Beauty, Science, and Spirit in Italian Art:

High Renaissance
ART ID 121 | Study of Western Arts
Slide concept by William V. Ganis, PhD NYIT Center for Teaching and Learning with Technology

With modifications by Arch. Edeliza V. Macalandag, UAP *15th Century

THE HIGH RENAISSANCE

Dissatisfaction with the leadership and policies of the Roman Catholic Church led to the Protestant Reformation.
In response, the Catholic Church initiated the Counter-Reformation.

A facet of the Counter-Reformation was the activity of the Society of Jesus, a religious order known as the Jesuits, which promoted education and missionary work. To deal with heretics, the Catholic Church also established a Church court called the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
The Catholic Counter-Reformation exploited the use of art to promote and reinforce religious and ideological claims.

THE HIGH RENAISSANCE

Developments in Italian 15th-century art ("Early Renaissance") matured during the 16th century ("High Renaissance"). No singular style characterizes the High Renaissance, but the major artists of the period, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian, exhibit a high level of technical and aesthetic mastery.

These artists also enjoyed an elevated social status, while their art was raised to the status formerly only given to poetry.

Mastering everything from a(natomy) to z(oology):

Leonardo da Vinci's wide-ranging interests and scientific investigations informed and enhanced his art. He studied the human body and considered the eyes the most vital organs and sight the most essential function.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 May 2, 1519, Old Style) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".

While in Milan, Leonardo painted Virgin of the Rocks, which employs the subtle play of light and dark to model forms and to express the emotional states of his figures. The figures, arranged in a pyramidal group, are placed within a cavern. The optical haziness of the light creates an atmosphere of psychological ambiguity.

Leonardo da Vinci

Virgin of the Rocks

ca. 1485 oil on wood 199 cm 122 cm

While in Milan, Leonardo painted Virgin of the Rocks, which employs the subtle play of light and dark to model forms and to express the emotional states of his figures. The figures, arranged in a pyramidal group, are placed within a cavern. The optical haziness of the light creates an atmosphere of psychological ambiguity.

Leonardo da Vinci

Virgin of the Rocks

ca. 1485 oil on wood 189.5 cm 120 cm

This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading

Leonardo da Vinci Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John
ca. 1505-07 charcoal heightened with white on brown paper 4 ft. 6 in. x 3 ft. 3 in.

Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper Refectory, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
ca. 1495-98 oil and tempera on plaster 29 ft. 10 in. x 13 ft. 9 in.

Leonardo's dramatic Last Supper in the refectory of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan shows the Twelve Disciples reacting to Christ's pronouncement that one of them will betray him. The forceful and lucid conceptualization of the moment is enhanced by features in the design of the simple room. Christ is the psychological and also the perspectival focus of the painting. The Twelve Disciples, who register a broad range of emotional responses, are arranged into four groups of three unified through gestures and postures.

Leonardo's famous portrait of Mona Lisa shows a half-length figure seated in a loggia with columns against the backdrop of a mysterious uninhabited landscape. Leonardo uses a smoky chiaroscuro (sfumato) and atmospheric perspective to enhance the figure's ambiguous facial expression, which serves to conceal or mask her psychic identity from the viewer.

Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa (La Giaconda)

ca. 1503-1505 oil on wood 2 ft. 6 in. x 1 ft. 9 in.

The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called "sfumato" or Leonardo's smoke.

Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa (La Giaconda)

ca. 1503-1505 oil on wood 2 ft. 6 in. x 1 ft. 9 in.

In one of Leonardo's notebooks containing his anatomical studies is a drawing of an Embryo in the Womb. It is an early example of scientific illustration. Leonardo also worked as both architect and sculptor.

Leonardo da Vinci Embryo in the Womb

ca. 1510 pen and ink on paper

The ambitious Pope Julius II was an avid art patron who understood the propagandistic value of visual imagery. He commissioned a new design for Saint Peter's basilica, the construction of his tomb, the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the decoration of the papal apartments.

Bramante's ambitious design for the new Saint Peter's consisted of a cross with arms of equal length, each terminated by an apse. A large hemispherical dome was planned for the crossing, with smaller domes over subsidiary chapels. A commemorative medal shows the exterior.

Donato dAngelo Bramante Plan for the new Saint Peters

1505

Bramante's design for the Tempietto in the cloister of the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, was inspired by ancient Roman round temples Bramante would have known in Rome and in its environs. The rational design is balanced and harmonious in the relationship of the parts (dome, drum, and base) to one another and to the whole. The Tempietto was originally planned to stand inside a circular colonnade.

Donato dAngelo Bramante Tempietto

San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, Italy

1502

Christoforo Foppa Caradosso Medal showing Bramantes design for the new Saint Peters
1506

Novel and Lofty Things

Michelangelo created works in architecture, sculpture, and painting that departed from High Renaissance regularity. His often complex and eccentric style expressed strength and a looming tragic grandeur. He insisted on the artist's own authority and independence and believed that an artist's own inspired judgment could identify pleasing proportions.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

The monumental nude statue of David reveals Michelangelo's early fascination with the male body. The detailed play of muscles over the figure's torso and limbs serves to enhance the mood and posture of tense expectation as David watches for the approach of Goliath. The pent-up energy of David's psychic and muscular tension is contrasted with his apparently casual pose. David is also represented as the defiant hero of the Florentine republic.

Michelangelo Buonarroti David

1501-1504 marble 14 ft. 3 in. high

For his own tomb, Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to design a grandiose, freestanding, two-story structure with some 28 statues. The project was gradually scaled down, and the final tomb, in San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, is dominated by the seated figure of Moses, whose pent-up emotional and physical energy fills his massive muscular frame.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Moses
San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, Italy
ca. 1513-1515 marble approximately 8 ft. 4 in. high

In the Bound Slave, believed to have been carved originally for Julius II's tomb, Michelangelo made the body an expression of the idea of oppression and a vehicle of intense feelings. The violent contrapposto reveals the figure's defiance and his frantic but impotent struggle against his restraints.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Bound Slave
1513-1516 marble 6 ft. 10 1/2 in. high

A Grand Drama: In less than four years, Michelangelo painted a monumental fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel organized around a sequence of narrative panels describing the Creation as recorded in the biblical book Genesis..

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Sistine Chapel Ceiling Vatican City, Rome, Italy
1508-12 fresco approximately 128 x 45 ft.

The colossal decorative scheme conceived within a unifying architectural framework includes the Hebrew prophets and pagan sibyls on both sides of the central row of scenes where the vault curves down, and four corner pendentives showing four Old Testament scenes.

Sistine Chapel (view facing west) Vatican City, Rome, Italy

built 1473

In triangular compartments above the windows are shown ancestors of Christ. Nude youths occupy the corners of the central panels, and small pairs of putti in grisaille support the painted cornice surrounding the entire central section. Michelangelo concentrated his expressive purpose on the human figure, in which he reveals both the beauty of the body in its natural form and also its spiritual and philosophical significance.

Sistine Chapel (view facing east) Vatican City, Rome, Italy

built 1473

The Downfall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Michelangelo Buonarroti Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel Ceiling Vatican City, Rome, Italy | 1511-12 | fresco | approximately
18 ft. 8 in. x 9 ft. 2 in.

In the panel of the Creation of Adam, Michelangelo painted a bold and entirely humanistic interpretation of the event, with a massive figure of God imparting life through an extended hand to a languorously reclining nude figure of Adam.

Christ on judgment day:

Michelangelo's large-scale Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel shows Christ as the stern judge of the world, surrounded by the choirs of Heaven above a group of trumpeting angels. The just ascend on one side, and on the other the damned are sent down. Below, the dead awake on the left and the damned are ferried to Hell on the right. Among the martyrs close to Christ is Saint Bartholomew, holding a knife and his flayed skin (its face a grotesque self-portrait of Michelangelo). The figures are huge and violently twisted, with small heads and contorted features.

Michelangelo Buonarroti Last Judgment Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1537-41 fresco

Christ on judgment day:

Michelangelo's large-scale Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel shows Christ as the stern judge of the world, surrounded by the choirs of Heaven above a group of trumpeting angels. The just ascend on one side, and on the other the damned are sent down. Below, the dead awake on the left and the damned are ferried to Hell on the right. Among the martyrs close to Christ is Saint Bartholomew, holding a knife and his flayed skin (its face a grotesque self-portrait of Michelangelo). The figures are huge and violently twisted, with small heads and contorted features.

Michelangelo Buonarroti Last Judgment Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1537-41 fresco

Michelangelo Buonarroti Last Judgment Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1537-41 fresco

Michelangelo Buonarroti Last Judgment Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1537-41 fresco

Michelangelo Buonarroti Drunkenness of Noah, Sistine Chapel Ceiling (pre-restoration)

Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1511-12 fresco

Michelangelo Buonarroti Drunkenness of Noah, Sistine Chapel Ceiling (post-restoration) Vatican City, Rome, Italy
1511-12 fresco

Cleaning of, Sistine Chapel Ceiling Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1977-1989

Sistine Chapel (view facing east) Vatican City, Rome, Italy

built 1473

Michelangelo Buonarroti Last Judgment Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1537-41 fresco

In the suite of rooms forming Pope Julius II's papal apartments, Raphael painted a series of frescoes. On one of the four walls of the Stanza della Segnatura, he painted the so-called School of Athens, which shows a congregation of philosophers and scientists of the ancient world conversing and arguing in a vast vaulted hall decorated with colossal statues of Apollo and Athena. In the center, silhouetted against the sky, are Plato and Aristotle. Other recognizable figures gathered around them include Pythagoras, Socrates, Heraclitus, Diogenes, Euclid, Zoroaster, and Ptolemy; their dignified poses and eloquent gestures communicate moods that reflect their various beliefs. In the Stanza della Segnatura, Raphael reconciled and harmonized paganism and Christianity.

Raphael Philosophy (School of Athens) Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican Palace, Rome, Italy
1509-11 | fresco | approximately 19 x 27 ft.

Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin shows Joseph's success in the competition with other suitors for the hand of Mary. A centrally planned temple is prominent in the background.

Raphael
Marriage of the Virgin Chapel of Saint Joseph in Citt di Castello near Florence, Italy
1504 oil on wood 5 ft. 7 in. x 3 ft. 10 1/2 in.

Raphael's employs a pyramidal composition and uses a subtle chiaroscuro to model the faces and figures in Madonna of the Meadows.

Raphael Madonna of the Meadows

1505 oil on panel 3 ft. 8 1/2 in. x 2 ft. 10 1/4 in.

Raphael's joyful and exuberant fresco of Galatea in the Villa Farnesina shows the nymph on a shell, surrounded by sea creatures and cupids.

Raphael Galatea Sala di Galatea, Villa Farnesina Rome, Italy

1513 fresco 9 ft. 8 in. x 7 ft. 5 in.

Raphael's portrait, painted in muted and low-keyed tones, shows the soberly dressed Baldassare Castiglione in halflength and three-quarter view looking directly out at the viewer. Raphael explores the Castiglione's personality and psychic state.

Raphael

Baldassare Castiglione
ca. 1514 oil on wood transferred to canvas 2 ft. 6 1/4 in. x 2 ft. 2 1/2 in.

Michelangelo's Piet, a depiction of the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Maryafter the Crucifixion, was carved in 1499, when the sculptor was 24 years old.

Michelangelo in the Service of the Medici. Following the death of Julius II, Michelangelo entered the service of the Medici popes (Leo X and his successor Clement VII), who commissioned him to build a funerary chapel in San Lorenzo in Florence.

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Tomb of Giuliano deMedici Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy
1519-1534 marble central figure approximately 5 ft. 11 in. high

The sculpted tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo in the New Sacristy were left unfinished by Michelangelo. The tomb of Giuliano contains a statue of Giuliano in a niche at the apex, with below a pair of contorted figures that rest on the sloping sides of the sarcophagus (a female figure of Night and a male figure of Day), and, possibly, a pair of recumbent river gods at the base. The meaning of the ensemble remains unclear. The figure of Giuliano, representing the active man, is an ideal human type. The figure of Lorenzo in the niche opposite represents the contemplative man.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Tomb of Giuliano deMedici

Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy
1519-1534 marble central figure approximately 5 ft. 11 in. high

Antonio da Sangallo the Younger

Palazzo Farnese
Rome, Italy | ca. 1530-1546

Before he became Pope Paul III, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese commissioned Antonio da Sangallo to build the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The design expresses the classical order, regularity, simplicity, and dignity of the High Renaissance. On the third level of the interior courtyard, Michelangelo replaced the columns of Sangallo's design with overlapping pilasters.

Michelangelo's reorganization of the Capitoline Hill (the Campidoglio) in Rome incorporated the existing Palazzo dei Senatori and the Palazzo dei Conservatori (the faade of which he redesigned) into a balanced and symmetrical design. He added a new building (the Museo Capitolino) opposite the Palazzo dei Conservatori and at the same angle to the Palazzo dei Senatori, which created a trapezoidal plan for the piazza. In the center of the piazza, which was given an oval pavement design, was placed (against the advice of Michelangelo) the Roman equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which, because it was believed to represent Constantine, served as a symbol of the triumph of Christianity over the pagan Roman Empire.

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Capitoline Hill Rome, Italy
designed ca. 1537

Michelangelo Buonarroti Capitoline Hill and Museo Capitolino Rome, Italy

designed ca. 1537

During his supervision of the building of the new Saint Peter's, Michelangelo preserved Bramante's original centralized plan but reduced and unified the central component to a compact, domed Greek cross inscribed in a square and fronted with a doublecolumned portico.

Michelangelo Buonarroti
plan for Saint Peters Vatican City, Rome, Italy
1546

On the exterior, he employed the colossal order, the vertical extension of which extends up through the attic stories into the drum and the dome to unify the whole building. Michelangelo's final plan for a hemispheric dome was not adopted by Giacomo della Porta, who, long after Michelangelo's death, built a dome with an ogival section.

Michelangelo Buonarroti
elevation for Saint Peters Vatican City, Rome, Italy
1546-1564

Michelangelo Buonarroti elevation for Saint Peters

Vatican City, Rome, Italy

1546-1564

The commercial and political power enjoyed by Venice during the 15th century declined in the 16th century due largely to the discoveries in the New World and the economic shift from Italy to Hapsburg Germany and the Netherlands. Moreover, since the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, Venice had lost control of the eastern Mediterranean. Venice remained independent despite attacks by the League of Cambrai, composed of Spain, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papal States.

The primacy of color. Giovanni Bellini's monumental sacra conversazione (holy conversation) altarpiece in San Zaccaria, Venice, shows the Virgin enthroned with the Christ Child in the company of four saints. The figures are bathed in an evocative, soft-colored light. The harmonious, balanced presentation of luminous colors results in an image that gently radiates a feeling of serenity and spiritual calm.

Giovanni Bellini
San Zaccaria Altarpiece Santa Zaccaria, Venice, Italy
1505 oil on wood transferred to canvas 16 ft. 5 in. x 7 ft. 9 in.

The primacy of color. Giovanni Bellini's monumental sacra conversazione (holy conversation) altarpiece in San Zaccaria, Venice, shows the Virgin enthroned with the Christ Child in the company of four saints. The figures are bathed in an evocative, soft-colored light. The harmonious, balanced presentation of luminous colors results in an image that gently radiates a feeling of serenity and spiritual calm.

Giovanni Bellini
San Zaccaria Altarpiece Santa Zaccaria, Venice, Italy
1505 oil on wood transferred to canvas 16 ft. 5 in. x 7 ft. 9 in.

A mythological picnic. Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods (derived from Ovid's Fasti ) is a new kind of mythological painting that shows the Olympian gods as peasants enjoying a picnic in a shady, rural place of rustic peace and simplicity. Bellini and other Venetian artists focused on color and the process of paint application, whereas Florentine and Roman artists were more concerned with sculpturesque form, drawing, and design (disegno). Venetian artists developed a "poetic," lyrical, and sensual art, whereas artists in Florence and Rome gravitated toward grand, heroic, esoteric, and intellectual themes.

Giovanni Bellini and Titian

The Feast of the Gods

1529 oil on canvas 5 ft. 7 in. x 6 ft. 2 in.

A mythological picnic. Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods (derived from Ovid's Fasti ) is a new kind of mythological painting that shows the Olympian gods as peasants enjoying a picnic in a shady, rural place of rustic peace and simplicity. Bellini and other Venetian artists focused on color and the process of paint application, whereas Florentine and Roman artists were more concerned with sculpturesque form, drawing, and design (disegno). Venetian artists developed a "poetic," lyrical, and sensual art, whereas artists in Florence and Rome gravitated toward grand, heroic, esoteric, and intellectual themes.

Giovanni Bellini and Titian

The Feast of the Gods

1529 oil on canvas 5 ft. 7 in. x 6 ft. 2 in.

A mythological picnic. Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods (derived from Ovid's Fasti ) is a new kind of mythological painting that shows the Olympian gods as peasants enjoying a picnic in a shady, rural place of rustic peace and simplicity. Bellini and other Venetian artists focused on color and the process of paint application, whereas Florentine and Roman artists were more concerned with sculpturesque form, drawing, and design (disegno). Venetian artists developed a "poetic," lyrical, and sensual art, whereas artists in Florence and Rome gravitated toward grand, heroic, esoteric, and intellectual themes.

Giovanni Bellini and Titian

The Feast of the Gods

1529 oil on canvas 5 ft. 7 in. x 6 ft. 2 in.

Poetry in motion. Giorgione's so-called Pastoral Symphony, which shows two voluptuous nude females accompanied by two clothed young men in a landscape with a shepherd, exemplifies the Venetian poetic manner in its eloquent though enigmatic evocation of a dreamy, tranquil, pastoral mood.

Giorgionne da Castelfranco

Pastoral Symphony
ca. 1508 oil on canvas 3 ft. 7 in. x 4 ft. 6 in.

Stormy weather. Giorgione's enigmatic painting The Tempest shows a lush landscape with human figures in the foreground threatened by stormy skies and lightning.

Giorgionne da Castelfranco

The Tempest
ca. 1510 oil on canvas 2 ft. 7 in. x 2 ft. 4 3/4 in.

A master of color. Titian was a supreme colorist and the most extraordinary and prolific of the great Venetian painters. Titian's large altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice uses vibrant color to infuse the image with a drama and intensity.

Titian
Assumption of the Virgin Santa Maria Gloriosa del Frari, Venice, Italy
ca. 1516-1518 oil on wood 22 ft. 6 in. x 11 ft. 10 in.

A dazzling display of color. Titian's Madonna of the Pesaro Family in the church of the Frari, Venice, shows Pesaro, bishop of Paphos in Cyprus and commander of the papal fleet, who had led a successful expedition in 1502 against the Turks during the Venetian-Turkish war, being received by the Madonna together with saints and a Turkish prisoner of war. The monumental figures are placed on a steep diagonal with the Madonna at the apex off to the right.

Titian
Madonna of the Pesaro Family Santa Maria dei Frari, Venice, Italy
1519-1526 oil on canvas approximately 16 x 9 ft.

Bacchanalian revelry. Titian's Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne shows Bacchus, accompanied by his boisterous and noisy retinue, arriving to save Ariadne, who had been abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos. The rich, luminous colors add to the painting's sensuous appeal.

Titian Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne

1522-1523 oil on canvas 5 ft. 9 in. x 6 ft. 3 in.

A Venetian Venus. Titian's so-called Venus of Urbino shows a nude woman reclining on a luxurious pillowed couch. Although she is posed as the goddess of classical mythology, the woman is probably a courtesan seen in her bedchamber. Color plays a prominent role in the composition.

Titian

Venus of Urbino
1538 oil on canvas 4 ft. x 5 ft. 6 in.

A powerful patroness. Titian's portrait of a poised and selfassured Isabella d'Este is a psychological reading of the body's most expressive parts-the head and the hands.

Titian

Isabella dEste
1534-36 oil on canvas 3 ft. 4 1/8 in. x 2 ft. 1 3/16 in.

A Madonna with sphinxes:

The sphinxes in this Andrea del Sarto painting were misidentified as harpies. The composition is based on a massive and imposing figure pyramid, the static qualities of which are relieved by the opposing contrapposto poses of the flanking saints - a favorite and effective High Renaissance device to introduce symmetry.

Andrea del Sarto

Madonna of the Harpies

1517 oil on wood 6 ft. 9 in. x 5 ft. 10 in.

A view of the sky:

In addition to pulling together many stylistic trends, including those of Leonardo, Raphael, and the Venetians, Correggio also created the illusion that the dome of the Parma Cathedral has disappeared and in its place is a vision of the Assumption of the Virgin. His style is sometimes called "proto-Baroque."

Antonio Allegri da Correggio

Assumption of the Virgin Dome fresco of Parma Cathedral Parma, Italy
1526-1530 fresco

Antonio Allegri da Correggio Assumption of the Virgin Dome fresco of Parma Cathedral Parma, Italy
1526-1530 fresco

MANNERISM Mannerist art and architecture generally places an emphasis on staged and contrived imagery, on elegance and beauty, on imbalanced compositions, and on unusual visual and conceptual complexities. Space in Mannerist paintings may appear ambiguous, and traditional themes may be presented in unconventional or unexpected ways. Mannerist art may be restless, with figures shown distorted, exaggerated, and with affected but often sinuously graceful postures. Mannerism's requirement of "invention" led artists to produce self-conscious stylizations involving complexity, caprice, fantasy, elegance, perfectionism, and polish.

Mannerist Painting The figures crowded into Pontormo's Descent from the Cross are disposed in a shallow, ambiguous space around the frame of the picture, leaving a void in the center of the composition. The twisting, bending figures, painted in clashing colors, have elongated limbs and small, oval heads.

Jacopo da Pontormo Descent from the Cross Capponi Chapel, Santa Felicit, Florence, Italy
1525-1528 oil on wood 10 ft. 3 in. x 6 ft. 6 in.

Mannerism's elegance and grace:

The body of the Madonna in Parmigianino's unfinished Madonna with the Long Neck has been artificially attenuated to create an elegant and exquisitely graceful figure.

Parmigianino
Madonna with the Long Neck
ca. 1535 oil on wood 7 ft. 1 in. x 4 ft. 4 in.

An allegorical love scene:

In the following painting, Bronzino demonstrated the Mannerist's fondness for extremely learned and intricate allegories that often had lascivious undertones.

Bronzino

Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (The Exposure of Luxury)

ca. 1546 oil on wood 5 ft. 1 in. x 4 ft. 8 3/4 in.

A mannered portrait:

A staid and reserved formality is a standard component of Mannerist portraits.

Bronzino Portrait of a Young Man

ca. 1530s oil on wood approximately 3 ft. 1 1/2 in. x 2 ft. 5 1/2 in.

Portraying familial intimacy: Sofonisba Anguissola's group portrait shows her two sisters and brother in lifelike natural poses against a neutral ground.

Sofonisba Anguissola Portrait of the Artists Sisters and Brother

ca. 1555

Some architects in the later 16thcentury continued to adhere to High Renaissance ideals.

Anticipating the Baroque:

Giacomo della Porta's design for the faade of il Ges unites the lower and upper stories through scroll buttresses and uses a progressive accumulation of pilasters and columns and bay decoration that builds to a dramatic climax at the central bay. Giacomo da Vignola's plan for Il Ges is dominated by a huge nave space and a domed crossing.

Giacomo della Porta faade of Il Ges Rome, Italy

ca. 1575-1584

Mannerist drama and dynamism: The composition of Tintoretto's dramatic Miracle of the Slave is constructed using a counterpoint of contrary motions; for any figure leaning in one direction, another figure counters it. A dynamic group of robust figures in the center sweep together in an upward serpentine curve, their motion checked by the plunging inverted figure of Saint Mark, moving in the opposite direction.

Tintoretto Miracle of the Slave

1548 oil on canvas 14 x 18 ft.

A visionary last supper: Tintoretto's Last Supper is a spiritual, even visionary, interpretation in which solid forms seem to melt away into swirling clouds of dark around the beacon-like glow of Christ's halo in the center. The converging perspective lines race diagonally away from the picture surface to create a disturbing effect of limitless depth and motion.

Tintoretto Last Supper Chancel. San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy

1594 oil on canvas 12 ft. x 18 ft. 8 in.

A Mannerist Mantuan mansion:

Mannerist architecture uses classical architectural elements in a highly personal and unorthodox manner. Giulio Romano's design for the Palazzo del T in Mantua includes a number of unconventional and humorously eccentric structural features such as slipping keystones, voussoirs in horizontal pediments, and large Tuscan columns carrying incongruously narrow architraves that appear to break midway between the columns and seem unable to support the weight of the triglyphs above.

Giulio Romano Interior courtyard faadeof the Palazzo del T Mantua, Italy
1525-1535

Paolo Veronese Christ in the House of Levi

1573 | oil on canvas | 18 ft. 6 in. x 42 ft. 6 in.

A problematic painting of Christ: Veronese's huge monumental painting of Christ in the House of Levi (originally called Last Supper) shows Christ seated with other figures (robed lords, their colorful retainers, clowns, dogs, and dwarfs) in a great open loggia framed by three monumental arches. When originally titled the Last Supper, the Holy Office of the Inquisition accused Veronese of impiety. Veronese changed the painting's title to the present one.

Paolo Veronese Christ in the House of Levi

1573 oil on canvas 18 ft. 6 in. x 42 ft. 6 in.

Venice triumphant: Veronese's illusionistic ceiling painting Triumph of Venice shows, within an oval frame, a pictorial glorification of the state of Venice. Personified as a woman, and being crowned by Fame, Venice is shown enthroned between two great, twisted columns in a balustraded loggia, garlanded with clouds, and attended by figures symbolic of its glories.

Paolo Veronese
Triumph of Venice
ca. 1585 oil on canvas approximately 29 ft. 8 in. x 19 ft.

Inspired by the ancients: Andrea Palladio's employs a central plan design for the Villa Rotonda near Vicenza that has four identical faades and projecting porches (each resembling a Roman temple) arranged around a central domecovered rotunda inspired by the Pantheon. The parts of the building are systematically related to one another in terms of calculated mathematical relationships.

Andrea Palladio Villa Rotunda near Vicenza, Italy

ca. 1566-1570

Andrea Palladio Villa Rotunda near Vicenza, Italy

ca. 1566-1570

Andrea Palladio Villa Rotunda near Vicenza, Italy

ca. 1566-1570

Shadow and surface:

Andrea Palladio's design for the faade of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice integrates the high central nave and lower aisles into a unified faade design by superimposing a tall, narrow classical porch on a low broad one.

Andrea Palladio west faade of San Giorgio Maggiore

Venice, Italy
begun 1565

Andrea Palladio interior of San Giorgio Maggiore Venice, Italy begun 1565

Techniques
the use of perspective: The first major treatment of the painting as a window into space appeared in the work of Giotto di Bondone, at the beginning of the 14th century. True linear perspective was formalized later, by Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti. In addition to giving a more realistic presentation of art, it moved Renaissance painters into composing more paintings. foreshortening - The term foreshortening refers to the artistic effect of shortening lines in a drawing so as to create an illusion of depth. sfumato - The term sfumato was coined by Italian Renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci, and refers to a fine art painting technique of blurring or softening of sharp outlines by subtle and gradual blending of one tone into another through the use of thin glazes to give the illusion of depth or three-dimensionality. This stems from the Italian word sfumare meaning to evaporate or to fade out. The Latin origin is fumare, to smoke. The opposite of sfumato is chiaroscuro. chiaroscuro - The term chiaroscuro refers to the fine art painting modeling effect of using a strong contrast between light and dark to give the illusion of depth or threedimensionality. This comes from the Italian words meaning light (chiaro) and dark (scuro), a technique which came into wide use in the Baroque Period.; Sfumato is the opposite of chiaroscuro. Balance and Proportion: proper sizes.

Sources http://websites.swlearning.com/cgiwadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&product_isbn_issn=0155 050907&discipline_number=436 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_art Art Through the Ages, 12th/11th ed., Gardner