The Renaissance began in 15th century Italy and spread to the 16th and 17th throughout Europe. Renaissance stands for rebirth, where humanity emerged as subject. Italian painters focused on rendering the illusion of physical reality and what came to be known as Renaissance perspective or linear perspective. Important artists from this period include Botticelli, Raphael, Michaelangelo, and Bronzino. Their artwork displays shifts throughout the Renaissance period and became visual hallmarks of the time.
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (1445-1510), called “Botticelli” or “the little barrel,” from a nickname borrowed from his older brother. He painted sculptural appearing figures that were modeled by the light from a consistent source, and placed in a setting he rendered illusionistic with linear perspective. A talented portraitist, often included recognizable contemporary figures among the saints and angels in religious paintings. He worked and always lived in Florence, before being called to Rome in 1481 by the Pope to help decorate the new Sistine Chapel along with other artists. Botticelli returned to Florence that same year and entered a new career phase when exposed to philosophical speculations on beauty and examples of ancient art in his employers’ collections. He produced paintings of mythological subjects inspired by ancient works and by contemporary Neoplatonic thought. Art historian Michael Baxandall has shown that “these worked were also patterned on the slow movements of fifteenth-century Florentine dance, in which the dancers acted out their relationships to one another in public performances that would have influenced the thinking and viewing habits of both painters and their audience.” (Stokstad 635) You can see this imagery in Botticelli’s Primavera which recalled Flemish tapestries, which were popular in Italy at the time.
Its subject is a complex allegory interweaving Neoplatonic ideas with esoteric references to Classical sources. Neoplatonic philosophers saw Venus, the goddess of love, as having two natures the first ruled over earthly human love and the second over universal divine love. Her symbol was compared to the Virgin Mary for this reason. The theme suggests love and fertility in marriage, with a fertility dance. He brought the same figure to Birth of Venus, also displaying the Neoplatonic idea of divine love in the form of a nude Venus based off a modest version. She is an alluring figure set in a composition using Botticelli's decorative use of line. The artists later career was affected by a spiritual crisis when monks were preaching sermons denouncing the worldliness of Florence. In reaction Florentines had orgies of self-recrimination and processing of weeping penitents going through the streets. Botticelli had fallen into a state of religious fervor and for repentance he burned earlier paintings to produce emotional pictures with religious intensity. Botticelli represents the linear style of the early Renaissance painters, with a heavy influence of classical art references.
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| Botticelli Primavera 1480 |
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| Raphael The small cowper Madonna 1505 |
Raffaello Santi or Sanzio (1483-1520), known as Raphael, came to Florence after studying in Perugia with the cities leading artist. He quickly became successful in Florence with small paintings of the Virgin and Child, such as The small cowper Madonna in 1505. He was painting elegant Madonnas and at the same time portraits of Florentine patrons. Unlike his predecessors Raphael turned his subjects to address to the viewer. He was commissioned by the Pope in 1508 decorating rooms in the papal apartments, and the pope’s private library and study. Raphael painted the four branches of knowledge as known in the sixteenth century; religion, philosophy, poetry, and law. His most influential achievement in the papal rooms was The School of Athens in 1510-1511, summarizing the ideals of the Renaissance papacy. It includes Greek philosophers like Platio and Aristotle in the center, mathematicians, naturalists, astronomers, geographers, and other philosophers debating theories with one another. The scene is in a building where the “grandeur of the building is matched by the monumental dignity of the philosophers themselves, each of whom has a distinct physical and intellectual presence.” (Stokstad 653) In the painting there are high arcs poses with energetic gestures which classify High Renaissance art.
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| Raphael School of Athens 1511 |
Michaelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) grew up in Florence, and was apprenticed at age 13. There he learned the technique of fresco painting and studied drawings of classical monuments. He went on in his career to be commissioned for many marble statue sculptures of religious prominence like the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and David.
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| Michaelangelo David 1504 |
The statue of the biblical hero David was finished in 1504 from one of these commissions to be placed on top of a cathedral. When it was complete the city council requested it be placed in the city square next to a Florence government building and there it was placed instead. There “it stood as a reminder of Florence’s republican status, which was briefly reinstated after the expulsion of the powerful Medici oligarchy in 1494.” (Stokstad 659). It also stood as an emblem for the Florentines who had recently fought forces and were still facing military pressure. It also represents an ideal athletic muscular male physique. He was committed by contract to the Florence Cathedral for statues, Pope Julius II, arranged in 1505 for him to go to Rome to work on the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
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| Michelangelo, ceiling of Sistine Chapel |
He was considered a sculptor but the pope wanted paintings and he did not enjoy the process of painting but completed it. Michaelangelo started a new and powerful style in Renaissance painting. He denied the original plan of the popes vision for the ceiling and was told to do what he pleased. He paints narrative biblical scenes with sculpted resembling figures on each of the thirty-three sections. Specialists in Renaissance art history characterize the final works of Michaelangelo to “view his artistic creations as symbols of human imperfection. Indeed, Michaelangelo’s poetry expressed his belief that humans could achieve perfection only in death.” (Stokstad 664) Although he preferred the art of sculpture he made an intricate and detailed grid of narrative scenes.
Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano Tori (1503-1572), nicknamed “Bronzino” meaning copper colored. He developed into a distinct Mannerist style, calm and strangely upsetting. During this time private commissions were rising in popularity and artists didn't have to only depend on church commissions. By 1540, he was court painter to the Medici family. He produced altarpieces, fresco decorations, and tapestry designs and is best known for his portraits. The portraits are formal and cold and conveyed the superiority of his subjects, their class is more prominent than their individual personality. Bronzino's Allegory with Venus and Cupid in the 1540s is one of the strangest paintings of the sixteenth century.
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| Bronzino Allegory with Venus and Cupid 1540s |
It acts as a summary of the Mannerist art movement containing formal, iconographical, and psychological characteristics of the style. The figures are pressed closely together and interweave with each other in a strange sense of space. The paintings allegory and ambiguity “probably delighted mid-sixteenth-century courtiers who enjoyed equally sophisticated wordplay and esoteric Classical references, but for us it defies easy explanation. Nothing is quite what it seems.” (Stokstad 681). The image shows Venus and her son Cupid engaging with each other physically and in an unsettling position kissing her and pinching her nipple. The image is compact with figures like a serpent, girls, a lion, Chronos, a man with syphilis screaming. It references themes of pleasure, fraud, and the epidemic of the disease during this period. The disease was believed to be spread by kissing, breast feeding, and sex. Bronzino purposely made his figures look a certain way where the sense of space is overwhelming.
Works Cited
Stokstad, Marilyn, and Michael Watt Cothren. Art History. Sixth ed., II, Pearson, 2018
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