Case Study: All Roads Lead from Florence: The Rebirth in Renaissance Art
Reading:
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For this case study you are to analyze Chapter 12 Art and the Artist (Pgs. 373 - 379) and review the sources provided below. You are expected to be able to answer the guiding question in full depth with specific historical evidence and supporting details.
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Introduction:
The Middle Ages are so called because they fall between twin peaks of artistic glory: the Classical Period and the Renaissance. While art hardly died in the middle ages, what was reborn in the Renaissance was LIFELIKE art. In the early 1400s, the world woke up. From the its beginnings in Florence, Italy, this Renaissance, or rebirth, of culture spread to Rome and Venice, then, in 1500, to the rest of Europe (known as the North Renaissance): the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, and England. In Italy, the common elements were the rediscovery of the art of Greece and Rome, the scientific study of the Body and the natural world, and the intent to reproduce the forms of nature realistically. Aided by new technical knowledge like the study of anatomy, artists achieved new heights in portraiture, landscapes, and mythological and religious paintings. As skills increased, the prestige of the art soared, reaching its peak during the High Renaissance with artists like da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The Protestant Reformation decreased the sway of the church. As a result, the study God the Supreme Being was replaced by the study of human beings. From minutely detailed, realistic portraits by Jan van Eyck, to the emotional intensity of Durer’s woodcuts, art was the means to explore all parts of life.
The Middle Ages are so called because they fall between twin peaks of artistic glory: the Classical Period and the Renaissance. While art hardly died in the middle ages, what was reborn in the Renaissance was LIFELIKE art. In the early 1400s, the world woke up. From the its beginnings in Florence, Italy, this Renaissance, or rebirth, of culture spread to Rome and Venice, then, in 1500, to the rest of Europe (known as the North Renaissance): the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, and England. In Italy, the common elements were the rediscovery of the art of Greece and Rome, the scientific study of the Body and the natural world, and the intent to reproduce the forms of nature realistically. Aided by new technical knowledge like the study of anatomy, artists achieved new heights in portraiture, landscapes, and mythological and religious paintings. As skills increased, the prestige of the art soared, reaching its peak during the High Renaissance with artists like da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The Protestant Reformation decreased the sway of the church. As a result, the study God the Supreme Being was replaced by the study of human beings. From minutely detailed, realistic portraits by Jan van Eyck, to the emotional intensity of Durer’s woodcuts, art was the means to explore all parts of life.
Key Concept:
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Guiding Question - Skill: Comparison
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Top Four Breakthroughs of the Italian Renaissance
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Renaissance Hall of Fame
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High Renaissance Works |
The Northern Renaissance
In the Netherlands as well as in Florence, new developments in art began about 1420. But what was called the Northern Renaissance was not a rebirth in the Italian sense. Artists in the Netherlands – modern Belgium and Holland – lacked the ruins to rediscover. Still, their break with the Gothic style produced a brilliant flowering in the arts. While the Italians looked to the Classical antiquity for inspiration, northern Europeans looked to nature.
Without Classical sculptures to teach them ideal proportions, they painted reality exactly as it appeared, in a detail, realistic style. Portraits were such faithful likeness that Charles VI of France sent a painter to three different royal courts to paint prospective brides, basing his decision on the paintings. This precision was made possible by the new medium of oil, which Northern Renaissance painters first perfected. Since oil took longer to dry that tempera, they could blend colors. Subtle variations in light and shade heightened the illusion of 3-D form. They also used “atmospheric perspective” – the increasingly hazy appearance of objects farthest from the viewer – to suggest depth. The trademark of these northern painters was their incredible ability to portray nature realistically, down to the minutest detail.
Without Classical sculptures to teach them ideal proportions, they painted reality exactly as it appeared, in a detail, realistic style. Portraits were such faithful likeness that Charles VI of France sent a painter to three different royal courts to paint prospective brides, basing his decision on the paintings. This precision was made possible by the new medium of oil, which Northern Renaissance painters first perfected. Since oil took longer to dry that tempera, they could blend colors. Subtle variations in light and shade heightened the illusion of 3-D form. They also used “atmospheric perspective” – the increasingly hazy appearance of objects farthest from the viewer – to suggest depth. The trademark of these northern painters was their incredible ability to portray nature realistically, down to the minutest detail.
Northern Renaissance Hall of Famers
- Jan Van Eyck – He used the new medium to achieve a peak of realism. Trained as a miniaturist and illuminator of manuscripts, he painted convincingly the most microscopic details in brilliant, glowing color. One the first masters of the new art of portraits painting, van Ecyk included extreme details like the stubble on his subject’s chin. “The Arnolfini Wedding” captured surface appearance and textures precisely.
- Bruegel – Bruegel took peasant life as his subject. In his scenes of humble folk working, feasting, or dancing, the satiric edge always appeared. “The Peasant Wedding” features guests eating and drinking with gluttonous absorption. Bruegel’s most famous painting, “Hunters in the Snow”, came from a series depicting man’s activities during the months of the year. His preoccupation with peasant life is shown in the exhausted hunters plodding homeward, silhouetted against the snow. Bruegel used atmospheric perspective – from the sharp foreground to the hazy background – to give the painting depth.
- Dürer - was a painter, print-maker and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was still in his twenties, due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in communication with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Belleni and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 he was patronized by emperor Maximilian I .
Italian Renaissance vs. Northern Renaissance
Italian Renaissance |
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Northern Renaissance |
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Architecture in the Italian Renaissance
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Information Sourced From: Strickland, The Annotated Mona Lisa, 1992)