Italian Renaissance. Great Renaissance Artists Famous Renaissance Artists

The names of Renaissance artists have long been surrounded by universal recognition. Many judgments and assessments about them have become axioms. And yet, treating them critically is not only the right, but also the duty of art history. Only then does their art retain its true meaning for posterity.

Of the Renaissance masters of the mid and second half of the 15th century, it is necessary to dwell on four: Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci. They were contemporaries of the widespread establishment of seigneuries and dealt with princely courts, but this does not mean that their art was entirely princely. They took from the lords what they could give them, paid with their talent and zeal, but remained the successors of the “fathers of the Renaissance,” remembered their behests, increased their achievements, strived to surpass them, and indeed sometimes surpassed them. During the years of gradual reaction in Italy, they created wonderful art.

Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca was until recently the least known and recognized. The influence of the Florentine masters of the early 15th century on Piero della Francesca, as well as his reciprocal influence on his contemporaries and successors, especially on the Venetian school, has been rightly noted. However, the exceptional, outstanding position of Piero della Francesca in Italian painting is not yet sufficiently realized. Presumably, over time, his recognition will only increase.

Piero della Francesca (c. 1420-1492) Italian artist and theorist, representative of the Early Renaissance

Piero della Francesca owned all the achievements of the “new art” created by the Florentines, but did not stay in Florence, but returned to his homeland, to the province. This saved him from patrician tastes. He gained fame with his talent; princes and even the papal curia gave him assignments. But he did not become a court artist. He always remained true to himself, his calling, his charming muse. Of all his contemporaries, he is the only artist who did not know discord, duality, or the danger of slipping onto the wrong path. He never sought to compete with sculpture or resort to sculptural or graphic means of expression. Everything is said in his language of painting.

His largest and most beautiful work is a cycle of frescoes on the theme “The History of the Cross” in Arezzo (1452-1466). The work was carried out according to the will of the local merchant Bacci. Perhaps a clergyman, the executor of the will of the deceased, took part in the development of the program. Piero della Francesca relied on the so-called “Golden Legend” of J. da Voragine. He also had predecessors among artists. But the main idea obviously belonged to him. The wisdom, maturity and poetic sensitivity of the artist clearly shines through in it.

Hardly the only pictorial cycle in Italy of that time, “The History of the Cross,” has a double meaning. On the one hand, everything is presented here that is told in the legend about how the tree from which the Calvary cross was made grew, and how its miraculous power later manifested itself. But since the individual paintings are not in chronological order, this literal meaning seems to recede into the background. The artist arranged the paintings in such a way that they give an idea of ​​different forms of human life: about the patriarchal - in the scene of the death of Adam and in the transfer of the cross by Heraclius, about the secular, court, urban - in the scenes of the Queen of Sheba and in the Finding of the Cross, and finally about the military, battle - in the "Victory of Constantine" and in the "Victory of Heraclius". In essence, Piero della Francesca covered almost all aspects of life. His cycle included: history, legend, life, work, pictures of nature and portraits of contemporaries. In the city of Arezzo, in the church of San Francesco, politically subordinate to Florence, there was the most remarkable fresco cycle of the Italian Renaissance.

The art of Piero della Francesca is more real than ideal. A rational principle reigns in him, but not rationality, which can drown out the voice of the heart. And in this respect, Piero della Francesca personifies the brightest, most fruitful forces of the Renaissance.

Andrea Mantegna

Mantegna's name is associated with the idea of ​​a humanist artist, in love with Roman antiquities, armed with extensive knowledge of ancient archaeology. All his life he served the Dukes of Mantua d'Este, was their court painter, carried out their instructions, served them faithfully (although they did not always give him what he deserved). But deep down in his soul and in art he was independent, devoted to his high the ideal of ancient valor, fanatically faithful to his desire to give his works a jeweler's precision. This required an enormous amount of spiritual strength. Mantegna's art is harsh, sometimes cruel to the point of mercilessness, and in this it differs from the art of Piero della Francesca and approaches Donatello.

Andrea Mantegna. Self-portrait in the Ovetari Chapel

Early frescoes by Mantegna in the Eremitani Church of Padua on the life of St. James and his martyrdom are wonderful examples of Italian mural painting. Mantegna did not at all think about creating something similar to Roman art (the painting that became known in the West after the excavations of Herculaneum). Its antiquity is not the golden age of mankind, but the iron age of emperors.

He glorifies Roman valor, almost better than the Romans themselves did. His heroes are armored and statuary. His rocky mountains are precisely carved by a sculptor’s chisel. Even the clouds floating across the sky seem to be cast from metal. Among these fossils and castings, battle-hardened heroes act, courageous, stern, persistent, devoted to a sense of duty, justice, and ready for self-sacrifice. People move freely in space, but, lining up in a row, they form a semblance of stone reliefs. This world of Mantegna does not enchant the eye; it chills the heart. But one cannot help but admit that it was created by the artist’s spiritual impulse. And therefore, the decisive importance here was the artist’s humanistic erudition, not the advice of his learned friends, but his powerful imagination, his passion bound by will and confident skill.

Before us is one of the significant phenomena in the history of art: great masters, by the power of their intuition, stand in line with their distant ancestors and accomplish what later artists who studied the past but were unable to equal them failed to do.

Sandro Botticelli

Botticelli was discovered by the English Pre-Raphaelites. However, even at the beginning of the 20th century, despite all the admiration for his talent, they did not “forgive” him for deviations from generally accepted rules - perspective, light and shade, anatomy. Subsequently, it was decided that Botticelli had turned back to the Gothic. Vulgar sociology summed up its explanation for this: the “feudal reaction” in Florence. Iconological interpretations established Botticelli's connections with the circle of Florentine Neoplatonists, especially evident in his famous paintings "Spring" and "Birth of Venus".

Self-portrait of Sandro Botticelli, fragment of the altar composition "Adoration of the Magi" (circa 1475)

One of the most authoritative interpreters of "Spring" Botticelli admitted that this picture remains a charade, a labyrinth. In any case, it can be considered established that when creating it, the author knew the poem “Tournament” by Poliziano, in which Simonetta Vespucci, the beloved of Giuliano de’ Medici, is glorified, as well as ancient poets, in particular, the opening lines about the kingdom of Venus in Lucretius’ poem “On the Nature of Things” . Apparently he also knew the works of M. Vicino, which were popular in Florence in those years. Motifs borrowed from all these works are clearly discernible in the painting acquired in 1477 by L. de' Medici, cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent. But the question remains: how did these fruits of erudition come into the picture? There is no reliable information about this.

Reading modern scholarly comments on this painting, it is difficult to believe that the artist himself could delve so deeply into the mythological plot in order to come up with all sorts of subtleties in the interpretation of figures, which even today cannot be understood at a glance, but in the old days, apparently, were understood only in Medici mug. It is more likely that they were suggested to the artist by some erudite, and he managed to achieve the fact that the artist began to translate the verbal sequence interlinearly into the visual one. The most delightful thing about Botticelli's painting is the individual figures and groups, especially the group of the Three Graces. Despite the fact that it has been reproduced an infinite number of times, it has not lost its charm to this day. Every time you see her, you experience a new attack of admiration. Truly, Botticelli managed to impart eternal youth to his creations. One of the scholarly commentators on the painting suggested that the dance of the graces expresses the idea of ​​harmony and discord, which the Florentine Neoplatonists often spoke about.

Botticelli owns unsurpassed illustrations for the Divine Comedy. Anyone who has seen his sheets will invariably remember them when reading Dante. He, like no one else, imbued with the spirit of Dante's poem. Some of the drawings to Dante are in the nature of an exact graphic subscript to the poem. But the most beautiful are those where the artist imagines and composes in the spirit of Dante. These are the most common among illustrations of heaven. It would seem that painting paradise was the most difficult thing for Renaissance artists, who so loved the fragrant earth and everything human. Botticelli does not renounce the Renaissance perspective, spatial impressions depending on the viewer’s angle of view. But in paradise he rises to the transfer of the non-perspective essence of the objects themselves. His figures are weightless, shadows disappear. Light penetrates them, space exists outside of earthly coordinates. The bodies fit into a circle as a symbol of the celestial sphere.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo is one of the generally recognized geniuses of the Renaissance. Many consider him the first artist of that time, in any case, his name first of all comes to mind when it comes to the remarkable people of the Renaissance. And that is why it is so difficult to deviate from the usual opinions and consider his artistic heritage with an unbiased mind.

Self-portrait where Leonardo portrayed himself as an old sage. The drawing is kept in the Royal Library of Turin. 1512

Even his contemporaries admired the universality of his personality. However, Vasari already expressed regret that Leonardo paid more attention to his scientific and technical inventions than to artistic creativity. Leonardo's fame reached its apogee in the 19th century. His personality became some kind of myth; he was seen as the embodiment of the “Faustian principle” of all European culture.

Leonardo was a great scientist, an insightful thinker, a writer, the author of the Treatise, and an inventive engineer. His comprehensiveness raised him above the level of most artists of that time and at the same time set him a difficult task - to combine a scientific analytical approach with the artist’s ability to see the world and directly surrender to feeling. This task subsequently occupied many artists and writers. For Leonardo, it took on the character of an insoluble problem.

Let us forget for a while everything that the wonderful myth about the artist-scientist whispers to us, and let us judge his painting the way we judge the painting of other masters of his time. What makes his work stand out from theirs? First of all, vigilance of vision and high artistry of execution. They bear the imprint of exquisite craftsmanship and the finest taste. In his teacher Verrocchio’s painting “The Baptism,” the young Leonardo painted one angel so sublimely and sublimely that next to him the pretty angel Verrocchio seems rustic and base. Over the years, “aesthetic aristocracy” intensified even more in Leonardo’s art. This does not mean that at the courts of the sovereigns his art became courtly and courtly. In any case, his Madonnas can never be called peasant women.

He belonged to the same generation as Botticelli, but spoke disapprovingly, even mockingly, of him, considering him behind the times. Leonardo himself sought to continue the search for his predecessors in the art. Not limiting himself to space and volume, he sets himself the task of mastering the light-air environment that envelops objects. This meant the next step in the artistic comprehension of the real world, and to a certain extent opened the way for the colorism of the Venetians.

It would be wrong to say that his passion for science interfered with Leonardo's artistic creativity. The genius of this man was so enormous, his skill so high, that even an attempt to “stand up to the throat of his song” could not kill his creativity. His gift as an artist constantly broke through all restrictions. What is captivating in his creations is the unmistakable fidelity of the eye, the clarity of consciousness, the obedience of the brush, and the virtuosic technique. They captivate us with their charms, like an obsession. Anyone who has seen La Gioconda remembers how difficult it is to tear yourself away from it. In one of the halls of the Louvre, where she found herself next to the best masterpieces of the Italian school, she triumphs and proudly reigns over everything that hangs around her.

Leonardo's paintings do not form a chain, like many other Renaissance artists. In his early works, like Benoit's Madonna, there is more warmth and spontaneity, but even in it the experiment makes itself felt. "Adoration" in the Uffizi - and this is an excellent underpainting, a temperamental, lively image of people reverently turned to an elegant woman with a baby on her lap. In “Madonna of the Rocks” the angel, a curly-haired youth looking out from the picture, is charming, but the strange idea of ​​​​transferring the idyll into the darkness of the cave is repellent. The famous “Last Supper” has always delighted in its apt characterization of the characters: gentle John, stern Peter, and the villainous Judas. However, the fact that such lively and excited figures are arranged three in a row, on one side of the table, looks like an unjustified convention, violence against living nature. Nevertheless, this is the great Leonardo da Vinci, and since he painted the picture this way, it means he intended it this way, and this mystery will remain for centuries.

Observation and vigilance, to which Leonardo called artists in his Treatise, do not limit his creative capabilities. He deliberately sought to spur his imagination by looking at the walls, cracked from age, in which the viewer could imagine any plot. In the famous Windsor drawing of sanguine "Thunderstorm" by Leonardo, what was revealed to his gaze from some mountain peak was conveyed. A series of Windsor drawings on the theme of the Flood is evidence of a truly brilliant insight of the artist-thinker. The artist creates signs that have no answer, but which evoke a feeling of amazement mixed with horror. The drawings were created by the great master in some kind of prophetic delirium. Everything is said in them in the dark language of John’s visions.

Leonardo's internal discord in his declining days makes itself felt in two of his works: the Louvre "John the Baptist" and the Turin self-portrait. In the late Turin self-portrait, the artist, who has reached old age, looks at himself in the mirror with an open gaze from behind his frowning eyebrows - he sees in his face the features of decrepitude, but he also sees wisdom, a sign of the “autumn of life.”

With classical completeness, the Renaissance was realized in Italy, in the Renaissance culture of which there are periods: Proto-Renaissance or the times of pre-Renaissance phenomena (“the era of Dante and Giotto”, around 1260-1320), partially coinciding with the period of Ducento (13th century), as well as Trecento (14th century). century), Quattrocento (15th century) and Cinquecento (16th century). More general periods are the Early Renaissance (14-15 centuries), when new trends actively interact with the Gothic, overcoming and creatively transforming it.

As well as the High and Late Renaissance, a special phase of which was Mannerism. During the Quattrocento era, the Florentine school, architects (Filippo Brunelleschi, Leona Battista Alberti, Bernardo Rossellino and others), sculptors (Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, Antonio Rossellino, Desiderio da Settignano), painters (Masaccio) became the focus of innovation in all types of art , Filippo Lippi, Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello, Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli) who created a plastically integral concept of the world with internal unity, which gradually spread throughout Italy (the work of Piero della Francesca in Urbino, Vittore Carpaccio, Francesco Cossa in Ferrara, Andrea Mantegna in Mantua, Antonello da Messina and the brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini in Venice).

It is natural that the time, which attached central importance to “divine” human creativity, brought forward personalities in art who, with all the abundance of talents of that time, became the personification of entire eras of national culture (personal “titans,” as they were romantically called later). Giotto became the personification of the Proto-Renaissance; the opposite aspects of the Quattrocento - constructive severity and soulful lyricism - were respectively expressed by Masaccio, Angelico and Botticelli. The "Titans" of the Middle (or "High") Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo are artists - symbols of the great turn of the New Age as such. The most important stages of Italian Renaissance architecture - early, middle and late - are monumentally embodied in the works of F. Brunelleschi, D. Bramante and A. Palladio.

During the Renaissance, medieval anonymity was replaced by individual, authorial creativity. The theory of linear and aerial perspective, proportions, problems of anatomy and light and shadow modeling is of great practical importance. The center of Renaissance innovations, the artistic “mirror of the era” was the illusory life-like painting; in religious art it replaces the icon, and in secular art it gives rise to independent genres of landscape, everyday painting, and portrait (the latter played a primary role in the visual affirmation of the ideals of the humanistic virtu). The art of wood and metal engraving, which became truly widespread during the Reformation, gains its final intrinsic value. Drawing from a working sketch turns into a separate type of creativity; the individual style of stroke, stroke, as well as texture and the effect of incompleteness (non-finito) are beginning to be valued as independent artistic effects. Monumental painting also becomes picturesque, illusory and three-dimensional, gaining greater visual independence from the mass of the wall. All types of fine art now in one way or another violate the monolithic medieval synthesis (where architecture dominated), gaining comparative independence. Types of absolutely round statues, equestrian monuments, and portrait busts (in many ways reviving the ancient tradition) are being formed, and a completely new type of solemn sculptural and architectural tombstone is emerging.

During the High Renaissance, when the struggle for humanistic Renaissance ideals acquired an intense and heroic character, architecture and fine art were marked by the breadth of social sound, synthetic generality and the power of images full of spiritual and physical activity. In the buildings of Donato Bramante, Raphael, Antonio da Sangallo, perfect harmony, monumentality and clear proportionality reached their apogee; humanistic fullness, bold flight of artistic imagination, breadth of reality are characteristic of the work of the greatest masters of fine art of this era - Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Titian. From the second quarter of the 16th century, when Italy entered a time of political crisis and disappointment in the ideas of humanism, the work of many masters acquired a complex and dramatic character. In the architecture of the Late Renaissance (Giacomo da Vignola, Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, Baldassare Peruzzi), interest in the spatial development of composition and the subordination of the building to a broad urban plan increased; in the richly and complexly developed public buildings, temples, villas, and palazzos, the clear tectonics of the Early Renaissance gave way to the intense conflict of tectonic forces (buildings by Jacopo Sansovino, Galeazzo Alessi, Michele Sanmicheli, Andrea Palladio). The painting and sculpture of the Late Renaissance were enriched by an understanding of the contradictory nature of the world, an interest in depicting dramatic mass action, in spatial dynamics (Paolo Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto, Jacopo Bassano); The psychological characteristics of images in the later works of Michelangelo and Titian reached unprecedented depth, complexity, and internal tragedy.

Venice school

The Venetian School, one of the main painting schools in Italy, with its center in the city of Venice (partly also in the small towns of Terraferma - areas of the mainland adjacent to Venice). The Venetian school is characterized by the predominance of the pictorial principle, special attention to the problems of color, and the desire to embody the sensual fullness and colorfulness of life. Closely connected with the countries of Western Europe and the East, Venice drew from foreign culture everything that could serve to decorate it: the elegance and golden shine of Byzantine mosaics, the stone surroundings of Moorish buildings, the fantastic nature of Gothic temples. At the same time, it developed its own original style in art, gravitating towards ceremonial colorfulness. The Venetian school is characterized by a secular, life-affirming principle, a poetic perception of the world, man and nature, and subtle colorism.

The Venetian school reached its greatest flowering in the era of the Early and High Renaissance, in the work of Antonello da Messina, who opened up for his contemporaries the expressive possibilities of oil painting, the creators of ideally harmonious images of Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione, the greatest colorist Titian, who embodied in his canvases the cheerfulness and colorfulness inherent in Venetian painting plethora. In the works of the masters of the Venetian school of the second half of the 16th century, virtuosity in conveying the multicolored world, love for festive spectacles and a diverse crowd coexist with obvious and hidden drama, an alarming sense of the dynamics and infinity of the universe (paintings of Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto). In the 17th century, the traditional interest in the problems of color for the Venetian school in the works of Domenico Fetti, Bernardo Strozzi and other artists coexisted with the techniques of Baroque painting, as well as realistic trends in the spirit of Caravaggism. Venetian painting of the 18th century is characterized by the flourishing of monumental and decorative painting (Giovanni Battista Tiepolo), the everyday genre (Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Pietro Longhi), documentary-accurate architectural landscape - vedata (Giovan Antonio Canaletto, Bernardo Belotto) and lyrical, subtly conveying the poetic atmosphere daily life of Venice cityscape (Francesco Guardi).

Florence school

Florentine School, one of the leading Italian art schools of the Renaissance, centered in the city of Florence. The formation of the Florentine school, which finally took shape in the 15th century, was facilitated by the flourishing of humanistic thought (Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Lico della Mirandola, etc.), which turned to the heritage of antiquity. The founder of the Florentine school during the Proto-Renaissance was Giotto, who gave his compositions plastic persuasiveness and life-like authenticity.
In the 15th century, the founders of Renaissance art in Florence were the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, the sculptor Donatello, the painter Masaccio, followed by the architect Leon Battista Alberti, the sculptors Lorenzo Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, Desiderio da Settignano, Benedetto da Maiano and other masters. In the architecture of the Florentine school in the 15th century, a new type of Renaissance palazzo was created, and the search began for the ideal type of temple building that would meet the humanistic ideals of the era.

The fine art of the Florentine school of the 15th century is characterized by a fascination with problems of perspective, a desire for a plastically clear construction of the human figure (works by Andrea del Verrocchio, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno), and for many of its masters - special spirituality and intimate lyrical contemplation (painting by Benozzo Gozzoli , Sandro Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi,). In the 17th century, the Florentine school fell into decay.

Reference and biographical data of the "Small Bay Planet Art Gallery" were prepared on the basis of materials from the "History of Foreign Art" (edited by M.T. Kuzmina, N.L. Maltseva), "Art Encyclopedia of Foreign Classical Art", "Great Russian Encyclopedia".

The beginning of Renaissance painting is considered to be the era of Ducento, i.e. end of the 13th century. The Proto-Renaissance is still closely connected with the medieval Romanesque. Gothic and Byzantine traditions. Artists of the late XIII - early XIV centuries. are still far from scientific study of the surrounding reality. They express their ideas about it, also using conventional images of the Byzantine pictorial system - rocky hills, symbolic trees, conventional turrets. But sometimes the appearance of architectural structures is so accurately reproduced that this indicates the existence of sketches from life. Traditional religious characters begin to be depicted in a world endowed with the properties of reality - volume, spatial depth, material substance. The search begins for methods of transmission on the plane of volume and three-dimensional space. The masters of this time revived the principle of light and shadow modeling of forms, known from antiquity. Thanks to it, figures and buildings acquire density and volume.

Apparently, the first to use ancient perspective was the Florentine Cenni di Pepo (information from 1272 to 1302), nicknamed Cimabue. Unfortunately, his most significant work - a series of paintings on themes from the Apocalypse, the life of Mary and the Apostle Peter in the Church of San Francesco in Assisi has reached us in an almost destroyed state. His altar compositions, which are located 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 of the 13th century, which adopted Byzantine traditions, to their immediate origins. He felt in them what remained inaccessible to his contemporaries - the harmonious principle and the sublime Hellenic beauty of the images.

Great artists appear as bold innovators who reject the traditional system. Such a reformer in Italian painting of the 14th century should be recognized Giotto di Bondone(1266-1337). He is the creator of a new pictorial system, the great transformer of all European painting, the true founder of new art. This is a genius who rises high above his contemporaries and many of his followers.

A Florentine by birth, he worked in many cities in Italy: from Padua and Milan in the north to Naples in the south. The most famous of Giotto's works that have come down to us is a cycle of paintings in the Arena Chapel in Padua, dedicated to the gospel stories about the life of Christ. This unique pictorial ensemble is one of the landmark works in the history of European art. Instead of disconnected 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.) through the language of painting are connected into a single narrative . Instead of the usual golden Byzantine background, Giotto introduces a landscape background. The figures no longer float in space, but find 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.

The reform carried out by Giotto in painting made a deep impression on all his contemporaries. Unanimous reviews of him as a great painter, an abundance of customers and patrons, honorary commissions in many cities in Italy - all this suggests that his contemporaries perfectly understood the significance of his art. But the coming generations imitated Giotto like timid students, borrowing details from him.

Giotto's influence acquired its strength and fruitfulness only a century later. The Quattrocento artists accomplished the tasks set by Giotto.

The glory of the founder of painting Quattrocento belongs to the Florentine artist Masaccio, who died very young (1401-1428). He was the first to solve the main problems of Renaissance painting - linear and aerial perspective. In his frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in the Florentine church of Santa Maria del Carmine, figures painted according to the laws of anatomy are connected with each other and with the landscape.

The Church of Santa Maria del Carmine became a kind of academy where generations of artists who were influenced by Masaccio studied: Paolo Uccello, Andrei Castagno, Domenico Veniziano and many others up to Michelangelo.

The Florentine school remained leading in Italian art for a long time. There was also a more conservative movement within it. Some artists of this movement were monks, which is why in the history of art they were called monastic. One of the most famous among them was fra (i.e. brother - the address of monks to each other) Giovanni Beato Angelico da Fiesole(1387-1455). His images of biblical characters are written in the spirit of medieval traditions; they are full of lyricism, calm dignity and contemplation. His landscape backgrounds are imbued with the sense of joie de vivre characteristic of the Renaissance.

One of the most prominent artists of the Quattrocento - Sandro Botticelli(1445-1510) - exponent of the aesthetic ideals of the court of the famous tyrant, politician, philanthropist, poet and philosopher Lorenzo Medici, nicknamed the Magnificent. The court of this uncrowned sovereign was a center of artistic culture, uniting famous philosophers, scientists, and artists.

The early Renaissance lasted about a century. It ends with the High Renaissance, which lasts only about 30 years. Rome became the main center of artistic life at this time.

By the turn of the XV-XVI centuries. refers to the beginning of a long-term foreign intervention in Italy, the fragmentation and enslavement of the country, the loss of independence of free cities, and the strengthening of the feudal-Catholic reaction. But a patriotic feeling grew among the Italian people, promoting political activity and the growth of national consciousness, and the desire for national unification. This rise of popular consciousness created a broad popular basis for the culture of the High Renaissance.

The end of the Cinquecento is associated with 1530, when the Italian states lost their freedom, becoming the prey of powerful European monarchies. The socio-political and economic crisis of Italy, which is based not on the industrial revolution, but on international trade, has been prepared for a long time. The discovery of America and new trade routes deprived Italian cities of advantages in international trade. But, as is known, in the history of culture, periods of flowering of art do not coincide with the general socio-economic development of society. And in a period of economic decline and political enslavement, in difficult times for Italy, a short-lived century of the Italian Renaissance began - the High Renaissance. It was at this time that the humanistic culture of Italy became a worldwide property and ceased to be a local phenomenon. Italian artists began to enjoy the pan-European popularity that they truly deserved.

If the art of the Quattrocento is analysis, searches, discoveries, the freshness of a youthful worldview, then the art of the High Renaissance is the result, synthesis, wise maturity. The search for an artistic ideal during the Quattrocento period led art to generalization, to the discovery of general patterns. The main difference between the art of the High Renaissance is that it abandons 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 realistic method of High Renaissance artists is unique. They are convinced that the significant can only exist in a beautiful shell. Therefore, they strive to see only exceptional phenomena that rise above everyday life. Italian artists created images of heroic personalities, beautiful and strong-willed people.

This was the era of the Renaissance titans, which gave world culture the work of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. In the history of world culture, these three geniuses, despite all their dissimilarity and creative individuality, personify the main value of the Italian Renaissance - the harmony of beauty, power and intelligence. The fates of these artists (whose powerful human and artistic individuality forced them to act as rivals and to treat each other with hostility) had much in common. All three were formed in the Florentine school, and then worked at the courts of patrons of the arts, mainly the popes. Their life is evidence of the change in society's attitude towards the creative personality of the artist, which is characteristic of the Renaissance. Masters of art became noticeable 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, suits 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. That is why so few completed works of Leonardo have reached us. He started paintings and abandoned them as soon as the problem seemed clearly formulated to him. Many of his observations anticipate the development of European science and painting by entire centuries. Modern scientific discoveries fuel interest in his sci-fi engineering drawings. Leonardo's theoretical reflections on colors, which he outlined in his Treatise on Painting, anticipate the main premises of impressionism of the 19th century. Leonardo wrote about the purity of the sound of colors only on the light side of an object, about the mutual influence of colors, about the need for painting in the open air. These observations by Leonardo are not used at all in his painting. He was more of a theorist than a practitioner. Only in the 20th century did the active collection and processing of his huge manuscript heritage (about 7,000 pages) begin. Its study will undoubtedly lead to new discoveries and explanations of the mysteries of the legendary creativity of this Renaissance titan.

A new stage in art was the painting of the wall of the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie on the subject 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. It influences with absolute thoughtfulness, coherence of parts and the whole, and the power of its spiritual concentration.

Leonardo worked on this work for 16 years.

One of the most famous paintings in the world was Leonardo's La Gioconda. This portrait of the merchant del Giocondo’s wife has attracted attention for centuries, hundreds of pages of commentary have been written about it, it has been stolen, forged, copied, and witchcraft powers have been attributed to it. The elusive expression on Gioconda's face defies precise description and reproduction. The slightest change in shades (which may simply depend on the lighting of the portrait) in the corners of the lips, in the transitions from the chin to the cheek, changes the character of the face. In different reproductions, Gioconda looks slightly different, sometimes a little softer, sometimes more ironic, sometimes more thoughtful. There is elusiveness in the very appearance of Mona Lisa, in her penetrating gaze, as if inextricably following the viewer, in her half-smile. This portrait became a masterpiece of Renaissance art. For the first time in the history of world art, the portrait genre stood on the same level as compositions on a religious theme.

The ideas of monumental art of the Renaissance found vivid expression in creativity Rafael Santi(1483-1520). Leonardo created the classical style, Raphael approved and popularized it. Raphael's art is often defined as the "golden mean". His composition surpasses everything that was created in European painting with its absolute harmony of proportions. For five centuries, Raphael's art has been perceived as the highest reference point in the spiritual life of mankind, as one of the examples of aesthetic perfection. Raphael's work is distinguished by classic qualities - clarity, noble simplicity, harmony. In its entirety, it is connected with the spiritual culture of the Renaissance.

The most outstanding of Raphael's monumental works are the paintings of the Vatican apartments of the pope. Multi-figure large-scale compositions cover all the walls of three halls. Raphael's students helped him in painting. He executed the best frescoes, such as the “School of Athens,” with his own hands. The subjects of the painting included fresco allegories of the main spheres of human spiritual activity: philosophy, poetry, theology and justice. In Raphael's paintings and frescoes there is an ideally sublime depiction of Christian images, ancient myths and human history. He knew how to combine the values ​​of earthly existence and ideal ideas like no other of the Renaissance masters. The historical merit of his art is that he connected two worlds into one - the Christian world and the pagan world. From that time on, the new artistic ideal was firmly established in the religious art of Western Europe.

The bright genius of Raphael was far from the psychological depth into the inner world of man, like Leonardo, but he was even more alien to the tragic worldview of Michelangelo. In the work of Michelangelo, the collapse of the Renaissance style was marked and the sprouts of a new artistic worldview emerged. 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 depiction. But this is a man of a special, powerful, heroic breed. Michelangelo's art is dedicated to the glorification of the human fighter, his heroic activities 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 most ambitious of his works was the painting of the vault of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo accomplished a truly titanic work - within four years he alone painted an area of ​​about 600 square meters. meters. Day after day, he wrote at a height of 18 meters, standing on scaffolding and throwing his head back. After finishing the painting, his health was completely undermined, and his body was disfigured (his chest fell in, his body arched, his goiter grew; for a long time the artist could not look straight ahead and read while raising a book above his head). The grandiose painting is dedicated to scenes of sacred history, starting from the creation of the world. Michelangelo painted about 200 figures and figurative compositions on the ceiling. Never and nowhere has there been anything comparable to Michelangelo's plan in scope and integrity. On the vault of the Sistine Chapel, he created a hymn in honor of heroic humanity. His heroes are living people, there is nothing supernatural about them, but at the same time, they are wonderful, powerful, titanic personalities. The Quattrocento masters, long before Michelangelo, illustrated various episodes of church tradition on the walls of the chapel; Michelangelo wanted to represent the fate of humanity before redemption on the vault.

Any idea that the picture is a plane disappears. The figures move freely in space. Michelangelo's frescoes break through the plane of the wall. This illusion of space and movement was a huge achievement of European art. Michelangelo's discovery that decoration can push forward or force back walls and ceilings later exploits the decorative arts of the Baroque.

Art, true to the traditions of the Renaissance, continues to live in the 16th century in Venice, the city that retained its independence the longest. In this rich patrician-merchant republic, which had long maintained trade relations with Byzantium and the Arab East, oriental tastes and traditions were processed in their own way. The main impact of Venetian painting is in its extraordinary color. The love of color gradually led the artists of the Venetian school to a new pictorial principle. The volume and materiality of the image are achieved not by cut-off modeling, but by the art of color modeling.

The peoples of Europe sought to revive treasures and traditions lost due to endless wars of extermination. Wars took away people and the great things that people created from the face of the earth. The idea of ​​reviving the high civilization of the ancient world gave rise to philosophy, literature, music, the rise of the natural sciences and - most of all - the flowering of art. The era demanded strong, educated people who were not afraid of any work. It was in their midst that the emergence of those few geniuses who are called “titans of the Renaissance” became possible. The very ones we call only by name.

The Renaissance was primarily Italian. Therefore, it is not surprising that it was in Italy that art during this period reached its highest rise and flourishing. It is here that there are dozens of names of titans, geniuses, great and simply talented artists.

MUSIC BY LEONARDO.

What a lucky guy! – many will say about him. He was endowed with rare health, handsome, tall, and had blue eyes. In his youth he wore blond curls, his proud figure resembled Donatell's St. George. He had unheard of and courageous strength and masculine valor. He sang wonderfully and composed melodies and poems in front of his audience. He played any musical instrument, moreover, he created them himself.

For the art of Leonardo da Vinci, contemporaries and descendants never found definitions other than “brilliant,” “divine,” and “great.” The same words refer to his scientific revelations: he invented a tank, an excavator, a helicopter, a submarine, a parachute, an automatic weapon, a diving helmet, an elevator, solved the most complex problems of acoustics, botany, medicine, cosmography, created a project for a circular theater, invented a century earlier , than Galileo, the clock pendulum, drew the current water skis, developed the theory of mechanics.

What a lucky guy! - many will say about him and will begin to remember his beloved princes and kings, who sought acquaintance with him, shows and holidays, which he invented as an artist, playwright, actor, architect, and had fun at them like a child.

However, was the irrepressible centenarian Leonardo happy, whose every day gave people and the world visions and insights? He foresaw the terrible fate of his creations: the destruction of the Last Supper, the shooting of the monument to Francesca Sforza, low trade and the vile theft of his diaries and workbooks. In total, only sixteen paintings have survived to this day. Few sculptures. But there were a lot of drawings, coded drawings: like the heroes of modern science fiction, he changed a part in his design, as if so that another could not use it.

Leonardo da Vinci worked in different types and genres of art, but painting brought him the greatest fame.

One of Leonardo's earliest paintings is the Madonna of the Flower or Benois Madonna. Already here the artist acts as a true innovator. He overcomes the framework of the traditional plot and gives the image a broader, universal meaning, which are maternal joy and love. In this work, many features of the artist’s art were clearly manifested: a clear composition of figures and volume of forms, a desire for brevity and generalization, psychological expressiveness.

The continuation of the theme started was the painting “Madonna Litta”, where another feature of the artist’s work was clearly revealed - a play on contrasts. The completion of the theme was the painting “Madonna in the Grotto”, which noted the ideal compositional solution, thanks to which the depicted figures of the Madonna, Christ and angels merge with the landscape into a single whole, endowed with calm balance and harmony.

One of the peaks of Leonardo’s work is the fresco “The Last Supper” in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria Della Grazie. This work amazes not only with its overall composition, but also with its accuracy. Leonardo not only conveys the psychological state of the apostles, but does so at the moment when it reaches a critical point, turns into a psychological explosion and conflict. This explosion is caused by the words of Christ: “One of you will betray me.” In this work, Leonardo made full use of the technique of specific comparison of figures, thanks to which each character appears as a unique individuality and personality.

The second pinnacle of Leonard's creativity was the famous portrait of Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda. This work marked the beginning of the genre of psychological portrait in European art. When creating it, the great master brilliantly used the entire arsenal of means of artistic expression: sharp contrasts and soft halftones, frozen stillness and general fluidity and variability, the finest psychological nuances and transitions. The entire genius of Leonardo lies in the amazingly lively look of Mona Lisa, her mysterious and enigmatic smile, the mystical haze covering the landscape. This work is one of the rarest masterpieces of art.

Everyone who saw the “La Gioconda” brought from the Louvre in Moscow remembers the moments of their complete deafness near this small canvas, the tension of the best in themselves. Gioconda seemed like a “Martian”, a representative of the unknown - probably the future, and not the past of the human tribe, the embodiment of harmony, about which the world is not tired and will never get tired of dreaming.

Much more can be said about him. Surprised that this is not fiction or fantasy. For example, you can remember how he proposed to move the Cathedral of San Giovanni - such work amazes us, residents of the 20th century.

Leonardo said: “A good artist must be able to paint two main things: a person and a representation of his soul. Or is this said about “Columbine” from the St. Petersburg Hermitage? Some researchers call her, and not the Louvre canvas, “La Gioconda.”

Boy Nardo, that was his name in Vinci: the illegitimate son of a letter-eating notary, who considered birds and horses to be the best creatures on Earth. Beloved by everyone and lonely, who bent steel swords and painted hanged people. He invented a bridge over the Bosphorus and an ideal city, more beautiful than those of Corbusier and Niemeyer. He sang in a soft baritone and made the Mona Lisa smile. In one of his last notebooks, this lucky man wrote: “It seemed to me that I was learning to live, but I was learning to die.” However, he then summed it up: “A life well lived is a long life.”

Is it possible to disagree with Leonardo?

SANDRO BOTTICELLI.

Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence in 1445 into the family of a leather tanner.

Botticelli’s first original work is considered to be “The Adoration of the Magi” (circa 1740), where the main properties of his original manner – dreaminess and subtle poetry – were already fully reflected. He was gifted with an innate sense of poetry, but a clear touch of contemplative sadness ran through him literally in everything. Even Saint Sebastian, tormented by the arrows of his tormentors, looks thoughtful and detached from him.

At the end of the 1470s, Botticelli became close to the circle of the de facto ruler of Florence, Lorenzo Medici, nicknamed the Magnificent. In the luxurious gardens of Lorenzo, a company of people gathered, probably the most enlightened and talented in Florence. There were philosophers, poets, and musicians there. An atmosphere of admiration for beauty reigned, and not only the beauty of art was valued, but also the beauty of life. Antiquity was considered the prototype of ideal art and ideal life, perceived, however, through the prism of later philosophical layers. Without a doubt, under the influence of this atmosphere, Botticelli’s first major painting, “Primavera (Spring),” was created. This is a dream-like, exquisite, marvelously beautiful allegory of the eternal cycle, the constant renewal of nature. It is permeated by a complex and whimsical musical rhythm. The figure of Flora, adorned with flowers, and the dancing graces in the Garden of Eden represented images of beauty that had not yet been seen at that time and therefore produced a particularly captivating impression. The young Botticelli immediately took a prominent place among the masters of his time.

It was the young painter’s high reputation that secured him an order for biblical frescoes for the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, which he created in the early 1480s in Rome. He wrote “Scenes from the Life of Moses”, “The Punishment of Korah, Dathan and Abiron”, demonstrating amazing compositional skill. The classical calm of the ancient buildings, against which Botticelli set the action, contrasts sharply with the dramatic rhythm of the characters and passions depicted; the movement of human bodies is complex, confusing, saturated with explosive force; one gets the impression of shaking harmony, the defenselessness of the visible world before the rapid pressure of time and human will. The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel for the first time expressed the deep anxiety that lived in Botticelli’s soul, which grew stronger over time. These same frescoes reflected the amazing talent of Botticelli as a portrait painter: each of the many painted faces is completely original, unique and unforgettable...

In the 1480s, returning to Florence, Botticelli continued to work tirelessly, but the peaceful clarity of the Primera was already far behind. In the middle of the decade he wrote his famous "Birth of Venus". Researchers note in the master’s later works a previously unusual moralism and religious exaltation.

Perhaps more significant than late painting are Botticelli’s drawings of the 90s - illustrations for Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. He painted with obvious and undisguised delight; the visions of the great poet are lovingly and carefully conveyed by the perfect proportions of numerous figures, thoughtful organization of space, inexhaustible resourcefulness in searching for visual equivalents of the poetic word...

Despite any emotional storms and crises, Botticelli remained a great artist, the master of his art, until the very end (he died in 1510). This is clearly evidenced by the noble sculpting of the face in the “Portrait of a Young Man”, the expressive characterization of the model, which leaves no doubt about her high human merits, the solid drawing of the master and his benevolent gaze.

Renaissance, which flourished in the 15th - 16th centuries, served as a new round in the development of art, and painting in particular. There is also a French name for this era - Renaissance. Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Michelangelo are some of the famous names that represent that time period.

Artists of the Renaissance depicted the characters in their paintings as accurately and clearly as possible.

Psychological context was not originally included in the image. The painters set themselves the goal of achieving vividness in what they depicted. Regardless of whether the dynamism of the human face or the details of the surrounding nature had to be conveyed in paint as accurately as possible. However, over time, the psychological aspect becomes clearly visible in Renaissance paintings, for example, from portraits one could draw conclusions about the character traits of the person depicted.

Achievement of artistic culture of the Renaissance

The undoubted achievement of the Renaissance was geometrically correct design of the picture. The artist built the image using the techniques he developed. The main thing for painters of that time was to maintain the proportions of objects. Even nature fell under mathematical techniques of calculating the proportionality of the image with other objects in the picture.

In other words, artists during the Renaissance sought to convey accurate image, for example, a person against the backdrop of nature. If we compare it with modern techniques of recreating a seen image on some canvas, then, most likely, photography with subsequent adjustments will help to understand what the Renaissance artists were striving for.

Renaissance painters believed that they had the right to correct flaws of nature, that is, if a person had ugly facial features, artists corrected them in such a way that the face became sweet and attractive.

Geometric approach in images leads to a new way of depicting spatiality. Before recreating the images on canvas, the artist marked their spatial location. This rule became established over time among the painters of that era.

The viewer was supposed to be impressed by the images in the paintings. For example, Raphael achieved full compliance with this rule by creating the painting “The School of Athens”. The vaults of the building are striking in their height. There is so much space that you begin to understand the size of this structure. And the depicted thinkers of antiquity with Plato and Aristotle in the middle indicate that in the Ancient world there was a unity of various philosophical ideas.

Subjects of Renaissance paintings

If you start getting acquainted with Renaissance painting, you can draw an interesting conclusion. The subjects of the paintings were based mainly on events described in the Bible. More often, painters of that time depicted stories from the New Testament. The most popular image is Virgin and Child- little Jesus Christ.

The character was so alive that people even worshiped these images, although the people understood that these were not icons, they prayed to them and asked for help and protection. In addition to the Madonna, Renaissance painters were very fond of recreating images Jesus Christ, apostles, John the Baptist, as well as gospel episodes. For example, Leonardo da Vinci created the world-famous painting “The Last Supper.”

Why did Renaissance artists use subjects? from the Bible? Why didn’t they try to express themselves by creating portraits of their contemporaries? Maybe they were trying to portray ordinary people with their inherent character traits in this way? Yes, the painters of that time tried to show people that man is a divine being.

By depicting biblical stories, Renaissance artists tried to make it clear that the earthly manifestations of man can be depicted more clearly if biblical stories are used. You can understand what the Fall, temptation, hell or heaven is if you start getting acquainted with the work of artists of that time. Same image of Madonna conveys to us the beauty of a woman, and also carries an understanding of earthly human love.

Leonardo da Vinci

The Renaissance became such thanks to the many creative personalities who lived at that time. Famous all over the world Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) created a huge number of masterpieces, the cost of which amounts to millions of dollars, and connoisseurs of his art are ready to contemplate his paintings for a long time.

Leonardo began his studies in Florence. His first painting, painted around 1478, is "Madonna Benoit". Then there were such creations as “Madonna in the Grotto”, "Mona Lisa", the above-mentioned “Last Supper” and a host of other masterpieces, written by the hand of a titan of the Renaissance.

The rigor of geometric proportions and accurate reproduction of the anatomical structure of a person - this is what characterizes the paintings of Leonard da Vinci. According to his convictions, the art of depicting certain images on canvas is a science, and not just some kind of hobby.

Rafael Santi

Raphael Santi (1483 - 1520) known in the art world as Raphael created his works in Italy. His paintings are imbued with lyricism and grace. Raphael is a representative of the Renaissance, who depicted man and his existence on earth, and loved to paint the walls of the Vatican Cathedrals.

The paintings betrayed the unity of figures, the proportional correspondence of space and images, and the euphony of color. The purity of the Virgin was the basis for many of Raphael's paintings. His very first image of Our Lady- This is the Sistine Madonna, which was painted by a famous artist back in 1513. The portraits that were created by Raphael reflected the ideal human image.

Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli (1445 - 1510) also a Renaissance artist. One of his first works was the painting “Adoration of the Magi.” Subtle poetry and dreaminess were his initial manners in the field of conveying artistic images.

In the early 80s of the 15th century, the great artist painted walls of the Vatican Chapel. The frescoes made by his hand are still amazing.

Over time, his paintings became characterized by the calmness of the buildings of antiquity, the liveliness of the characters depicted, and the harmony of the images. In addition, Botticelli’s passion for drawings for famous literary works is known, which also only added fame to his work.

Michelangelo Buonarotti

Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475 - 1564)- Italian artist who also worked during the Renaissance. This man, known to many of us, did everything he could do. And sculpture, and painting, and architecture, and also poetry.

Michelangelo, like Raphael and Botticelli, painted the walls of the Vatican churches. After all, only the most talented painters of those times were involved in such important work as painting images on the walls of Catholic cathedrals.

More than 600 square meters of the Sistine Chapel he had to cover it with frescoes depicting various biblical scenes.

The most famous work in this style is known to us as "The Last Judgment". The meaning of the biblical story is expressed fully and clearly. Such precision in the transfer of images is characteristic of all of Michelangelo’s work.

ATTENTION! For any use of site materials, an active link to is required!