More

The Eighteenth Century

The decline of Italian art in many of its most celebrated strongholds gathered pace in the eighteenth century, a slump from which only Venice and Rome stood apart. In the case of the former, its pre-eminence was due to a revival of its grand decorative tradition after a century’s gap. This gave it a leading position in European Rococo , the ornate derivative of late Baroque.An updated version of the style of Veronese was first fostered by Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734), whose work is superficially similar to Veronese’s, but has an airier, lighter feel. A more individual approach is apparent in the work of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683-1754), an outstanding draughtsman whose joyful and harmonious paintings give the impression of a free and cushy approach, yet which were actually the result of meticulous planning. Venice also boasted a notable female portraitist in Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757), who was the first artist to use pastel as an independent medium.

By far the most accomplished exponent of Venetian Rococo, and one of the greatest decorative artists of all time, was Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). His work is best seen in an architectural setting, where his illusionistic approach compares favourably with those of the primeval Roman artists in its colour, handling, spatial awareness, sense of fantasy and depth of feeling. The finest schemes were prefabricated for foreign patrons (in Würzburg and Madrid), but there are some excellent examples in Udine, Vicenza and Stra, and several in Venice itself, notably the Palazzo Labia and Ca’Rezzonico.

His son, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), aided him on many projects and painted in a broadly similar style, though he had a more obvious eye for satire. Also active in Venice were a number of painters who specialized in painting views of the city as mementos for its aristocratic visitors. The best known of these was Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768), whose images, often painted on the spot and with the use of a camera obscura, have defined the favourite conception of the buildings and lifestyle of Venice ever since. However, they are an perfect representation, with spatial arrangements and even individual buildings altered. Canaletto’s nephew, Bernardo Bellotto (1721-80), closely followed his style and applied it to cities all over Europe, but took a more literal approach, stressing topographical exactness. A more sombre, musing mood is present in the Venetian views of Francesco Guardi (1712-93), who used a darker palette. His emphasis on transitory light effects foreshadowed the French Impressionists, while his figures have a greater vivacity than those of Canaletto. Genre scenes were also much in demand with visiting tourists, and Pietro Longhi (1702-85), who had a limited technique but ready sense of humour, vividly characterized the Venetian life of his day for the benefit of this market.

Among non-Venetian painters, the Genoese Alessandro Magnasco (1667-1749) is particularly distinctive, often combining into one picture his two favourite themes of mannered landscapes ravaged by the elements and ecstatic monks at prayer. In Rome, the tourist demand for views was met by Giovanni Paolo Panini (c1692-1765), who painted both the ruins of the classical period and the modern buildings of the day. These are surpassed, however, by the grandiose large-scale etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78), which fully exploit the dramatic contrasts of light and shade doable in the black-and-white medium.

The latter can be seen as an primeval manifestation of Neoclassicism , a movement which began in the middle of the century, inspired partly by a reaction against Baroque excesses, and partly by the excitement caused by the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, though many of its leading exponents were foreigners resident in Rome. Neoclassicism aimed at the complete revival of the arts of the ancients, a trend that was particularly marked in sculpture, which had a far larger legacy to borrow on than painting. It is best seen in the works of Antonio Canova (1757-1822), which show great beauty in modelling, though a certain frigidity in the depiction of emotions. His statues are often highly erotic in effect: the several monuments he prefabricated in honour of general include life-sized nude depictions, one of which is now in the Brera, Milan.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The Baroque Age

The leadership of Italian art away from the sterility of late Mannerism came initially from cities that had hitherto played a minor role in its development. Bologna was the first to come to prominence, through the academy founded there in 1585 by members of the Carracci family – Lodovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609). This was by no means the first attempt to set up a training school for artists, a concept rendered necessary by the blow the Renaissance had dealt to the old workshop tradition, but it was far more successful than any previous venture. Annibale was easily the greatest and most versatile artist of the three, breathing a whole new life into the classical tradition. His frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome offer a fresh and highly imaginative approach to mythological scenes, as well as being brilliant examples of illusionism. A more serious intent is noticeable in the artist’s canvases, which introduce an emotional yet untheatrical content to well-ordered religious subjects. He was also a major landscape painter, pioneering the sort of luscious scene with a subsidiary subject from the Bible or classical literature which was later to be developed in Rome by the great French painters, Claude and Poussin.An entirely different but equally novel approach was taken by Michelangelo da Caravaggio (1573-1610), whose violent and wayward life led him from Milan to Rome, Naples, Malta, Sicily and most of the way back again. Caravaggio was the great master of chiaroscuro, which he used to even more dramatic effect than Tintoretto. He also used what seemed like shock tactics to his patrons in the Church, stripping away centuries of perfect tradition to present biblical stories as they might have seemed at the time. Real-life peasants, beggars, ruffians and prostitutes were all used as models for the figures, to enhance the realistic impact. His original canvases for commissions such as those for the Roman churches of San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria del Popolo were sometimes rejected, though he always managed to find a private buyer. His impact on the great European Golden Age of seventeenth-century painting was immense, spawning whole schools of Dutch and French derivatives, along with Rembrandt, Rubens, and most of the great Spanish masters.

In Italy, Caravaggio’s art had an immediate impact on the older Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639), who was particularly keen on its tenebrist effects. The Mantuan Bartolomeo Manfredi (c1580-1620) extended the master’s style to such genre subjects as card games and soldiers in guardrooms. And Caravaggio’s style was brought to city by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (c1578-1635), inspiring the city’s painters to raise city from its traditionally marginal position in Italian art to a place, throughout the seventeenth century, at the very forefront.

The first important follower of the Carracci in Bologna was Guido Reni (1575-1642). In the nineteenth century, Reni was ranked as one of the supreme artists of all time, but suffered a slump in reputation when a reaction against artistic sentimentality set in; it is only very recently that his genuine gifts for the expression of feeling have been given their proper due. Among other Carracci pupils, Domenichino (1581-1641) was a truehearted follower of the style, extending its hold on Rome, though he was better at its more decorative and perfect aspects. Guercino (1591-1666) merged the classical and realistic styles, imbuing chiaroscuro effects with a subtlety very different to that favoured by Caravaggio and his followers.

Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647), originally from Parma, combined the Carracci style with elements borrowed from Correggio. His frescoes in Rome and city have a greater sense of movement and technical trickery than those Domenichino was painting at the same time, and mark the beginnings of High Baroque painting. In turn, his own work was prefabricated to seem out-of-date by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669), who introduced a sense of fantasy and freedom that was far more ambitious than anything previously attempted. His ceiling in the Palazzo Barberini presented the illusion of opening on to the heavily populated heavens above, with figures seen di sotto in su – apparently teeming down into the hall below. For a century, this was to be the sort of monumental painting favoured in Rome; it was also spread to Florence by Cortona himself, by means of a series of frescoes in the Palazzo Pitti.

The High Baroque style was essentially a Roman phenomenon, born out of the super-confident mood in the world capital of Catholicism as a result of the success of the Counter Reformation. Its overwhelmingly dominant personality was Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), a youthful prodigy who had created an entirely new sculptural language while still in his primeval twenties. Such works as David and Apollo and Daphne , both in the Villa Borghese, were the first great marble statues since Michelangelo, yet in their independence of form showed a decisive rejection of the concept of belonging to the block from which they were carved, drawing the spectator into the scene and asserting the primacy of the emotions – a key concept of the Baroque. Though only an occasional painter (he in fact spent more time as an architect), Bernini adopted painterly techniques for his work, using different materials for contrast, exploiting sources of light, and using illusionist techniques, producing a drama best seen in The Ecstasy of St Theresa in Rome’s Santa Maria della Victoria, which goes so far as to re-create the region of a theatre by the inclusion of a room of onlookers.

So overwhelming was the impact of Bernini’s art that most other sculpture of the period is but a pale imitation of it. One of the few sculptors not to be overawed was the Tuscan Francesco Mochi (1580-1654), who prefabricated two magnificent equestrian monuments in Piacenza. Alessandro Algardi (1598-1654) of Bologna managed a brilliant career in Rome as a bitter rival of Bernini, promoting a sculptural version of the Carracci style.

In Venice, the versatile Genoese Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644) tried to revive memories of the great sixteenth-century masters. His exuberant primeval works are generally more successful, showing the influence of Rubens: they typically have very free brushwork, luminous colours and pronounced modelling. In Naples, Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) combined something of the approaches of Carracci and Caravaggio, though his most original works are his detailed, colourful portraits. A much more aggressively Caravaggesque saying is apparent in the work of Artemisia Gentileschi (c1597-1651), daughter of Orazio, who was particularly adept at lurid subjects. She enjoyed a remarkable degree of independence and position for a woman of her day, and has attracted a great deal of attention from modern feminists, having a clean claim to the title of “the greatest ever female painter”. Salvator Rosa (1615-73) painted landscapes that have a wild, mystical calibre very different from those of the classical painters of Bologna and Rome. Characteristically, they are populated by bandits or witches, or have an allegorical theme. Mattia Preti (1613-99), who originally hailed from the artistic backwater of Calabria, painted some of the most effective canvases in Caravaggio’s idiom, excelling at its tenebrist aspects. His later work is more influenced by Roman Baroque, using brighter colours and pronounced spatial effects. In these, he resembles Luca Giordano (1632-1705), the main Neapolitan painter of the second half of the century. Giordano was renowned for his ability to paint quickly, and he ranks among the most prolific artists of all time. His output employs a whole variety of styles and is uneven in quality, but shows remarkable technical facility. The last major Baroque painter active in city was Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), whose large crowded compositions show the full theatricality of the style.

Meanwhile, the Roman vogue for spectacular illusionistic ceilings was continued by Giovanni Battista Baciccia (1639-1709), who was warmer in colour and even more audacious in approach than Pietro da Cortona. His most famous decoration is that in the Gesù, which boldly mixes painted and stucco figures. An even greater command of pyrotechnics, however, was displayed by the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709) on the ceiling of Sant’Ignazio, whose illusion is designed to be seen from only one specific point.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The Late Renaissance

The perfection of form achieved in the late Renaissance was the culmination of centuries of striving. As artists could not hope to improve on the achievements of Michelangelo and Raphael at their peak, they had to find new approaches. As a result, Mannerism was born. This was a deliberately intellectual approach, aimed at flouting the accepted rules, notably by distorting the senses of scale and perspective, exaggerating anatomical details, adopting unlikely poses for the figures, and using unnaturally harsh colours.One artist commonly labelled a Mannerist is Giulio Romano (c1499-1546), one of the most gifted of Raphael’s assistants, whose frescoes in the Palazzo Te in Mantua, which he himself built, show the style at its most grandiose, notably in The Fall of the Giants , occupying a room to itself. A leading light in the adoption of Mannerism in Florence was Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540), together with Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1556) and Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72). Pontormo, a brilliant draughtsman, was the most talented of this group, an healthy decorator and an inquiring if understated portraitist. Bronzino was highly prolific, but only his portraits of royal and noble personages have much appeal today, their detachment, concentrating more on the beauty of their clothing, casting an enormous influence on official portraitists down the centuries. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), originally from Arezzo, was responsible for many of the frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, although he is now chiefly famous for his series of biographies of artists, which marked the birth of art history as a discipline.

Another Florentine Mannerist whose writings have helped secure his fame is the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71), the author of a spirited Autobiography which offers a fascinating insight into the artistic world of the time. Though he was successful in finding favour at courts all over Europe, only a few of his sculptures, all of a very high quality, survive. The Bust of Cosimo I , in the Bargello, marks the departure of the portrait from realism, creating instead a new heroic image. His Perseus, in the Loggia dei Lanzi, forms a fitting counterpart to Donatello’s late Judith , and completely outclasses the Hercules and Cacus in the square outside by his rival Baccio Bandinelli (1493-1560).

By far the most influential Florentine Mannerist, however, was Giambologna (1529-1608), a sculptor of French origin. His favourite medium was bronze, and he established a large workshop which churned out miniature replicas of his most important compositions. These typically show figures in combat, and are designed for the spectator to achievement around, rather than examine from only one viewpoint. His most famous image is the typically androgynous Mercury ; in a conscious rebuttal of the approaches of both Donatello and Michelangelo, this figure appears to float in the air, in the boldest attempt ever prefabricated by a sculptor to defy the laws of gravity.

One of the most individualistic Mannerists was Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551), who provided a somewhat unusual end to the long line of Sienese painters, though his emphasis on colour was utterly typical of that city. He was a master of decorative effect, as witnessed by his illusionist frescoes in the Palazzo Pubblico, and his large altarpieces for Sienese churches, which show a particular concern for light and shade, appearance effects, and deep emotions. In Parma, the paintings of Francesco Mazzola, known simply as Parmigianino (1503-40), retained something of the consciously refined approach of Correggio, with their exaggeratedly sinuous figures, though his portraits reveal considerable spiritual insight. His decorative scheme for Santa Maria della Steccata typifies the Mannerist penchant for surplus ornament and demonstrates the fertility of his imagination.

Venice, as ever, followed its own distinctive late-Renaissance path, having no taste for the sort of Mannerism practised elsewhere in Italy. Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-94) aimed at an saint based on the drawing of Michelangelo and the colour of Titian, though in fact the heroic style he forged had only superficial resemblances to his mentors. To heighten the sense of drama, he used a battery of other methods: unorthodox vantage points, elongated figures, and unexpected positioning of the main subject on the canvas.

In strong contrast to Tintoretto, the other leading Venetian painter of the day, Paolo Veronese (1528-88), was a supreme decorator on a grand scale. Indeed, some of his best work was conceived for architectural settings, such as San Sebastiano in Venice and the Villa Barbara in Masèr. Veronese’s love of pomp and splendour, however, is carried over into his easel paintings, which revel in warm, glowing colours and monumental figures, with little sense of gravitas. He fell foul of the Inquisition as a result of the inclusion of German soldiers (which place him under suspicion of Protestant sympathies) and other anachronistic and surplus detail in a huge banquet scene (now in the Venice Accademia) purporting to represent The Last Supper . He responded by changing the title to A Feast in the House of Levi .

Alessandro Vittoria (1525-1608), a pupil of Jacopo Sansovino, embellished Venice’s churches with sculptures that have much in common with Mannerist productions elsewhere in Italy, but are more classically modelled. Jacopo Bassano (1510-92) was trained in the city, but preferred to work in the rustic town after which he takes his name, where he was by far the most remarkable of a dynasty of painters. As a setting for his religious panels, he painted the small town and country life of his day as it really was. He also popularized the inclusion of animals and heaped piles of fruit and vegetables – features eagerly taken up by later northern European artists – and was a superb painter of light and shade, using heavy daubs of colour and strong chiaroscuro.

Another remarkable artist working well away from the main centres was Federico Barocci (1535-1612) of Urbino. His paintings were painstakingly executed, their soft rounded forms mirroring the comforting religious image propagated by the Counter-Reformation, and with an emphasis on light and movement that was to some extent anticipatory of the Baroque to come.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The High Renaissance

Just as the beginning of the Renaissance is linked to the specific circumstances of the competition for the Florence Baptistry doors, so the climactic part of the era, known as the High Renaissance, is sometimes considered to have started with the mural of The Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, painted in the last years of the fifteenth century by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Apart from its magnificent spatial and illusory qualities, this painting endowed apiece of the characters with classifiable psychological traits, and successfully froze the action to capture the mood of a precise moment. His use of sfumato , a blurred outline whereby tones gradually but imperceptibly changed from light to dark, was of crucial importance to his ability to make his figures appear as living beings with a soul – a technique best seen in his portraits.In Florence, the most original painter of the generation after Leonardo was Fra’ Bartolommeo della Porta (c1474-1517), who was caught up in the religious fanaticism that also influenced Botticelli. As a device to stress the otherness of the divine, he clad the figures in his religious compositions in plain drapery, rather than the colourful contemporary costumes which had hitherto been fashionable. He also did away with elaborate backgrounds and anecdotal detail, concentrating instead on expression and gesture. Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515), who worked with him in the same workshop in San Marco that had once been run by Fra’ Angelico, painted in a broadly similar but less austere manner. Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530), on the other hand, was the one Florentine artist who shared the Venetian precept of colour and shade as being the most important ingredients of a picture. His figures are classical in outline, aiming at a equilibrise of nuance, proportion and monumentality.

These Florentines, however, stood very much in the shadow of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), with whom the Renaissance period reaches its climax. Michelangelo’s first love was the creation of marble statues. He had little interest in relief, and none at all in bronze or clay, believing that the slow building up of forms was too simple a task for a great artist. His technique is illustrated most graphically in the unfinished Slaves in Florence’s Accademia, who seem to be actuation their way out of the stone. The colossal primeval David , also in the Accademia, shows his mastery of the nude, which thereafter became the key focus of his art. In spite of claiming to be a reluctant painter, Michelangelo’s single greatest accomplishment was the ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel, one of the world’s most awe-inspiring acts of individual human achievement. Its confident and elated mood is offset by the overpowering despondency of The Last Judgement on the end wall, painted three decades later. His later works are more abstract, as seen in the pietàs in the Museo dell’Opera in Florence and the Milan Castello, which contrast sharply with the formal beauty of his youthful interpretation of the scene in St Peter’s.

Raphael (1483-1520) stands in almost complete antithesis to his rival Michelangelo, though the individualized friendships he forged with his powerful patrons were as significant in raising the position of the artist as was the latter’s less compromising approach. A pupil of Perugino, he quickly surpassed his teacher’s style, going to Florence where he became chiefly renowned for numerous variants of the Madonna and Child and Holy Family . Raphael also developed into a supreme portraitist, skilled at both the psychological and physical attributes of his sitters. His greatest works, however, are the frescoes of his Roman period, notably those in the Stanze della Segnatura in the Vatican and the Villa Farnesina. Influenced by Michelangelo’s achievement in the Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s late works show him moving towards a large-scale, more dramatic and mannered style, but his primeval death meant that the continuation of this trend was left to his pupils.

Closely related to the classicizing tendency of Raphael is that of the Florentine-born sculptor Andrea Sansovino (c1467-1529), whose grandiose tombs in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, with standing effigies of the Virtues, set the tone for sixteenth-century funerary monuments. His pupil Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570) took his study and carried on his tradition, spending the latter part of his career in Venice, where although principally active as an architect, he also prefabricated monumental sculptures which are inseparable from the buildings they adorn. Sebastiano del Piombo (c1485-1547), on the other hand, stood as a direct rival to Raphael in Rome, striving to transfer Michelangelo’s heroic manner to panel painting. In this, he was only variably successful, though he was a highly sensitive portraitist.

Meanwhile Antonio Correggio (1489/94-1534) managed to carve out a brilliant career for himself in Parma. His three ceiling frescoes there develop the illusionistic devices of Mantegna, marking Correggio out as a precursor of the Baroque. One of the great painters of mythological scenes, he was also a relentless explorer of the dramatic possibilities of light and shade. Another fine exponent of the contrasts of light was the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi (1479/90-1542), a romantic spirit who created fantastic landscapes peopled with sumptuously dressed figures.

The golden period of Venetian painting, ushered in by Bellini, continued with his elusive pupil, Giorgione (1475-1510), whose short life is shrouded in mystery. One of the few paintings certainly by him is The Tempest in the Venice Accademia, whose true subject matter baffled even his contemporaries. In it, the figures are, for the first time in Italian art, completely subsidiary to the lush landscape illuminated by menacing shafts of light. The haunting altarpiece in the duomo of his native town of Castelfranco Veneto is also almost certainly his, but many other paintings attributed to him may actually be by one of many painters who maintained something of his poetic, colourful style. Some of these, notably Vincenzo Catena (c1480-1531) and Palma il Vecchio (c1480-1528), developed recognizable artistic personalities of their own. Lorenzo Lotto (c1480-1556) was the most distinctive of this circle, travelling widely throughout his career, assimilating an astonishing variety of influences.

Giorgione’s influence is also marked in the primeval works of Titian (c1485-1576), the dominant personality of the Venetian school and one of the most versatile painters of all time. His art embraced with equal skill all the subjects that were required by the Renaissance – altarpieces, mythologies, allegories and portraits. Even more than Michelangelo, he was healthy to pick and choose his patrons, and was the first artist to build up a truly international clientele. As a portraitist of men of power, Titian was unrivalled, setting the vocabulary for official images which was to prevail until well into the seventeenth century. His complete technical and compositional mastery was already apparent in relatively primeval works such as the Assumption in I Frari, the first example of what was to become a Venetian speciality: a panel painting specially designed to fit an architectural space. Towards the end of his life, Titian forsaken his bravura and brilliant palette in favour of a very free style, stretching the possibilities of oil paint to their very limits.

Giovanni Antonio Pordenone (1483/4-1539) was a rustic north Italian painter strongly influenced by Giorgione and Titian. More obviously in direct descent from the Venetian masters was the school of Brescia. Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo (active 1508-48) showed particular adeptness at light effects, and was a pioneer of night scenes, while Alessandro Moretto (c1498-1554) was one of the most incisive portraitists of the Renaissance, and seems to have been responsible for introducing the full-length form to Italy. His altarpieces are more variable, but often have a suitably grand manner.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The Fifteenth Century Outside of Florence

Although the fifteenth century brought a rich crop of artists working throughout Italy, including many places which previously had little tradition of their own to draw on, no other city came near to matching the depth and consistency of the fifteenth-century Florentine School.However, although the technical innovations pioneered in Florence were to have an enormous influence, they were by no means slavishly followed. Sienese painters evidenced the continuing vitality of the colourful narrative approach of the previous century, modified by the impact of International Gothic. The works of Sassetta (c1392-1450), which are often impregnated by a sense of mysticism, do make some concessions to the new theories of spatial composition, but this is an essentially subordinate feature. The finest Sienese artist of the century was the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia (1374-1438), whose style is essentially linear, though with classical tendencies modified by knowledge of the most advanced northern European art of the day. He was given important public commissions in his native city, such as the overall supervision of the baptistry font and the Fonte Gaia. However, his masterpiece is his last work, the reliefs on the deception of San Petronio in Bologna, which show a vigorous approach fully comparable with those of the great Florentines. His main follower was the Florentine-born Agostino di Duccio (1418-81), another sculptor heavily dependent on line, whose work abounds with nervous energy. His masterpiece, executed in collaboration with Matteo de’ Pasti (c1420-67), is the joyous series of low reliefs in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini.

Another artist associated with the Rimini project was the Tuscan Piero della Francesca (1410/20-92), who cast an overwhelming influence over the development of painting in central Italy. A painstaking worker, Piero was also active as a mathematician, hence the importance of appearance and symmetry in his compositions. His figures are painted with a cool sense of detachment yet have a grave, monumental beauty. Piero was also one of the great painters of light, in the blue skies which illuminate his gentle landscapes, and in more dramatic effects, such as in The Dream of Constantine , part of his most substantial commission – the fresco cycle in San Francesco, Arezzo.

Melozzo da Forlí (1438-94) was the closest follower of Piero della Francesca, showing a similar interest in perspective, and apparently inventing a favourite Renaissance trick device called sotto in su , an extreme form of illusion in which figures painted on a ceiling appear to float in space. Another inventive pupil of the same master was Luca Signorelli (1450-1523), who developed the ideas of dramatic movement pioneered by Pollaiuolo. In spite of obvious defects, such as harsh colours, stiff drawing and a tendency to overcrowd his compositions, Signorelli was responsible for some of the most heroic paintings of the day. His profound knowledge of anatomy was to be an enormous influence on the succeeding generation, and he used the nude to achieve the most spectacular effects, notably in the frescoes in Orvieto’s duomo.

Pietro Perugino (1445-1523), probably yet another pupil of Piero, developed in a quite different way from Signorelli, producing calm altarpieces featuring soft and beautifully rounded figures set against serene Umbrian landscapes. His collaborator Bernardino Pinturicchio (c1454-1513) was a purely decorative artist whose work has no pretensions to depth, but is nearly always fresh and pleasing, particularly in his larger schemes such as the Libreria Piccolomini in the duomo in Siena.

The first important Renaissance painter in northern Italy was Andrea Mantegna (c1431-1506), who represents the apogee of classical influence. Steeped from an primeval age in the art of the Romans, Mantegna’s saint vision of the antique world permeates nearly all his work, even becoming the predominant element in many of his unnameable compositions, together with a phenomenal technical skill, and daring use of unorthodox vantage points – best seen in the grief-laden Dead Christ in the Brera, Milan. In total contrast is the exuberant decoration for the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua, one of the artist’s few works based on direct attending rather than classical inspiration.

Padua in the mid-fifteenth century became an important training ground for artists, thanks to the primeval successes of Mantegna, and the ten-year stay of Donatello. One of its offshoots was the group of painters active in Ferrara: Cosmè Tura (c1431-95), Francesco del Cossa (1435/6-77) and Ercole de’ Roberti (1448/55-96). Tura’s figures are highly charged, with mannered poses and claw-like hands, typically set against fanciful structure very different from the perfect townscapes painted by other Renaissance artists. Cossa’s outline is sharper, his figures energetic rather than theatrical, his colours more resplendent; he too favoured architectural backgrounds, particularly of ruins. Roberti’s essentially small-scale style combines something of the pathos of Tura with Cossa’s emphasis on colour and line.

Also trained in Padua was the Brescian Vincenzo Foppa (1427/30-1515/6), who subsequently became the leader of the Milanese school. His best works have a certain grandeur of conception, and a subdued sense of colouring. His main follower was Ambrogio Bergognone (1450/60-1523), who is particularly associated with the Certosa di Pavia. This great building project was also the main outlet for the talents of the leading Lombard sculptors of the day, notably Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (1447-1522), whose other main work is the decoration of the Cappella Colleoni in Bergamo.

Venice, as always, remained something of a law unto itself. Even in mid-century, the sculptures of Bartolomeo Bon (c1374-1464/7) and the crowded panels of Michele Giambono (active 1420-62) showed the city’s continuing preference for late-Gothic forms. Something of a transition can be seen with the Vivarini family – Antonio (c1419-80), his brother Bartolomeo (c1430-91) and his son Alvise (c1445-1505) – who gradually introduced a sense of spatial appearance and an increased attempt at characterization. Carlo Crivelli (c1430-95) was also associated with them. One of the most inventive and idiosyncratic artists of the day, Crivelli forsaken Venice, preferring commissions from churches in small towns in Marche, which he executed in a deliberately archaic style. His altarpieces are claustrophobically opulent, characterized by strong drawing, rich colours, elaborate detail and a superfluity of decoration, with incidental still lifes a common ingredient.

Another, and far more influential, artistic dynasty was that of the Bellini family – Jacopo (c1400-70) and his sons Gentile (c1429-1507) and Giovanni (c1430-1516). The latter was the most significant, standing as a major influence on Venetian painters to come. Though influenced by his brother-in-law Mantegna, Bellini’s overall effect is very different, with a soft beauty of both colour and outline. He painted a seemingly endless series of variations on subjects such as the Madonna and Child and pietà, yet always managed to make apiece very different. His larger altarpieces concentrate attention on the foreground, and hold the figures in such a way that there is a parallel plane behind, rather than the more usual receding landscape. Gentile composer was essentially a history painter who epitomized the penchant for highly detailed depictions of Venetian life.

Vittore Carpaccio (c1460-1523) continued this narrative tradition, and two complete cycles by him can still be seen in Venice: that of St Ursula in the Accademia, and of St George and St Jerome in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni. A love of the picturesque also pervades his altarpieces, which generally give due prominence to fantastic landscapes and resplendent Renaissance buildings.

Venetian Renaissance sculpture was dominated by yet another dynasty, the Lombardo family: Pietro (c1438-1515) and his sons Antonio (c1458-1516) and Tullio (c1460-1532). Their strongly classical style was particularly suited to funerary monuments, the best of which are in San Zanipolo. They were also talented decorative carvers, as can be seen in the interior scheme for their own church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli.

Closely associated with the Venetian school was the only important southern Italian painter of the Renaissance, Antonello da Messina (c1430-79), who spent the last years of his life in the city. Antonello combined Italian painters’ achievements in appearance and foreshortening with the ability to reproduce a variety of textures (skin, velvet, hair, wood) in the naturalistic way that was typical of contemporary Flemish artists; and it was through contact with their work that he introduced oil painting to Italy. His pictures have a strong sense of pathos, and some of his most arresting images are simple devotional pictures, which follow the same format he favoured for his secular portraits.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The Florentine Renaissance

A date often given for the start of the Renaissance is 1401, when the Florentine authorities announced a public competition for the right to make a second door for the baptistry. Candidates had to submit a trial piece of The Sacrifice of Isaac , a stiff test presenting problems of narrative, expression, movement and spatial arrangement, in which scenery, animals and both nude and draped figures had to be adequately depicted. The most audacious solution, which can be seen in the Bargello, was provided by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), who in the process fully mastered the science of perspective. He unsuccessful to win, and in disgust gave up sculpture in favour of architecture, but the new possibilities opened up by his command over visuals, and the impetus they provided for other artists to experiment and discover, mark the transition from medieval art to modern.Brunelleschi’s mantle was taken over by Donatello (c1386-1466), who began his long career by creating a new kind of freestanding statue to adorn Florence’s churches, which became the artistic symbol of the city. These heroic, larger-than-life figures are shown with their feet planted firmly on the ground, displaying facial expressions of great energy and concentration. A typical example is the St George prefabricated for Orsanmichele, below which was placed an extraordinary carving of the fear slaying the dragon which uses the art of appearance for the first time in stone sculpture, as well as pioneering the technique of very low relief. With the bronze David , now in the Bargello, Donatello helped bring the nude – the eventual figurative challenge – back into the mainstream of art; and he also revived another lost art, the bronze equestrian statue, with the Monument to Gattamelata in Padua.

The victor of the baptistry door competition was Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), who thereafter devoted almost the rest of his life to the project. Ghiberti initially showed no interest in perspective, and remained loyal to most of the old Gothic formulas, his first set of doors merely refining Andrea Pisano’s techniques. However, his second set of doors, known as the Gates of Paradise , show how his style evolved under the influence of classical antecedents, creating a sense of space and illusion, and imbuing the grouping and characterization of the figures with a gently lyrical touch.

Donatello’s collaborator Nanni di Banco (c1384-1421) was another to achieve an individual mix of the Gothic and Renaissance idioms, notably in The Four Saints on Orsanmichele. Another architect-sculptor, Bernardo Rossellino (1409-64), created in the Monument to Leonardo Bruni in Santa Croce the image of the sort of niche tomb that was to prevail for the rest of the century.

Luca della Robbia (1400-82) began his career as a sculptor of marble and bronze, working in a classically derived style, but a very different one from the essentially serious approach of his contemporaries. However, after Luca invented the art of glazed terracotta, he forsaken other forms of sculpture, laying the foundation for a highly lucrative family business which was continued by his nephew Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525).

The painter Masaccio (1401-28) belongs with Brunelleschi and Donatello as a key figure of the primeval Renaissance. His Trinity fresco in Santa Maria Novella must have startled his contemporaries, its perfect sense of depth and appearance giving the illusion of peering into the solid surround on which it was painted. Masaccio collaborated with Masolino, most notably in the fresco cycle in Santa Maria del Carmine. In this, the scenes are pared down to the essentials; the figures have a heroic calibre and dignity, with their gestures depicted at the moment of maximum intensity. A single source of light is used, with shadows cast accurately.

Fra’ Angelico (1387/1400-55), like Ghiberti in sculpture, combined new techniques with the Gothic tradition. A devout Dominican monk, his pictures show a rapt, heavenly vision. Colour is a telling ingredient: Angelico’s ethereal blue was inimitable, the rest of his palette hardly less fetching. Frescoes in the cells of his own monastery of San Marco, intended as aids to contemplation, rank as his most important body of work. Late in his career, Angelico was called to the Vatican, where he frescoed the Cappella Niccolina, employing a style which had by then lost all Gothic traces.

Fra’ Filippo Lippi (c1406-69) gradually moved away from the style of his master Masaccio to develop a greater sense of drama, seen to best effect in the frescoes in the cathedral at Prato. His later panels show a highly personal, mystical vision, characterized by wistful Madonnas, playful children and poetic landscapes. Fra’ Angelico’s only follower of note was Benozzo Gozzoli (c1421-97), whose work lacks any sense of profundity, but possesses undeniable decorative charm, best seen in the frescoes in the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi in Florence.

The city’s most anomaly painter was Paolo Uccello (1396-1475), who was concerned by the problems of appearance and foreshortening. His Sir John Hawkwood in the duomo was a deliberate piece of trompe l’oeil, though its effect is marred by the use of different vantage points, a characteristic common to his paintings, in which he tried to find as many lines as doable to lead the eye inwards. Domenico Veneziano (1406-61) was one of the most admired artists of the day, but only a few works by him survive, notably the serene St Lucy Altar in the Uffizi, which shows his talent for spatial arrangement and gentle, pastel-like colouring. Andrea del Castagno (c1421-57), in contrast, favoured harsh, strong colours, and an exaggerated dramatic pose for his figures, as can be seen in The Last Supper in Sant’Apollonia. In the series of Famous Men in the Uffizi he initiated a Florentine trend by vividly translating onto canvas the late sculptural types of Donatello.

Halfway through the century, a new versatility was brought to Florentine art by Antonio Pollaiuolo (c1432-98), who was active as a painter, sculptor, engraver, goldsmith and embroidery designer. Pollaiuolo was renowned for the advances he prefabricated in the depiction of anatomy and movement; he was also one of the first to grapple with the next great challenge covering Renaissance painters, videlicet how to move beyond making all parts of a picture accurate and realistic, while at the same time creating a satisfying compositional whole. Another painter-sculptor was Andrea del Verrocchio (c1435-88), whose fame as a teacher has unfairly drawn attention away from his own wide-ranging achievements. His Christ and St Thomas on Orsanmichele shows crafty compositional skills in fitting two statues into a space intended for one, and marks a move away from classicism, as does his equestrian Monument to Bartolommeo Colleoni outside San Zanipolo in Venice. Other Florentine sculptors of this period preferred a much softer approach. Desiderio da Settignano (1428-64) prefabricated sensitive busts of women and children, and used Donatello’s technique of low relief to create scenes of the utmost delicacy. Mino da Fiesole (1429-84), Antonio Rossellino (1427-79) and Benedetto da Maiano (1442-97) showed broadly similar preoccupations, all concentrating on grace and beauty of line.

Subjects drawn from classical mythology became an increasingly important part of the repertoire of Florentine painters in the second half of the fifteenth century, in large part owing to the humanist culture fostered at the court. One of Italy’s most distinctive artists, Sandro Botticelli (c1445-1510), created the most famous and haunting images in this field, notably The Birth of Venus and Primavera , both now in the Uffizi. His late work shows a deliberate archaism, perhaps as a result of the religious fanaticism of the time.

Filippino Lippi (1457/8-1504), the result of Fra’ Filippo’s affair with a nun, came to fame with his completion of Masaccio’s frescoes in Santa Maria del Carmine. He developed a style based on that of Botticelli, though with a more consciously antique feeling. Another painter with pagan tastes was the reclusive Piero di Cosimo (c1462-1521), who was at his best in enigmatic mythological scenes. Meanwhile, vivid new frescoes were created for Florence’s churches by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94), whose works are now chiefly remembered for their documentary interest, being filled with portraits of contemporary notables and vivid anecdotal details.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries

In spite of the momentous developments, the path towards the Renaissance was not to follow a continuous or consistent course. Indeed, the leading local school of painters in the fourteenth century was not that of Florence, but of neighbouring Siena , which had very different preoccupations. This had a great deal to do with the father figure, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c1255-1318), who did not go along the revolutionary path of Giotto, but instead breathed a whole new life into the Byzantine tradition. Duccio’s sense of grandeur is well conveyed by the central panel of his masterpiece, the Maestà, in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo of his native city. However, it is the small scenes of this vast altarpiece which bring out his best quality: that of a masterful storyteller, adept at arrangement, grouping and the depiction of expression, feeling and movement. Colour, which in Giotto is merely used to bring out the forms, becomes a leading component in its own right.In spite of the presence in the city of the vibrant statues of Giovanni Pisano, subsequent Sienese painters found Duccio’s narrative art the more potent model. Simone Martini (c1284-1344) began his career by painting a fresco counterpart of Duccio’s Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico, though his most celebrated work in this building, the commemorative Equestrian Portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano , is now widely regarded as a fake. His refined, graceful style depended above all on line, colour and decorative effects – seen to best effect in the cycle of The Life of St Martin in the lower church in Assisi and in the sumptuous, cunningly designed Annunciation in the Uffizi. The latter was painted in collaboration with his brother-in-law Lippo Memmi (d1357), who independently painted the Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico in San Gimignano, and may also have been responsible for the dramatic New Testament frescoes in the Collegiata of the same town, traditionally ascribed to the otherwise unknown Barna .

Another Sienese painter who worked at Assisi was Pietro Lorenzetti (active 1306-45); his frescoes there show the impact of Giotto, and have a sense of pathos which is uncharacteristic of Sienese painting. His brother Ambrogio Lorenzetti (active 1319-47) was a more original artist, whose main achievement was the idiosyncratic Allegory of Good and Bad Government in the Palazzo Pubblico, which shows painting being used for a secular, didactic purpose for the first time and raises the landscape background to a new, higher status, with an awareness of appearance uncommon for this date. The other notable Sienese sculptor of the period was the mysterious Lorenzo Maitani (c1270-1330), who is associated with one work only – the wonderfully lyrical reliefs on the most sumptuous deception in Italy, that of the duomo in Orvieto.

In Florence , meanwhile, a whole group of painters consciously followed Giotto’s style, without materially adding to it. The most talented was Maso di Banco (active 1320-1350), who was particularly skilled at conveying the master’s sense of plastic form, while the most truehearted was Taddeo Gaddi (d1366), whose son Agnolo Gaddi (d1396) carried the Giottesque tradition on to nearly the end of the century. Bernardo Daddi (c1290-1349), on the other hand, combined this tradition with aspects of the Sienese style. The sculptor Andrea Pisano (c1290-1348) succeeded Giotto as master mason of the campanile. The reliefs he executed for it, plus the bronze door he prefabricated for the baptistry, translate Giotto’s pictorial language back into a three-dimensional format.

A reaction against the hegemony of the Giottesque style came with Andrea Orcagna (c1308-68) who was equally prominent as a painter and sculptor, developing a flowery, decorative saying seen to best effect in the tabernacle in Orsanmichele. The paintings of Orcagna and his school re-established the hierarchical tradition of the Byzantines, and rejected the importance of spatial depth.

At the very end of the fourteenth century, the International Gothic style, originating in the Burgundian courts, swept crossways Europe. This introduced a new richness to the depiction of landscape, animals and costume, though it was unconcerned with intellectual matters. Its dissemination in Italy was largely due to Gentile da Fabriano (c1370-1427), whose Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi (one of his relatively few surviving compositions) shows the gorgeously opulent surface effects of this style at its best. Another leading practitioner was Masolino da Panicale (c1383-1447), who is best known for having begun the famous fresco cycle in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. In the same city, the new movement influenced Lorenzo Monaco (c1372-1425), whose work bridges the Florentine and Sienese traditions.

International Gothic took a particularly firm grip in Verona, chiefly through Antonio Pisanello (1395-1455). The latter’s fame rests partly on his prowess as a medallist, and only a tantalizing handful of his paintings remain, notably the frescoes in the Veronese churches of Sant’Anastasia and San Fermo, and the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, which magically evoke the perfect courtly world of sprite tales. Numerous drawings establish these were based on patient observations of nature – something that was to be a key element in the unfolding of the Renaissance.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture