgio Vasari considered Cimabue to have started the Italian Renaissance, later art historian Frederick Hartt in his book History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture felt that Cimabue was instead the last artist of the Byzantine tradition. 
Cimabue, Giotto and Duccio are all in fact exploring the psychology of the figures they are painting and whatever one chooses to call this period in art, it is now evident that the ideas of Renaissance Humanism are taking hold in society.
At first glance Cimabue's Madonna and angels do look rather stylized and abstracted, the faces are all similar and elongated, the angels hover weightlessly stacked on top of one another.  However in comparison with Byzantine models his figures are more filled out and have realistic folds in their drapery.  There is an expressive and inquisitive look in each face of Cimabue's work.  Byzantine icons are beautiful works of art, but were created for spiritual reasons and were never meant to reflect naturalism.

While Giorgio Vasari considered Cimabue to have started the Italian Renaissance, later art historian Frederick Hartt in his book History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture felt that Cimabue was instead the last artist of the Byzantine tradition. 
At first glance Cimabue's Madonna and angels do look rather stylized and abstracted, the faces are all similar and elongated, the angels hover weightlessly stacked on top of one another.  However in comparison with Byzantine models his figures are more filled out and have realistic folds in their drapery.  There is an expressive and inquisitive look in each face of Cimabue's work.  Byzantine icons are beautiful works of art, but were created for spiritual reasons and were never meant to reflect naturalism.
While Giorgio Vasari considered Cimabue to have started the Italian Renaissance, later art historian Frederick Hartt in his book History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture felt that Cimabue was instead the last artist of the Byzantine tradition. 
While Giorgio Vasari considered Cimabue to have started the Italian Renaissance, later art historian Frederick Hartt in his book History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture felt that Cimabue was instead the last artist of the Byzantine tradition. 

Gothic art embodies the transition from medieval stylization to the fully-developed realism of the Renaissance. It began in France in the mid 12^th C continuing up to early 16^th C, it developed alongside the Renaissance, before the two finally merged.

"Departing from the Byzantine notion of painting as a symbolic image of a divine being, Duccio, the founder of Sienese painting, endowed his figures with a new humanity, exploring the psychological relationship between Mother and Child."2

he pictorial inventions of Giotto can be seen in his altarpiece created for the church of Ognissanti in Florence.  Known as The Ognissanti Madonna (shown above), Giotto's figures have a solidity and weight to them.  Faces are quite expressive and individualized rather than stylized, the throne is shown as a realistic three dimensional space and the angels are shown convincingly in front of one another rather than stacked on top of each other.  Many art historians consider Giotto the father of the Italian Renaissance.  His innovations in art are especially evident in his many fresco cycles where he clearly captures the emotions in each individual.

After his time stylized iconographic figures and altarpieces start to wane from Italian art.

Bitter rivalry between the two republics the Ghibellines who supported the Holy Roman Empire (Siena). Due to the ties with the Holy Roman Empire along with ties to the French papacy in Avignon, the Sienese had more artistic influenced which were derived from the International Gothic style found in Germany and France.  This can be seen in the poses and folds of drapery in his figures.  But Duccio like Giotto is painting in a way that captures the intelligence and personality of each saint and angel. 

Arena, Chapel in Padua, Italy, the interior of which is covered with fresco paintings by Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266-1337). Looking around its interior – virtually, via books and online sources, since I’ve never actually been there – I was struck by the extent to which Giotto anticipated Renaissance era painting in his work, during a time in which the more stylized, Byzantine approach still dominated Western religious painting. Among the most impressive and moving of the paintings in the Chapel is one widely regarded as one of Giotto’s masterpieces, The Lamentation.

Commissioning art for churches was a very common way for financially well-off people to “earn” their way into Heaven through good works.

The Scrovegni Chaple is also commonly known as the Arena Chapel, since it was built near the site of an ancient Roman arena. Relatively plain from the outside, the interior of the Chapel is filled with one of the masterworks of art history. Giotto’s cycle of frescoes was begun around 1303 (some speculate that, as an architect, he may have designed the Chapel as well). His work may have been completed in time for the Chapel’s consecration in 1305, although it may also have continued as late as 1310.

Depictions of The Lamentation traditionally show Jesus’s body, having been removed from the cross, being mourned by family members and friends. In the visual iconography of that time, Biblical figures are usually marked out by their halos. By the eleventh century, the Lamentation had become a frequently depicted scene, with Mary and Jesus of course at the center of the drama.

Returning to Giotto’s painting, in the foreground are five figures surrounding and forming a circle around Jesus’s body, which we can see does not touch the ground. Three of the figures are women, wearing halos and biblical clothing, holding Jesus’s body. Two others are turned away from us. Two hold aloft Jesus’s hands. At Jesus’s feet is Mary Magdalene, recognizable by her long red hair.

There is a sense of three dimensions, if a little more compressed than what we would see in paintings a century or two later. The muted pastel colors are fairly typical of fresco painting; the blue azurite used for the sky, once probably quite brilliant, has also faded. The humans wear clothing that drapes naturally, and their facial and bodily expressions are recognizably emotional.

What most strongly separates Giotto from his contemporaries is the dramatic and emotional power of his work. Look at the intensity of the grief, and the variety of its expression, in both the faces and the physical postures.

Throughout the Middle Ages most of the intellectuals and scholars were clerics. Their studies focused on God and his Universe. They were concerned with the precise demonstration of what was true. The intellectual activity of that era is known as Scholasticism. This overlapped with the development of a new form of intellectual inquiry, what we call Humanism. Humanists represented a new type of intellectual – they were mostly laymen and they were fascinated with the literature of Greek and Roman antiquity. They reformulated the insights of Christian scholars to give a new account of the nature of the human being, human society and the arts and sciences of civilisation. In particular, the rediscovery of Ancient Greek texts revealed knowledge relating to philosophy, mathematics and science. In the Medieval period education focused on the teaching of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, arithmetic, geometry, astonomy and musical theory based on mathematical concepts; at university level they taught theology, law and medicine. One of the enduring legacies of humanism was the introduction of other subjects including poetry, history and moral philosophy, what we now call the Humanities – literature, arts, philosophy, and so on.

In 1334 at the age of 67 Giotto was commissioned to take over the design and construction of Florence Cathedral. This is something we see throughout this period, that painters were also architects or sculptors, the separation between the disciplines was not so defined. .Giotto concentrated on the campanile (bell tower) for the cathedral.  His design was in harmony with the polychromy of the cathedral.

Through this work, Giotto has become, together with Brunelleschi (dome of the cathedral of Florence) and Alberti (with his treatise De re aedificatoria, 1450), one of the founding fathers of Italian Renaissance architecture.

Baptistry in Florence is part of the cathedral complex, built earlier between 1059 and 1128, probably on the site of a Roman building. The architecture is in Florentine Romanesque style, which has a strong influence on the subsequent development of Renaissance architecture. The Baptistry is renowned for its three sets of artistically important bronze doors with relief sculptures. The south doors were done by Andrea Pisano during the 14^th C. Showing scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist – this panel shows John’s disciples visiting him in prison – John is not visible himself as he is inside the prison praying.

In 1401 the Cloth Importer’s Guild decided to commission new doors, and they announced a competition. VIDEO

In 1425 he received an additional commission for the East Doors. Big change in style.

Brunelleschi, who didn’t win the competition also made a transition from being a goldsmith to being an architect, and he received the commission to build the dome for the cathedral, a hugely tricky engineering operation.  Buttresses were forbidden by the city fathers, and because it was impossible to obtain rafters for scaffolding long and strong enough (and in sufficient quantity) for the task, it was unclear how a dome of that size could be constructed without it collapsing under its own weight in the process. There were other technical stresses and problems to be considered. The wool merchants' guild, held a competition to solve the problem. The two main competitors were Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, with Brunelleschi winning and receiving the commission. This work took up most of the rest of his life and involved feats of mathematics and invention – he had to invent mechanisms to get stones up to the top.

Brunelleschi also experimented with perspective

Al Hasan – Book of Optics 1011 to 1021.

What we see emerging out of Florence in the 14^th and 15^th Centuries, is a shift in perspective, towards empirical observation – looking at the world, measuring, calculating, weighing. Interest in developing technologies to do these things. Italy was a trading centre for goods coming from the East, trade routes had been opened up to the east, goods coming in like silk, cinnamon, spices, ivory. Merchant class who buy and sell, the beginnings of capitalism although it doesn’t take that name yet. The possibility of developing personal wealth leads to an interest in the material world. People don’t want to turn their back on religion, but they want a world view that allows them to be religious, good servants of god but also interested in worldly things.

The Masaccio is located in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which dates from 1246 – 1360. The façade is in a style called Tuscan Gothic. There are three portals spanned by round arches, while the rest of the lower part of the facade is spanned by blind arches, separated by pilasters, with below Gothic pointed arches, striped in green and white, capping noblemen's tombs. This same design continues in the adjoining wall around the old churchyard.

The upper part of the façade was designed by Leone Battista Alberti. Who inlaid the black and white marble on the façade between 1456 and 1470.  Alberti was famous for his treatise on architecture De Re Aedificatoria, based on the book De Architectura of the classical Roman writer etrusvius  Alberti attempted to bring the ideals of humanist architecture, proportion and classically-inspired detailing, to bear on this design while also creating harmony with the already existing medieval part of the facade. His contribution consists of a broad frieze decorated with squares. Everything above it, including the four white-green pilasters and a round window, crowned by a pediment with the Dominican solar emblem, and flanked on both sides by enormous S-curved volutes. The four columns with Corinthian capitals on the lower part of the facade were also added. The pediment and the frieze are clearly inspired by antiquity, but the S-curved scrolls in the upper part are new and without precedent in antiquity. The scrolls (or variations of them), found in churches all over Italy, all find their origin here in the design of this church.

Paulo Uccello

Andrea Mantegna born in 1431 – his flinty, metallic and somewhat stony figures and landscapes are evidence of a sculptural approach to painting. One of his great aims was optical illusion, carried out by a mastery of perspective which, though not always mathematically correct, attained an astonishing effect in those times. main legacy in considered the introduction of spatial illusionism.

Piero della Francesca was a painter who worked in Florence in this period also. He was known to be a  also known as a mathematician and geometer , and his worked is characterized by a serene humanism, combined with geometry and mathematical perspective. Flagellation of Christ is an enigmatic painting – the action is peculiar, it has a dreamlike quality to it, the violence on one side, the serenity and calm in the rest.

The Baptism of Christ is another of della Francesca’s best known works – typical subject, but not a typical treatment. Stillness of figures, calm. Strict geometry, Christ and the dove in the centre, perfect verticals, horizontals in the belts, the dove, the clouds, - the arch is echoed in shapes. Interest in the mathematical foundations of beauty and harmony. Tuscan landscape, Formality of the composition.

Sandro Botticelli was born in 1445. His work is considered representative of the grace and use of line that often characterises Florentine painting.

Primavera is understood as a metaphor for the Florentine  new spring of culture, everything flourishing and taking on new forms. Completely non-religious subject, drawing on Ancient Roman myths for its subject, Mercury, the Three Graces, ,Venus, Flora, Chloris,Zephyrus.

Late in his life he came under the influence of a preacher called Savonarola, who condemned the pagan imagery and lavish lifestyles that were in vogue.

Botticelli abandoned this type of work and became very religious – this is one of his later paintings, which shows something of a stylistic return to the international gothic style.

I wanted to finish up with Gentile de Fabriano’s work from 1420, which was painted in Florence. De Fabriano seems to have begun his painting career in Venice which had a very different tradition to Florence, and we will be looking at that next week. He travelled around quite a lot, and he is best known for his work in the International Gothic style, so this style as I mentioned before continued alongside these other developments.