Late Medieval & Early Renaissance Northern Europe

Northern Europe in 1477 CE

Northern Europe in 1477 CE

• The significance of manuscript illustration.

• The differences between Tempera & Oil paintings.

• The heightened used materiality & emotion and the reasoning behind it.

Topics to Cover:

Manuscript Illustration

A View into the Value of Medieval Manuscripts

St. Matthew, from The Lindisfarne Gospels

c. 700 CE
Colors & ink on vellum/parchment

Reproduced Pages from The Lindisfarne Gospels

Reproduced 'Carpet Page' from The Lindisfarne Gospels

January, from Le Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Limbourg Brothers
1413-1416 CE
Colors & ink on vellum/parchment

October, from Le Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Limbourg Brothers

1413-1416 CE
Colors & ink on vellum/parchment

An Example of the Secrets within Medieval Manuscripts

Tempera vs. Oil Painting

Merode Altarpiece (open)

Robert Campin
c. 1425-1428 CE | Oil on wood

Madonna Enthroned, from the Church of Ognissanti

Giotto di Bondone
Florence, Italy, ca. 1310
Tempera & gold leaf on wood, 10’ 8” x 6’ 8”  

Tempera & Oil Paint Demonstration

Materiality & Emotion

Flagellation of Christ

Piero della Francesca
c. 1455-1460 CE | Oil & tempera on panel

Flagellation of Christ, Piero della Francesca

Quattrocento Italy

Renaissance Florence

Renaissance Florence

• Humanism revisited.

• The artistic achievements of Donatello, Brunelleschi, & Masaccio

• The Medici & Neoplatonism

Topics to Cover:

Humanism

Petrarch

1304 - 1374 CE

• Medieval Poet, Scholar, & Intellectual.
• Poetry influence development of modern Italian language.
• "Father of Humanism" for his focus on Classical authors over Medieval ones.
• Laid the groundwork for the Humanities:
  • Classical Language
  • Literature
  • History
  • Philosophy
    • All involve arguing one's claims rather than citing hard evidence alone.

Renaissance Humanism:

Core Principles:

1. Human Potential as a celebration of God's gifts.
2. Classical Revival and the devaluing of Medieval concepts and ideologies.
3. Virtue & Civic Duty through Education.
4. Reason & Critical Thinking through studying the humanities.
5. Rejection of Scholasticism, the dominant Medieval school of thought with a heavy focus on religion.
6. Individualism as the most precious gift to humanity and the very thing that enables the rest of the philosophy.

All other things have a limited and fixed nature prescribed and bounded by our laws.

You, with no limit or no bound, may choose for yourself the limits and bounds of your nature.

     We have placed you at the world’s center so that you may survey everything else in the world.

     We have made you neither of heavenly nor of earthly stuff, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with free choice and dignity, you may fashion yourself into whatever form you choose.

- Giovanni della Pico Mirandola
Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1496 CE

Donatello, Brunelleschi, & Masaccio

Saint George, or San Michele

Donatello
1410-1415 CE
Marble, 6’10” high

David

Donatello
late 1440–1460 CE
Bronze, 5’ 2-1/4” high

David

Andrea del Verrocchio
c. 1465–1470 CE
Bronze, 4’ 1 1/2” high

Doryphoros (a.k.a. Spear Bearer)

by Polykleitos, c. 440 BCE

Florence Cathedral Dome

Filippo Brunelleschi
1420-1436

Brunelleschi's Dome

Interior (looking east) of San Lorenzo

Filippo Brunelleschi
Florence, Italy, c. 1421–1469

Interior of Santo Spirito (looking northeast)

Filippo Brunelleschi
Florence, Italy, 1434–1436; begun c. 1436

FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI

Facade of the Pazzi Chapel, Santa Croce

Florence, Italy, begun c. 1440

PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA

Flagellation of Christ

c. 1455-1465 CE | Oil and tempera on wood, 1’ 11-1/8” X 2’ 8-1/4”

MASACCIO

Tribute Money

Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy, c. 1427 CE | Fresco, 8’ 4-1/8” x 19’ 7-1/8”

Berlinghiero Berlinghieri

Madonna and child

c. 1230 CE
Tempera on wood

PERUGINO

Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter

Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome, Italy, 1481–1483 CE | Fresco, 11’ 5 1/2” x 18’ 8 1/2”

The Medici
& Neoplatonism

Meet the Medici Family

Medici Coat of Arms

The Importance of City Life

The Proliferation of Artists

Art, Sex, Beauty, & Love (Neoplatonism)

SANDRO BOTTICELLI

Birth of Venus

c. 1484–1486 | Tempera on canvas, approx. 5’ 9” x 9’ 2”

Often I have woken to myself out of the body, become detached from all else and entered into myself; and I have seen beauty of surpassing greatness, and have felt assured that then especially I belonged to the higher reality, engaged in the noblest life and identified with the Divine.

- Plotinus [Enneads, iv.8]

Platonic Forms

SANDRO BOTTICELLI

Birth of Venus

c. 1484–1486 | Tempera on canvas, approx. 5’ 9” x 9’ 2”

Why the Medici Matter Today

Cinquecento Italy

Italy 1494 CE

• The architecture & painting of Michelangelo

• Leonardo and the rise of the celebrity artist

The Architecture & Painting of Michelangelo

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

Interior and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Vatican City, Rome, Italy, 1508-1512
Fresco, 128’ X 45’.

Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Vatican City, Rome, Italy, 1508-1512
Fresco, 128’ x 45’

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

Creation of Adam detail of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Vatican City, Rome, Italy, 1511–1512 | Fresco, 9’ 2” x 18’ 8”

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

Last Judgment, altar wall of the Sistine Chapel

Vatican City, Rome, Italy, 1536–1541
Fresco, 48’ x 44’

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

Saint Peter’s (looking northeast)

Vatican City, Rome, Italy, 1546–1564

Dome completed by GIACOMO DELLA PORTA, 1590

Old St. Peter's as Commissioned by Emperor Constantine

ANDREA PALLADIO

Villa Rotonda (formerly Villa Capra)

near Vicenza, Italy, c. 1566–1570 CE

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

Pieta
c. 1498-1500 CE | Marble, 5’ 8-1/2” high

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

David

Florence, Italy, 1501–1504
Marble, 17’ high

David & the Importance of Setting

Raphael's Work at the Vatican

RAPHAEL

Marriage of the Virgin

San Francesco, Città di Castello, Italy, 1504
Oil on wood, 5’ 7” x 3’ 10 1/2”

RAPHAEL

Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi

c. 1517
Oil on wood, 5’ 5/8” X 3’ 10 7’8”.

RAPHAEL

Philosophy (School of Athens)

Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican Palace, Rome, Italy, 1509–1511 | Fresco, 19’ x 27’.

Leonardo & the Rise of the Celebrity Artist

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Mona Lisa

c. 1503–1505 CE
Oil on wood, 2’ 6 1/4” x 1’ 9”

How the Mona Lisa Became a Cultural Icon

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Madonna of the Rocks

San Francesco Grande, Milan, Italy, begun 1483
Oil on wood (transferred to canvas), 6’ 6 1/2” x 4’

LEONARDO DA VINCI

cartoon for Madonna and Child with Saint Anne and the Infant Saint John

ca. 1505–1507
Charcoal heightened with white on brown paper, 4’ 6” x 3’ 3”

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Vitruvian Man

c. 1485–1490
Pen and ink on paper, 1’ 1 1/2" X 9 5/8”.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

The Fetus and Lining of the Uterus

c. 1511–1513
Ink wash, over red chalk and traces of black chalk on paper, 1’ 8 5/8”.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Last Supper

Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, c. 1495–1498 CE | Oil and tempera on plaster, 13’ 9” x 29’ 10”

Considering the Reality of "Genius"

High Renaissance & Mannerism in
N. Europe & Spain

• The impact of the Protestant Reformation

• Albrecht Dürer's German perspective on the Renaissance

The Impact of the Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther

Born: November 10, 1483
Died: February 18, 1546

Overview of Protestantism

Catholic Faith

Protestant Faith

Albrecht Dürer's German Perspective
on the Renaissance

The Quintessential German Artist

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Great Piece of Turf

1503 CE
Watercolor, 1’ 3/4” x 1’ 3/8”

ALBRECHT DÜRER

The Fall of Man (Adam and Eve)

1504 CE
Engraving, 9 7/8” x 7 5/8”.

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Knight, Death, and the Devil

1513 CE
Engraving, 9 5/8” x 7 3/8”

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Four Apostles

1526 CE
Oil on wood, each panel 7’ 1” x 2’ 6”

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Self-Portrait at the Age of 13

1484 CE
Silverpoint, 10.8" x 7.7”

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle

1493 CE
Oil on parchment on canvas, 22" x 17.3”

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Self-Portrait at 26

1498 CE
Oil on panel, 20.5" x 16"

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Self-Portrait

1500 CE
Oil on panel, 26.25” X 19.25”

Landscape Painting
in the Netherlands

JOACHIM PATINIR

Landscape with Saint Jerome

c. 1520–1524 CE | Oil on wood, 2’ 5 1/8” x 2’ 11 7/8”

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER

Netherlandish Proverbs

1559 CE | Oil on wood, 3’ 10” x 5’ 4 1/8”.

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER

Hunters in the Snow

1565 CE | Oil on wood, approx. 3’ 10 1/8” x 5’ 3 3/4”. 

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER

Fall of Icarus

c. 1555–1556 CE | Oil on wood transferred to canvas, 2’ 5” X 3’ 8 1/8”.

Note the Different Perspective Techniques

El Greco, Spirituality, & Cross-Cultural Influences

El Greco's Spirituality

JOACHIM PATINIR

Comnenus Mosaic

1122 CE | Mosaic

EL GRECO

St. Francis & Brother Leo in Meditation

c. 1600 CE
Oil on canvas

EL GRECO

View of Toledo

c. 1610 CE
Oil on canvas, 3’ 11-3/4" X 3’ 6-3/4"

EL GRECO

The Burial of Count Orgaz

1586 CE
Oil on canvas, 16’ x 12’

The Baroque in Italy

• Caravaggio's intense and dramatic career.

• Bernini, politics, & Baroque hypocrisy

Caravaggio:
The Rock Star of Baroque Italy

The Rough Streets of Caravaggio's Rome

Musicians

Caravaggio

c. 1595 CE | Oil on canvas,

Conversion of Saint Paul

Caravaggio

c. 1601 CE
Oil on canvas

Caravaggio's Big Idea

Calling of Saint Matthew

Caravaggio

c. 1601 CE
Oil on canvas

Mathematical Beauty via Francesco Borromini

FRANCESCO BORROMINI

Interior of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (looking northwest and up into the dome), Rome, Italy

1638-1641 CE

FRANCESCO BORROMINI

View of dome from below of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, Italy

1638–1641 CE

Borromini the Mathematician

FRANCESCO BORROMINI

Chapel of Saint Ivo
College of the Sapienza, Rome, Italy

begun 1642.

FRANCESCO BORROMINI

Chapel of Saint Ivo (view into dome), College of the Sapienza, Rome, Italy

begun 1642 CE

Gianlorenzo Bernini's Rage

Introducing: Bernini

Apollo and Daphne

Gianlorenzo Bernini

1623–1624 CE
Marble

Saint Peter’s Basilica (looking northeast)

Vatican City, Rome, Italy

Michelangelo Buonarroti

1546–1564 CE

Dome completed by Giacomo della Porta, 1590

Facade & Nave of Saint Peter’s
Vatican City, Rome, Italy

Carlo Maderno | 1606–1612 CE

Baldacchino

Saint Peter’s, Vatican City, Rome, Italy

Gianlorenzo Bernini

1624–1633 CE
Gilded bronze, 100’ high.

Plans for the Bernini Towers

Bernini's Rage Nearly Destroys Him

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi
(Fountain of the Four Rivers)
Piazza Navona, Rome, Italy

Gianlorenzo Bernini

1648–1651 CE
Travertine and marble figures, granite obelisk

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, Italy

Gianlorenzo Bernini

645–1652 CE
Marble

Inerior of the Cornaro Chapel
Santa Maria della vittoria, Rome, Italy

Gianlorenzo Bernini

1645-1652 CE

Cornaro Patriarchs shown "watching" the theatrical scene

Saint Peter's Square

Vatican City, Italy

Gianlorenzo Bernini | 1656-1667 CE

Original design of St. Peter's, c. 4th cent. CE