Art of the Early

Renaissance
Mike Venegas

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 Outline
• I will focus on the visual arts of the Early
Renaissance period.
• What the Renaissance was?
• How it started?
• Where it started?
• How Early Renaissance art was created
• The Workshop system
• Innovations of Early Renaissance art
• Early Renaissance artists and sculpture
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 Renaissance
• A period from the early 1300’s to roughly
1600 when there was a renewed interest in
history literature and art.
• Renaissance = “Rebirth”
• Europe’s economic recovery
• Renewed study of ancient Greece and
Rome

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 Humanism
o The birth of humanism
o Humanism was an ideal that focused on
the world of mankind as much as a
concern for the hereafter.
o Rejected medieval view of humanity
and focused on the goodness of
mankind

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 Humanism (cont.)

• Began in Florence, Italy

• Ideal setting
• Wealthy patrons

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 Early Renaissance

• Period from 1400 to 1500

• Artist as a craftsmen
• Art created by commission
• Art through imitation

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 Workshop system
• Collaboration of masters and
apprentices
• Family-based
• Run like a business

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 Workshop
• Art was commissioned
• Apprentice started in early teens
• Studied under master for several
years

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Products of the workshop system
• Michaelangelo
• Master – Domenico Ghirlandaio

• Leonardo da Vinci
• Master- Andrea del Verocchio

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 Innovations

• Frescoes- art created on damp

plaster
• Oil paints
• Realistic portrayal of human nature

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 Innovations
• Chiaroscurro- use of shadows to
show balance of light and dark
• Science
• Linear perspective- allowed artist
to represent objects in relative sizes

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 Giotto
• Giotto is considered to be the most influential
artist on Renaissance painting.
• Father of the Renaissance
• Giotto’s dignified figures seemed to displace
space, to stand upon the ground with real
substance and weight.
• The figures seem to extend both backward, into
the picture, and forward, toward the spectator’s
space.

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 slide

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 Filippo Bruneleschi
(1337-1446)

• Florentine architect and engineer

• First to carry out a series of optical experiments
that led to a mathematical theory of perspective.
• His method of perspective had a dramatic
impact on the depiction of 3-dimensional space
in the arts

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 One point linear perspective
Pierro della Francesca “View of an Ideal City”

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 Masaccio
(1401-1428)
• One of first artists to apply the new method of
linear perspective in his fresco of the Holy
Trinity
• Used a barrel vaulted ceiling to imitate with
precision the true appearance of architectural
space
• Figures depict accurate human anatomy

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 The Holy Trinity

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 Pierro della Francesca
(1416-1492)

• Expressed an obsession with perspective

• His works are characterized by carefully analyzed
architectural spaces and sensitivity to geometric
purity of shapes.
• Wrote several treatises on perspective and
geometry

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 Carefully analyzed perspective
and geometry
• The Discovery and Proving of the True Cross

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 Donatello
(1386-1466)

• New sense of naturalism in sculpture

• Use of classical contrapposto stance
(relaxed not rigid)
• Statue of David considered first full scale
nude since ancient times

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 Andrea Mantegna
(1430-1506)
• Created unusual vantage points
• Looking at figures from below
• Lamentation of the Dead Christ the viewer is
looking from the feet of the subject.
• Deep foreshortening
• Effectively placed the viewer at the scene,
adding to the sense of empathy

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 Lamentation of the Dead Christ
• Use of unusual vantage points

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 Sandra Boticelli
(1445-1510)
• First artist to paint a full-length female
nude
• In Birth of Venus the figure occupies the
center of the work which was traditionally
reserved for the Virgin. This work is
possibly the most pagan image of the
entire Renaissance.

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 Literature in the Early
Renaissance
Jennifer Montes

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 Before the Renaissance
• Christian Age
• Literary production limited
• Important original books of the time
– Exameron by St. Ambrose
– City of God and the Confessions by St. Augustine
– Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

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 Characterized by:
• Large collections of church hymns
• Didactic poems of relative significance
• Sermons
• Theological treatises
• Legends of various saints
• Fables
• Historical chronicles beginning with Creation

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 Rise of Humanism
• Involved the modern discovery or rediscovery
of those fields we now call the humanities
– History, moral and political philosophy, poetry,
literature, rhetoric, grammar, and linguistic study and
interpretation.
• Humanism was a deliberate revival, renascence,
or "renaissance" of the arts and humanities.

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 Humanism
• Humanists took Christian ideas and secular and
pagan (Greek and Roman) ideas to gain
knowledge useful in making them better people
– Virtuous, responsible, educated citizens, aware of
what had been thought and done at other times and
places.
• The humanists sought to understand what it was
to be fully human.

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 Early Renaissance affected by:
• Works of Dante
• Works of Petrarch
• Invention and widespread use of movable
type

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 Dante Alighieri
• Born in Florence, Italy in 1265
• Son of Alighiero di Bellincione Alighieri and his
first wife Bella
• Wrote his first book “Vita Nuova” (New Life) in
1294
• Exiled in 1302

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 Exile
• De Vulgari Eloquentia –treatise on his native
language
– Never completed
• Il Convivio –collection of verse
– Never completed
• Began writing the Commedia (Divine Comedy)
in 1306

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 La Divina Commedia
• The Divine Comedy
• Completed in 1321
• Narrative poem
• Written in terza rima (third rhyme)
– a verse form consisting of tercets
– rhyme scheme (aba, bcb, cdc)
– Form modified by Dante

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 Divine Comedy
• Allegory of human life written to convert the
corrupt to righteousness
• Represents three realms of the Christian afterlife
– Inferno (Hell)
– Puragatorio (Purgatory)
– Paradiso (Heaven

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 Influences of Dante
• Virgil
• Lucan
• Theological Influences
– St. Thomas Aquinas
– Sts. Gregory, Isidore, Anselm, and Bonaventure
– Boethius

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 Influenced by Dante
• Artists
– Giotto
• “Cimabue thought/To lord it over painting’s field; and
now/ The cry is Giotto’s, and his name eclipsed.”
(Purgatorio, canto XI)
– Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Last Judgement
– Salvadore Dali

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 Michelangelo

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 Dali’s representation of Dante

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 Influenced by Dante
• Authors
– Shelley
– Byron
– Yeats
– T.S. Eliot

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 Francesco Petrarca
• Born in Arezzo in 1304
• Son of a Ser Petracco
• 1341 crowned poet laureate in Rome
• Created works in Latin
• Most popular are those written in Italian
• Trionfi—allegorical and moral
– Written in terza rima

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 Canzoniere
• “Song Book”
• Considered Petrarch’s masterpiece
• Contains mostly sonnets
– To a lesser degree canzoni, sestine, ballate, and
madrigals

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 Canzoniere
• Inspired by the lady, Laura
• Deals with Love, political and patriotic feeling,
and issues of morality
• Unrequited Love
– Seeing her brings him joy
– Creates unfulfilled desires

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 Laura
• First saw his “muse”, Laura, April 6, 1327
(Good Friday) in the church of Sainte-Claire d’
Avignon
• Some doubt her existance
• Others believe she may have been the wife of
Hugues de Sade

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 The Petrarchian Sonnet
• Now known also as the Italian Sonnet
• 14 lines
• Consists of 2 divisions
– First eight lines (octet)
– Second six lines (sestet)
• Rhyme Scheme
– Abbaabbacdecde

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 Sonnet 140

Amor, che nel penser mio vive et regna (a)

e 'l suo seggio maggior nel mio cor tene, (b)
talor armato ne la fronte vene; (b)
ivi si loca et ivi pon sua insegna. (a)
Quella ch' amare et sofferir ne 'nsegna (a)
e vol che 'l gran desio, l'accesa spene (b)
ragion, vergogna, et reverenza affrene, (b)
di nostro ardir fra se stessa si sdegna. (a)
Onde Amor paventoso fugge al core, (c)
lasciando ogni sua impresa, et piange et trema; (d)
ivi s'asconde et non appar più fore. (e)
Che poss' io far, temendo il mio signore, (c)
se non star seco infin a l'ora estrema? (d)
ché bel fin fa chi ben amando more. (e)
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 Influences of Petrarch
• Dante
• Cicero
• Virgil

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 Influenced by Petrarch
• Chaucer makes reference to Petrarch in the
prologue to the Clerk’s Tale in his Canterbury
Tales
– "Francis Petrarch, the laureate poet/
Was this clerk's name, whose rhetoric so sweet/
Illumed all Italy with poetry”

• Sir Thomas Wyatt

– Imitated his form in at least 27 of his poems

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 Petrarchanism
• French and Italian poets imitated his style
indirectly
• Bembo called for poets to imitate the original
only

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 Rejecters of Petrarchanism
• The English rejected Petrarch’s form
• Elizabethan sonnet writers thought it was
obsolete and created their own style
• No direct imitation of Petrarch in England
– Marked avoidance
• Canzioniere not published in England until
1850’s

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 Impact of Movable Type
• Invented in 1440 By Johannes Gutenberg
• Led to a great demand for books in the mid 15th
century
– Printers met the high demand by printing an over-
abundance of books.
– Prices plummeted (20% less than a manuscript)

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 Gutenberg’s Press

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 Movable type
• Aided in political and religious revolution
• Humanist movement fueled its success.
– Canterbury Tales and Dante’s Divine Comedy were
some of the first printed
• Led to the rise of the vernacular (non-Latin)
literary text

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 Early Renaissance
• The style and ideas from the Early Renaissance
carried throughout the renaissance period and
left a lasting impact on modern culture.

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