Ideas and society [Renaissance]

What was the Renaissance?
The word 'Renaissance', meaning 'rebirth', is used to describe the revival of ideas from the art and literature of Ancient Greece and Rome ('Classical Antiquity' that took place in Italy in the later fourteenth century and the fifteenth century. Florence was the early centre of the Renaissance, but the new ideas spread to other prosperous cities.

The Humanist influence on art
Poets, philosophers, and educationists who were inspired by Classical principle
and values were called 'Humanists'.

They were especially attracted to the 'Classical’ vision of humanity retrieved from the literature of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, that emphasised the value of individuals, the value of human reason and the value of human experience in the ordinary, everyday world.

They valued the 'Classical' concepts of beauty, balance and harmony in human life and art. Very few of them abandoned their Christian beliefs. The Humanist Leon Battista Alberti advised painters to seek the company of Humanists like himself, especially poets, orators, and those familiar with Classical texts, who could help the painters with ideas.

Where mediaeval Christianity had understandably had its gaze firmly fixed on the supernatural worlds of Heaven and Hell, and promoted a pessimistic view of the nature of man as wicked and corrupt, Renaissance philosophers were much more optimistic. This optimism promoted a new emphasis on the 'human' aspects of life, including the physical qualities of human beings; these ideas flowed through to the art of the time.

Art gains new direction
Art gained new direction and a new life from the Humanist interest in Classical Antiquity. Artists adopted Classical motifs and forms in their work. With Brunelleschi, Alberti and Michelozzo, architecture moved decisively away from Gothic and Romanesque forms to the severe mathematical symmetry and purity of Classical forms. Sculptors, too, tried to incorporate Classical ideals of natural form and realistic representation into their work. The depiction of the nude human form in painting and sculpture again became a central focus of interest.

Although they generally kept to Christian subjects, the more progressive painters stressed 'Naturalism', or 'faithfulness to nature'. They rejected the Byzantine style in art in favour of a new realism that was as faithful as possible to the nature and condition of human beings.

Renaissance painters and sculptors generally did not have models from Ancient Greece, except in Roman copies, but they did have Ancient Roman works. Sculptors and architects like Donatello and Brunelleschi went to Rome to measure and draw the ruins and to study the remains of Classical sculpture. Classical buildings inspired architects to create harmonious settings for human living.

Even so, the Classical models, with their ideal representations of natural form, formed only one kind of influence on developments in painting and sculpture. Perfect form was one goal only. The spirit that quickened living forms-character, personality, feelings, in effect the psychological dimension of humanity-became a focus of increasing interest as the Renaissance art reached maturity. Increasingly, also, the spirit and values that informed Renaissance art reflected the interests of contemporary Italian society as well as those of Classical Antiquity.

Antonio Filarete (1400-65)
Antonio Filarete, a highly reputable architect and sculptor, advised painters and sculptors to make their work more realistic by taking into account the natural aspects and manner of human beings-their expressions, the way they moved, etc.-as well as their natural form. He argued that the image a painter or sculptor was trying to present should reflect the character of the subjects, so they should not be represented out of their time and place:
... Thus the actions, manners, and poses and everything should match the natures,
ages and types [of the figures] ... Saints also should match their types, so that when you have a St Anthony to do, he is not to be made timid, but alert, and likewise St George, as Donatello did, which is truly a very good and perfect figure ... and so too if you have to do a St Michael killing the devil he ought not to be timid; if you have a St Francis to do, he should not be bold, but timid and devout, and St Paul should be bold and strong, and so with judges and their poses ... for when you make a figure of somebody of our time, he is not to be put in ancient costume, but as his habit is.

Alberti's ideas on painting
In Florence, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), architect and humanist, wrote a book, On Painting, about 1435. He stressed the need for artists to represent the real world, the world of humanity found even amongst the farm animals, and to do this with the kind of liveliness and variety to be found in commonplace situations. He advised painters to put an abundance and variety of figures in their work:
... [mix] in their places, old, young, children, women, girls, infants, chickens, puppies, birds, horses, sheep, buildings, landscapes, and all such things ... and marked with dignity and modesty ... some bodies should stand straight up and show their whole faces, with hands held high and fingers graceful, resting on one foot. Others should have faces turning away, arms dangling, feet close together, and everyone his own action and bending of limbs, some sitting, some kneeling, some lying down. And if it is proper, some should be nude and other[s] partly nude and partly dressed, but always observing modesty and decency.

For Alberti, faithfulness to nature also involved the expression of the inner state of a person, with which the viewer could relate:
Then too, a scene will touch our minds when the people painted in it express their
emotions a great deaL It is an effect of nature, than whom nothing is more capable
of things like itself, that we weep with those who weep and laugh with those who
laugh and mourn with those who mourn.


The study of anatomy
In the later fifteenth century, the study of anatomy became more scientifically based, as artists began to dissect bodies in order to discover the relationship between muscle and bone structure and how each contributed to the form and movement of the human body. Antonio Pollaiuolo, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo) and Michelangelo were all keen students of anatomy. Leonardo's interest in science led him to make hundreds of anatomical studies of human beings, birds and animals, and to buy birds in the town square in order to release them so that he could study their movement in flight.

Renaissance patrons
Humanists were employed at the courts of princes and popes as diplomats and secretaries and tutors, and by city governments as chancellors and public servants. In these positions, they encouraged their wealthy, aristocratic patrons to value and support Classical art and learning. The Humanists praised an active life in the service of the urban community,
based on the model of ancient Rome. In this way they gave wealthy families the confidence to devote large sums of money to beautifying the city with fine buildings and to building grand homes in the city and villas in the countryside for themselves. The Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti argued that fine architecture would make the city noble, and contribute to an illusion of powers. Wealthy city businessmen were entranced by this idea!

Very large amounts of the wealth of the cities continued to be directed towards building, furnishing and decorating churches, chapels and convents. Religious buildings were designed with beauty and harmony in mind, in addition to religious function, as the values of Classical Antiquity shaped their style and decoration.

Who were the Renaissance patrons?
The Church and the richer nobility remained the powerful patrons they had been throughout the Middle Ages. Most of the fifteenth-century popes in Rome commissioned lavish works to beautify the buildings in the Vatican. Lay people took an increasing role on local committees that were responsible for managing the building and maintenance of churches and other religious buildings; as well, they often provided the money for this!
New kinds of patrons emerged in the fifteenth century. The princely courts of despots (local lords) like the Gonzaga of Mantua, the Este of Ferrara and the Visconti of Milan, as well as the court of the King of Naples, gave artists opportunities to carry out fine, high-quality work in the Classical style. The Medici, who were a fabulously wealthy upper-middle-class banking family in Florence, lived like princes.

Guilds and city councils of prosperous cities such as Florence and Venice
commissioned works to beautify the public buildings. Rich, powerful merchant,
manufacturing and banking families, the wealthy middle classes who lived in the cities, also commissioned works. They thought of themselves as urban nobility, and wanted a lifestyle and setting to match their power in the city.

With such patrons, art began to develop a more secular dimension as it reflected their particular interests. Popes, cardinals and archbishops, who lived like secular princes and became art connoisseurs on Church money, came in for much criticism. It did not stop them from commissioning the finest artists to construct and decorate grand buildings and their own luxurious marble tombs!

Private patrons generally paid well. With some exceptions (like the few talented noblemen who became painters), all those who might be considered artists were still craftspeople, and relatively uneducated. As painters of wall panels, frescoes and miniatures, as goldsmiths, sculptors in marble and bronze, engravers, embroiderers, workers in stained glass and designers of buildings, they belonged to craft guilds. Distinguished patrons provided opportunities for the most talented artists to rise in the world, by making it possible for them to move in educated, especially Humanist, social circles.

Individual craftsmen whose work was distinguished, or had a philosophical dimension to it, became increasingly respected as 'artists', as they responded to the refined and sophisticated taste of their patrons. Creators of fine art, who were in great demand, gained an increasingly professional status and a secure bourgeois lifestyle.


Wall painting
'Fresco' painting on fresh lime plaster (see page 33) continued to be a major method of decorating the large wall surface in churches wherever the climate was dry enough. In some cases, or for certain pigments, a 'secco' method was used, whereby the plaster was allowed to dry before being painted. The paint did not soak into the plaster as much as it did with the 'fresco' method, so the pictures were not as permanent. In Italy, a 'sinopia', or cartoon in red earth, was sketched in before the final painting on the fresh lime plaster.


Panel painting
Panel painting on small boards made out of poplar wood (in Venice, imported fir-tree wood) were used in Italy in the mediaeval period. The panels were 'sized' with a plaster and glue 'gesso', that helped the pigment to grip the board. Preliminary sketches were made on the prepared ground, similar to the 'sinopia' prepared for fresco painting. Paint pigments were mixed with a binder, usually egg yolk, to form 'tempera', making the paint shine.Gold leaf was hammered to the required thinness inside leather pouches, then applied to the background if required. A coat of varnish protected the surface. Canvas Later in the century, Italians began to paint on canvas. Canvas did not rot as wood did, and it could be transported easily, which the Venetians did by wrapping the painted canvases around poles, painted side out.

Oils
During the fifteenth century, oils began to replace egg yolk as the painting medium. With oils, painters had greater flexibility in the handling of paint on their canvases or panels. Oil did not dry as fast as egg tempera, and oil paint enabled the painter to model his or her forms with greater naturalism, rather than having to work in relatively flat areas of colour. Painters explored the possibilities of light and shade, and paintings gained in luminosity from layers of 'glazes'.

Composition and themes
Composition was a matter negotiated by the patron with the artist. Patrons often specified particular figures, as well as how many of them there were to be, how they were to be portrayed, and the type of pigments or gold to be used. Themes were specified by the patron, with suggestions added by the artist. Although religious themes remained the main subjects, later in the century many artists, under Humanist influence, turned to Classical society and the ancient pagan myths and legends for inspiration.

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Architecture

Religious buildings and architectural terms

• A chapel is a small building or part of a large building, used for Christian worship.

• A cupola is the dome over the transept (crossing) of a large church.

• A lantern is a superstructure with windows above a roof or cupola to let in light (or air).

• A loggia is a space enclosed on three sides and colonnaded on the fourth side.

• A module, in Classical architecture, is 'half the diameter of the column just above its moulded base' (Summerson).

• A nave is the long central space of a church (basilica).

• An oratory is a building used for prayer.

• A pier is the load-bearing solid part of a wall between windows, doors or other openings.

• A pilaster is a column 'flattened' against a wall.

• Rusticated means that the face of the building stones are left very rough,
or that deep grooves are incised into the mortar between them.







Basic concepts or values in Italian Renaissance architecture

• Beauty lies in the balance, grate and harmony perceived in 'Classical'
architecture, which is governed by the following principles:
• Geometrical shapes determine the organisation of space.
• Rational design is developed with modules constructed according to mathematical ratios; that is, all the parts of a building are in the same
ratio.
• Proportion is achieved by repeating the modules.
• Stability is built into the rational design.
• Order is produced by mathematical regularity.
• There is agreement (Alberti called it 'congruity') of all of the parts with the whole, which is perceived by the mind (reason).

2. 'Classical' architecture incorporates one or more of the Greek Orders
Doric, Ionic, Corinthian,
or the Roman variations-
Tuscan, and Composite.

Alberti argued that columns were 'ornament' and were not to be used
as supports; instead, piers should provide supports.


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