Message about the artist of the Renaissance. High Renaissance artists
Renaissance painting
The beginning of Renaissance painting is considered the era of Ducento, i.e. XIII century. The Proto-Renaissance is still closely connected with medieval Romanesque, Gothic and Byzantine traditions. Artists of the late XIII - early XIV centuries. are still far from the scientific study of the surrounding reality. They express their ideas about it, still using the conditional images of the Byzantine visual system - rocky hills, symbolic trees, conditional turrets. But sometimes the appearance of architectural structures is so accurately reproduced that this indicates the existence of sketches from nature. Traditional religious characters are beginning to be depicted in a world endowed with the properties of reality - volume, spatial depth, material materiality. The search for transmission methods on the plane of volume and three-dimensional space begins. The masters of this time revive the well-known antiquity principle of chiaroscuro modeling of forms. Thanks to it, figures and buildings acquire density and volume.
Apparently, the first who applied the ancient perspective was the Florentine Cenny di Pepo (data from 1272 to 1302), nicknamed Cimabue. Unfortunately, his most significant work - a series of paintings on the themes of the Apocalypse, the life of Mary and the Apostle Peter in the church of San Francesco in Assisi, has come down to us almost in a ruined state. His altar compositions, which are in Florence and in the Louvre Museum, are better preserved. They also go back to Byzantine prototypes, but they clearly show the features of a new approach to religious painting. Cimabue returns from Italian painting
XIII century, which adopted the Byzantine traditions, to their immediate origins. He felt in them what remained inaccessible to his contemporaries - the harmonious beginning of the sublime Hellenic beauty of the images.
Rigidity and schematism give way to the musical smoothness of the lines. The figure of the Madonna no longer seems incorporeal. In medieval painting, angels were interpreted as signs, as attributes of the Mother of God, they were depicted as small symbolic figures. With Cimabue, they acquire a completely new meaning, they are included in the scene, these are beautiful young creatures, anticipating those graceful angels that will appear with the masters of the 15th century.
The work of Cimabue was the starting point of those new processes that determined the further development of painting. But the history of art cannot be explained in evolutionary terms alone. Sometimes there are sharp jumps in it. Great artists appear as bold innovators who reject the traditional system. Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337) should be recognized as such a reformer in Italian painting of the fourteenth century. This is a genius who rises high above his contemporaries and many of his followers.
Florentine by birth, he worked in many Italian cities. The most famous of the works of Giotto that have come down to us is the cycle of murals in the chapel del Arena in Padua, dedicated to the Gospel stories about the life of Christ. This unique pictorial ensemble is one of the milestone works in the history of European art. Instead of disparate individual scenes and figures characteristic of medieval painting, Giotto created a single epic cycle. 38 scenes from the life of Christ and Mary (“Meeting of Mary and Elizabeth”, “Kiss of Judas”, “Lamentation”, etc.) are connected by the language of painting into a single narrative. Instead of the usual golden Byzantine background, Giotto introduces a landscape background. The figures no longer float in space, but acquire solid ground under their feet. And although they are still inactive, they show a desire to convey the anatomy of the human body and the naturalness of movement. Giotto gives the forms an almost sculptural perceptibility, heaviness, density. It models the relief, gradually highlighting the main colorful background. This principle of light and shade modeling, which made it possible to work with pure, bright colors without dark shadows, became dominant in Italian painting until the 16th century.
The reform made in Giotto's painting made a deep impression on all his contemporaries.
The influence of Giotto acquired its strength and fruitfulness only after a century. The artists of Quattrocento carried out the tasks that were set by Giotto. The stage of the Early Renaissance is called a triumphal period in the history of art. The generosity and scope of artistic creativity in Italy in the 15th century gives the impression of an unprecedented creative activity of sculptors and painters.
The glory of the founder of painting Quattrocento belongs to the Florentine artist Masaccio, who died very young (1401-1428). On his frescoes, the figures, painted according to the laws of anatomy, are connected with each other and with the landscape. Its hills and trees go into the distance, forming a natural air environment. The life of people and nature is connected into a single whole, into a single dramatic action. This is a new word in the world art of painting.
The Florentine school for a long time remained leading in the art of Italy. It also had a more conservative trend. The artists of this trend were monks, so in the history of art they were called monastic. One of the most famous among them was the brother of Giovanni Beato Angelico da Fiesole (1387-1455).
A characteristic feature of the painting of the late Quattrocento is the diversity of schools and trends. At this time, the Florentine, Umbian (Piero dela Francesca, Pinturicchio, Perugino), Northern Italian (Mantegni), Venetian (Giovanni Bellini) schools were formed.
One of the most prominent artists of Quattrocento - Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) - an exponent of the aesthetic ideals of the court of the famous tyrant, politician, patron, poet and philosopher Lorenzo de' Medici, nicknamed the Magnificent. The court of this uncrowned sovereign was the center of artistic culture, bringing together famous philosophers, scientists, and artists.
In the art of Botticelli, a kind of synthesis of medieval mysticism with the ancient tradition, the ideals of the Gothic and the Renaissance takes place. In his mythological images, there is a revival of symbolism. He depicts beautiful ancient goddesses not in sensual forms of earthly beauty, but in romantic, spiritualized, sublime images. The painting that glorified him is The Birth of Venus. Here we see a peculiar female image of Botticelli, which cannot be confused with the works of other artists. Botticelli amazingly combined pagan sensuality and increased spirituality, sculptural femininity and delicate fragility, sophistication, linear accuracy and emotionality, variability. He is one of the most poetic artists in art history. He prefers symbolic, allegorical themes, likes to dream, to express himself in a hint.
The early Renaissance lasted for about a century. It is completed by the period of the High Renaissance, which accounts for only about 30 years. Rome became the main center of artistic life at this time.
If the art of the Quattrocento is analysis, searches, discoveries, the freshness of a youthful worldview, then the art of the High Renaissance is a result, a synthesis, a wise maturity. The search for an artistic ideal during the Quattrocento period led art to a generalization, to the disclosure of general patterns. The main difference between the art of the High Renaissance is that it renounces particulars, details, details in the name of a generalized image. All experience, all searches for predecessors are compressed by the great masters of the Cinquecento in a grandiose generalization.
The image of a beautiful, strong-willed person is the main content of the art of that time. Unlike the art of the 15th century, it is characterized by the desire to comprehend and embody the general regularity of the phenomena of life.
It was the era of the titans of the Renaissance, which gave world culture the work of Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo. In the history of world culture, these three geniuses, despite all their dissimilarity, creative individuality personify the main value of the Italian Renaissance - the harmony of beauty, power and intellect. Their lives are evidence of the change in the attitude of society towards the creative personality of the artist, which is characteristic of the Renaissance. Masters of art became prominent and valuable figures in society, they were rightly considered the most educated people of their time.
This characteristic, perhaps more than other figures of the Renaissance, is suitable for Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519). He combined artistic and scientific genius. Leonardo was a scientist who studied nature not for the sake of art, but for the sake of science. Therefore, so few finished works of Leonardo have come down to us. He started pictures and abandoned them as soon as the problem seemed to him articulated. Many of his observations anticipate the development of European science and painting for centuries. Modern scientific discoveries fuel interest in his sci-fi engineering drawings.
His "Madonna in the Grotto" is the first monumental altarpiece of the High Renaissance. This is a large painting of a format common in Renaissance painting, which resembles a window rounded at the top.
A new stage in art was the painting of the wall of the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria del Grazie on the plot of The Last Supper, which was painted by many Quattrocento artists. "The Last Supper" is the cornerstone of classical art, it carried out the program of the High Renaissance. Leonardo worked on this piece for 16 years. The huge fresco, where the figures are painted one and a half times their natural size, has become an example of a wise understanding of the laws of monumental painting associated with the real space of the interior. It embodied the artist's scientific research in the field of physics, optics, mathematics, anatomy, necessary to solve the problems of proportions and perspectives in a vast pictorial space. Most importantly, the brilliant work of Leonardo has tremendous psychological power. None of the artists depicting the Last Supper before Leonardo set such a difficult task - through the reaction of different people, personalities, temperaments, emotional responses, to show the single meaning of this great moment. 12 apostles, 12 different characters manifest themselves in different ways at the moment of spiritual upheaval. Through their emotional reactions, expressed in the movement, the eternal questions of man are revealed: about love and hatred, devotion and betrayal, nobility and meanness.
One of the most famous paintings in the world was the work of Leonardo "La Gioconda". This portrait of the wife of the merchant del Giocondo has attracted attention for centuries, hundreds of pages of comments have been written about him, he was kidnapped, forged, copied, he was credited with witchcraft power. The elusive facial expression of the Mona Lisa defies exact description and reproduction. This portrait has become a masterpiece of Renaissance art.
For the first time in the history of world art, the portrait genre has risen to the same level as compositions on a religious theme.
The ideas of the monumental art of the Renaissance found a vivid expression in the work of Raphael Santi (1483-1520). Leonardo created the classical style, Raphael approved and popularized it. The art of Raphael is often defined as the "golden mean".
Raphael's work is distinguished by the qualities of the classics - clarity, noble simplicity, harmony. With all its essence, it is connected with the spiritual culture of the Renaissance. He was 30 years younger than Leonardo, and died almost simultaneously with him, having done so much in the history of art that it is hard to imagine that one person could do all this. A versatile artist, architect, muralist, master of portraiture and multi-figure composition, a talented decorator, he was a central figure in the artistic life of Rome. The pinnacle of his skill was the "Sistine Madonna", written in 1516 for the Benedictine monastery in Piacenza (now the picture is in Dresden). For many, it is a measure of the most beautiful that art can create.
This altar composition has been perceived for centuries as a formula of beauty and harmony. A tragic feeling emanates from the amazingly spiritualized faces of the Madonna and the baby God, whom she gives in atonement for human sins. Madonna's gaze is directed, as it were, through the viewer, it is full of mournful foresight. This image embodies the synthesis of the ancient ideal of beauty with the spirituality of the Christian ideal.
The historical merit of Raphael's art is that he connected two worlds into one whole - the Christian world and the pagan world. Since that time, the new artistic ideal has been firmly established in the religious art of Western Europe.
Renaissance sculpture
The bright genius of Raphael was far from the psychological depth into the inner world of man, like that of Leonardo, but even more alien to the tragic worldview of Michelangelo. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) lived a long, difficult and heroic life. His genius manifested itself in architecture, painting, poetry, but most clearly in sculpture. He perceived the world plastically, in all areas of art he is primarily a sculptor. The human body seems to him the most worthy subject of the image. But this is a man of a special, powerful, heroic breed. The art of Michelangelo is dedicated to the glorification of the human fighter, his heroic activity and suffering. His art is characterized by gigantomania, a titanic beginning. This is the art of squares, public buildings, and not palace halls, art for the people, and not for court aristocrats.
The 15th century is the heyday of monumental sculpture in Italy. It leaves the interiors on the facades of churches and civil buildings, on the city square, becomes part of the city ensemble.
One of the earliest and most famous works of Michelangelo is a five-meter statue of David in the square in Florence, symbolizing the victory of young David over the giant Goliath. The opening of the monument turned into a national celebration, because the Florentines saw in David a hero close to them, a citizen and defender of the republic.
Renaissance sculptors turned not only to traditional Christian images, but also to living people, contemporaries. With this desire to perpetuate the image of a real contemporary, the development of the genre of sculptural portrait, tombstone, portrait medal, equestrian statue is connected. These sculptures adorned the squares of cities, changing their appearance.
Renaissance sculpture returns to the ancient traditions of plastic arts. Monuments of ancient sculpture become an object of study, an example of plastic language. Sculpture, before painting, departs from medieval canons and embarks on a new path of development. Perhaps this is due to the place that she occupied in medieval temples. During the construction of large cathedrals, workshops were created that trained sculptors-decorators who were well trained here. The workshops of sculptors were the leading centers of artistic life and played an important role in the study of antiquity and the anatomy of the human body. The achievements of sculpture of the Early Renaissance had a great influence on painters who perceived a living person through the prism of plasticity. The sculptors of the Renaissance achieve the full significance of the human body, they free it from under the mass of clothes in which the figures were hidden by medieval Gothic. The path that Hellas took in three centuries was completed by three generations of masters in the Renaissance.
The first forerunners of Renaissance art appeared in Italy in the 14th century. Artists of this time, Pietro Cavallini (1259-1344), Simone Martini (1284-1344) and (primarily) Giotto
(1267-1337), when creating paintings of traditional religious subjects, they began to use new artistic techniques: building a three-dimensional composition, using a landscape in the background, which allowed them to make images more realistic and lively. This sharply distinguished their work from the previous iconographic tradition, replete with conventions in the image.
The term is used to refer to their work. Proto-Renaissance (1300s - "Trecento")
.
Giotto di Bondone
(c. 1267-1337) - Italian painter and architect of the Proto-Renaissance era. One of the key figures in the history of Western art. Having overcome the Byzantine icon-painting tradition, he became the true founder of the Italian school of painting, developed a completely new approach to depicting space. Giotto's works were inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo.
Early Renaissance (1400s - "Quattrocento").
At the beginning of the 15th century Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377-1446), Florentine scholar and architect.
Brunelleschi wanted to make the perception of the terms and theaters reconstructed by him more visual and tried to create geometrically perspective pictures from his plans for a certain point of view. In these searches, direct perspective.
This allowed the artists to get perfect images of three-dimensional space on a flat canvas of the picture.
_________Another important step towards the Renaissance was the emergence of non-religious, secular art. Portrait and landscape established themselves as independent genres. Even religious subjects acquired a different interpretation - Renaissance artists began to consider their characters as heroes with pronounced individual traits and human motivation for actions.
The most famous artists of this period are Masaccio (1401-1428), Masolino (1383-1440), Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497), Piero Della Francesco (1420-1492), Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), Antonello da Messina (1430-1479), Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494), Sandro Botticelli (1447-1515).
Masaccio
(1401-1428) - the famous Italian painter, the largest master of the Florentine school, the reformer of painting of the Quattrocento era.
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| Fresco. Miracle with the stater. |
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| Painting. crucifixion. |
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| Fresco. History of the Queen of Sheba. Church of San Francesco in Arezzo |
Sandro Botticelli(1445-1510) - great Italian painter, representative of the Florentine school of painting.
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| Spring. |
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| Birth of Venus. |
High Renaissance ("Cinquecento").
The highest flowering of Renaissance art came for the first quarter of the 16th century.
Works Sansovino (1486-1570), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Rafael Santi (1483-1520), Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564), Giorgione (1476-1510), Titian (1477-1576), Antonio Correggio (1489-1534) constitute the golden fund of European art.
Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci (Florence) (1452-1519) - Italian artist (painter, sculptor, architect) and scientist (anatomist, naturalist), inventor, writer.
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| self-portrait |
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| Lady with an ermine. 1490. Czartoryski Museum, Krakow |
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| Mona Lisa (1503-1505/1506) |
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| Madonna Litta. 1490-1491. Hermitage Museum. |
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| Madonna Benois (Madonna with a flower). 1478-1480 |
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| Madonna with a Carnation. 1478 |
During his life, Leonardo da Vinci made thousands of notes and drawings on anatomy, but did not publish his work. Making an autopsy of the bodies of people and animals, he accurately conveyed the structure of the skeleton and internal organs, including small details. According to professor of clinical anatomy Peter Abrams, da Vinci's scientific work was 300 years ahead of its time and in many ways surpassed the famous Grey's Anatomy.
List of inventions, both real and attributed to him:
parachute, toolescovo castle,bicycle, tankh, llight portable bridges for the army, pprojector, toatapult, robot, dvohlenz telescope.
Later, these innovations were developed Rafael Santi (1483-1520) - a great painter, graphic artist and architect, a representative of the Umbrian school.
| Self-portrait. 1483 |
Michelangelo di Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti Simoni(1475-1564) - Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, thinker.
Paintings and sculptures by Michelangelo Buonarotti are full of heroic pathos and, at the same time, a tragic sense of the crisis of humanism. His paintings glorify the strength and power of man, the beauty of his body, while emphasizing his loneliness in the world.
The genius of Michelangelo left an imprint not only on the art of the Renaissance, but also on all further world culture. His activities are mainly associated with two Italian cities - Florence and Rome.
However, the artist was able to realize his most grandiose plans precisely in painting, where he acted as a true innovator of color and form.
By order of Pope Julius II, he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512), representing the biblical story from the creation of the world to the flood and including more than 300 figures. In 1534-1541, in the same Sistine Chapel for Pope Paul III, he performed the grandiose, dramatic fresco The Last Judgment.
Sistine Chapel 3D.
The work of Giorgione and Titian is distinguished by an interest in the landscape, the poeticization of the plot. Both artists achieved great skill in the art of portraiture, with the help of which they conveyed the character and rich inner world of their characters.
Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco ( Giorgione) (1476 / 147-1510) - Italian artist, representative of the Venetian school of painting.
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| Sleeping Venus. 1510 |
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| Judith. 1504 |
Titian painted pictures on biblical and mythological subjects, he became famous as a portrait painter. He was commissioned by kings and popes, cardinals, dukes and princes. Titian was not even thirty years old when he was recognized as the best painter in Venice.
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| Self-portrait. 1567 |
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| Venus Urbinskaya. 1538 |
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| Portrait of Tommaso Mosti. 1520 |
Late Renaissance.
After the sack of Rome by imperial troops in 1527, the Italian Renaissance entered a period of crisis. Already in the work of the late Raphael, a new artistic line is outlined, called mannerism.
This era is characterized by overstretched and broken lines, elongated or even deformed figures, often naked, tension and unnatural poses, unusual or bizarre effects associated with size, lighting or perspective, the use of a caustic chromatic scale, overloaded composition, etc. The first masters mannerism Parmigianino
, Pontormo
, Bronzino-
lived and worked at the court of the dukes of the Medici house in Florence. Later, Mannerist fashion spread throughout Italy and beyond.
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola
(Parmigianino
- "inhabitant of Parma") (1503-1540,) Italian artist and engraver, representative of mannerism.
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| Self-portrait. 1540 |
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| Portrait of a woman. 1530. |
Pontormo (1494-1557) - Italian painter, representative of the Florentine school, one of the founders of mannerism.
Mannerism was replaced by art in the 1590s baroque (transitional figures - Tintoretto And El Greco ).
Jacopo Robusti, better known as Tintoretto (1518 or 1519-1594) - painter of the Venetian school of the late Renaissance.
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| The Last Supper. 1592-1594. Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. |
El Greco ("Greek" Domenikos Theotokopoulos ) (1541-1614) - Spanish artist. By origin - a Greek, a native of the island of Crete.
El Greco had no contemporary followers, and his genius was rediscovered almost 300 years after his death.
El Greco studied in the workshop of Titian, but, however, his painting technique differs significantly from that of his teacher. The works of El Greco are characterized by speed and expressiveness of execution, which bring them closer to modern painting.
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| Christ on the cross. OK. 1577. Private collection. |
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| Trinity. 1579 Prado. |
During the Renaissance, many changes and discoveries take place. New continents are explored, trade develops, important things are invented, such as paper, a marine compass, gunpowder and many others. Changes in painting were also of great importance. Renaissance paintings gained immense popularity.
The main styles and trends in the works of masters
The period was one of the most fruitful in the history of art. Masterpieces of a huge number of outstanding masters can be found today in various art centers. Innovators appeared in Florence in the first half of the fifteenth century. Their Renaissance paintings marked the beginning of a new era in art history.
At this time, science and art become very closely linked. Artists scientists sought to master the physical world. Painters tried to use more accurate ideas about the human body. Many artists strove for realism. The style begins with Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, which he painted over the course of nearly four years.
One of the most famous works
It was painted in 1490 for the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The canvas represents the last meal of Jesus with his disciples before he was captured and killed. Contemporaries watching the artist's work during this period noted how he could paint from morning to evening without even stopping to eat. And then he could abandon his painting for several days and not approach it at all.
The artist was very worried about the image of Christ himself and the traitor Judas. When the picture was finally completed, it was rightfully recognized as a masterpiece. "The Last Supper" is one of the most popular to this day. Renaissance reproductions have always been in high demand, but this masterpiece is marked by countless copies.
A recognized masterpiece, or the mysterious smile of a woman
Among the works created by Leonardo in the sixteenth century is a portrait called "Mona Lisa", or "La Gioconda". In the modern era, this is perhaps the most famous painting in the world. She became popular mainly because of the elusive smile on the face of the woman depicted on the canvas. What led to such a mystery? Skillful work of the master, the ability to shade the corners of the eyes and mouth so skillfully? The exact nature of this smile cannot be determined until now.
Out of competition and other details of this picture. It is worth paying attention to the hands and eyes of a woman: with what accuracy the artist reacted to the smallest details of the canvas when writing it. No less interesting is the dramatic landscape in the background of the picture, a world in which everything seems to be in a state of flux.
Another famous representative of painting
No less famous representative of the Renaissance - Sandro Botticelli. This is a great Italian painter. His Renaissance paintings are also hugely popular with a wide range of audiences. "Adoration of the Magi", "Madonna and Child on the Throne", "Annunciation" - these works by Botticelli, dedicated to religious themes, have become the artist's great achievements.
Another famous work of the master is Madonna Magnificat. She became famous during the years of Sandro's life, as evidenced by numerous reproductions. Similar paintings in the form of a circle were quite in demand in Florence of the fifteenth century.
A new turn in the work of the painter
Beginning in 1490, Sandro changed his style. It becomes more ascetic, the combination of colors is now much more restrained, dark tones often prevail. The new approach of the creator to writing his works is perfectly noticeable in the "Coronation of Mary", "Lamentation of Christ" and other canvases depicting the Madonna and the Child.
The masterpieces painted by Sandro Botticelli at that time, for example, the portrait of Dante, are devoid of landscape and interior backgrounds. One of the artist's no less significant creations is "Mystical Christmas". The picture was painted under the influence of the troubles that took place at the end of 1500 in Italy. Many paintings by Renaissance artists not only gained popularity, they became an example for the next generation of painters.
An artist whose canvases are surrounded by an aura of admiration
Rafael Santi da Urbino was not only but also an architect. His Renaissance paintings are admired for their clarity of form, simplicity of composition, and visual achievement of the ideal of human greatness. Along with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he is one of the traditional trinity of the greatest masters of this period.
He lived a relatively short life, only 37 years old. But during this time he created a huge number of his masterpieces. Some of his works are in the Vatican Palace in Rome. Not all viewers can see with their own eyes the paintings of Renaissance artists. Photos of these masterpieces are available to everyone (some of them are presented in this article).
The most famous works of Raphael
From 1504 to 1507, Raphael created a whole series of Madonnas. The paintings are distinguished by bewitching beauty, wisdom and at the same time a kind of enlightened sadness. His most famous painting was the Sistine Madonna. She is depicted soaring in the sky and gently descending to the people with the Baby in her arms. It was this movement that the artist was able to depict very skillfully.
This work has been highly acclaimed by many well-known critics, and they all came to the same conclusion that it is indeed rare and unusual. All Renaissance paintings have a long history. But it has become most popular due to its endless wanderings since its inception. After going through numerous trials, she finally took her rightful place among the expositions of the Dresden Museum.
Renaissance paintings. Photos of famous paintings
And another famous Italian painter, sculptor, and also an architect who had a huge impact on the development of Western art is Michelangelo di Simoni. Despite the fact that he is known mainly as a sculptor, there are also beautiful works of his painting. And the most significant of them is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
This work was carried out for four years. The space covers about five hundred square meters and contains more than three hundred figures. In the very center are nine episodes from the book of Genesis, divided into several groups. The creation of the earth, the creation of man and his fall. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are "The Creation of Adam" and "Adam and Eve".
His most famous work is The Last Judgment. It was made on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. The fresco depicts the second coming of Jesus Christ. Here Michelangelo ignores the standard artistic conventions in writing Jesus. He depicted him with a massive muscular body structure, young and beardless.
The Meaning of Religion, or the Art of the Renaissance
Italian Renaissance paintings became the basis for the development of Western art. Many of the popular works of this generation of creators have a huge impact on artists that continues to this day. The great artists of that period focused on religious themes, often commissioned by wealthy patrons, including the Pope himself.
Religion literally penetrated into the daily life of the people of this era, deeply embedded in the minds of artists. Almost all religious canvases are in museums and art repositories, but reproductions of Renaissance paintings related not only to this subject can be found in many institutions and even ordinary houses. People will endlessly admire the works of famous masters of that period.
Italy is a country that has always been famous for its artists. The great masters who once lived in Italy glorified art throughout the world. We can say for sure that if it were not for the Italian artists, sculptors and architects, the world would look very different today. The most significant in Italian art, of course, is considered. Italy in the Renaissance or Renaissance reached an unprecedented rise and prosperity. Talented artists, sculptors, inventors, real geniuses who appeared in those days are still known to every schoolchild. Their art, creativity, ideas, developments today are considered classics, the core on which world art and culture are built.
One of the most famous geniuses of the Italian Renaissance, of course, is the great Leonardo da Vinci(1452-1519). Da Vinci was so gifted that he achieved great success in many areas of activity, including the visual arts and science. Another famous artist who is a recognized master is Sandro Botticelli(1445-1510). Botticelli's paintings are a real gift to humanity. Today, his dense are in the most famous museums in the world and are truly priceless. No less famous than Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli is Rafael Santi(1483-1520), who lived for 38 years, and during this time managed to create a whole layer of stunning painting, which became one of the brightest examples of the Early Renaissance. Another great genius of the Italian Renaissance is no doubt Michelangelo Buonarotti(1475-1564). In addition to painting, Michelangelo was engaged in sculpture, architecture and poetry, and achieved great results in these arts. The statue of Michelangelo called "David" is considered an unsurpassed masterpiece, an example of the highest achievement of the art of sculpture.
In addition to the artists mentioned above, the greatest artists of Italy of the Renaissance were such masters as Antonello da Messina, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Paolo Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto, Domenico Fetti, Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Francesco Guardi and others. . All of them were a prime example of the delightful Venetian school of painting. The Florentine school of Italian painting includes such artists as: Masaccio, Andrea del Verrocchio, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, Benozzo Gozzoli, Sandro Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Piero di Cosimo, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Fra Bartolommeo, Andrea del Sarto.
To list all the artists who worked during the Renaissance, as well as during the late Renaissance, and centuries later, who became known to the whole world and glorified the art of painting, developed the basic principles and laws that underlie all types and genres of fine arts, perhaps it will take several volumes to write, but this list is enough to understand that the Great Italian Artists are the very art that we know, that we love and that we will appreciate forever!
Paintings by great Italian artists
Andrea Mantegna - Fresco in the Camera degli Sposi
Giorgione - Three Philosophers
Leonardo da Vinci - Mona Lisa
Nicolas Poussin - The Magnanimity of Scipio
Paolo Veronese - Battle of Lepanto
When looking at pictures renaissance, one cannot but admire the clarity of the lines, the excellent color palette and, most importantly, the incredible realism of the transmitted images. Modern scientists puzzled for a long time how the masters of that time managed to create such masterpieces, because there is no written evidence of the intricacies and secrets of the performance technique. English artist and photographer David Hockney claims that he has unraveled the mystery of Renaissance artists who knew how to paint "live" pictures.
If we compare different time periods in the history of painting, it becomes clear that during the Renaissance (the turn of the 14th-15th centuries), paintings "suddenly" became much more realistic than before. Looking at them, it seems that the characters are about to sigh, and sunbeams will play on the objects.
The question begs itself: did the Renaissance artists suddenly learn to draw better, and the paintings began to turn out more voluminous? The famous artist, graphic artist and photographer David Hockney tried to answer this question ( David Hockney).
In this study, he was helped by the painting by Jan van Eyck "Portrait of the Arnolfinis". On the canvas you can find a lot of curious details, and yet it was written in 1434. Particular attention is drawn to the mirror on the wall and the candlestick under the ceiling, which looks amazingly realistic. David Hockney managed to get a similar candlestick and tried to draw it. Much to the surprise of the artist, it turned out to be quite difficult to depict this object in perspective, and even the glare of light must be conveyed in such a way that it is clear that this is the brilliance of metal. By the way, before the Renaissance, no one took up the image of glare on a metal surface.
When the 3D model of the candlestick was recreated, Hockney made sure that Van Eyck's painting showed it in perspective with a single vanishing point. But the catch was that the 15th century did not have a camera obscura with a lens (an optical device with which you can create a projection).
David Hockney puzzled over how Van Eyck managed to achieve such realism in his canvases. But one day he drew attention to the image of a mirror in the picture. It was convex. It is worth noting that in those days the mirrors were concave, because the craftsmen were not yet able to “glue” the tin lining to the flat surface of the glass. To get a mirror in the 15th century, molten tin was poured into a glass flask, and then the top was cut off, leaving a concave shiny bottom. David Hockney realized that Van Eyck used a concave mirror through which he looked in order to draw subjects as realistically as possible.
In the 1500s, craftsmen learned how to make large quality lenses. They were inserted into a camera obscura, which made it possible to obtain a projection of any size. This was a real revolution in the technique of realistic images. That's just most of the people in the pictures "became" left-handed. The thing is that the direct projection of the lens when using a camera obscura is mirrored. In the painting by Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten "Declaration of Love (The Violent Cook)", written around 1665-1670, all the characters are left-handed. A man and a woman are holding a glass and a bottle in their left hand, the old man in the background is also shaking their left finger at them. Even the monkey uses its left paw to look under a woman's dress.
To obtain a correct, proportional image, it was necessary to accurately set the mirror into which the lens was directed. But not all artists managed to do it perfectly, and then there were few high-quality mirrors. Because of this, in some paintings you can see how the proportions were not respected: small heads, large shoulders or legs.
The use of optical devices by artists in no way detracts from their talent. Thanks to the achieved realism of Renaissance paintings, modern inhabitants now know what people and household items of that time looked like.
Medieval artists tried not only to achieve realism in their paintings, but also to encrypt special symbols in them. So, a magnificent masterpiece by Titian
