Italy Painting and Sculpture

Painting and sculpture

Italy’s contribution to European painting and sculpture far surpasses that of any other nation. This is in part due to the triumph of the Renaissance period, but Italy can also boast many other remarkable artistic achievements, from the seventh century BC to modern times. The country’s fragmented political history has led to strong regional characteristics in Italian art: Rome, Pisa, Siena, Florence, Milan, Venice, Bologna and city all have distinctive and recognizable traditions.Gordon McLachlan , with contributions by Catherine McBeth

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The Twentieth Century

The only Italian artist born within the last two hundred years to have gained truly universal recognition is Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Although most of his adult life was spent in Paris, Modigliani’s work is recognizably Italian, being rooted in the tradition of the Renaissance and Mannerist masters. Primitive African art, then being appreciated in Europe for the first time, was the other main influence on his highly distinctive and essentially linear style. His output consists almost entirely of sensuous reclining female nudes, and strongly drawn, psychologically penetrating portraits.In 1909 an attempt to break France’s artistic monopoly was launched – ironically enough, in Paris – by the Futurists , who aimed to glorify the dynamism of the modern world, including the key role of warfare. Their approach was similar to the recently founded Cubist movement in aiming to reproduce several sides of an goal at the same time, but differed in striving to convey movement as well. Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was the most resourceful member of the group, which never recovered from his death in World War I – for which, true to his principles, he had volunteered. His erstwhile colleagues later developed in different directions. Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) painted in a variety of styles, ranging from the academic to the abstract. Gino Severini (1883-1966) joined the Cubists after the latter had become more interested in colour, then turned to mural and mosaic decorations, before reverting, towards the end of his life, to a sense of fantasy that was characteristic of his Futurist phase. Carlo Carrà (1881-1966) did a complete about-face from his Futurist origins, aiming to revive the representationalism of the old Italian masters.

Carrà teamed up in 1917 with Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) to form Pittura Metafisica , which reacted against both the mechanical approach of Cubism and Futurism’s infatuation with the modern world, cultivating instead a nostalgia for antiquity. The movement, which established a school in Ferrara, was influenced by Surrealism, and had in particular a penchant for the presence of unexpected, out-of-place objects; de Chirico’s Metaphysical Interiors show rooms littered with all the fetishes of modern civilization. Architectural forms of a strange and rigid nature are another recurring theme in his work of this period, though like Carrà he later forsaken this in favour of a consciously archaic approach.

Other Italian painters of the twentieth century to have gained an international reputation include Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), who was strongly influenced by de Chirico and specialized in haunting still lifes – very precisely drawn and often in monochrome. Also touched by the Metaphysical tradition was Filippo de Pisis (1896-1956), whose huge output is experimental in nature, often exploring sensation and the unexpected; consequently, it is highly uneven in quality.

If Futurism had been the official art of the Fascist regime, after World War II any self-respecting artist had to be a Communist, or at least display left-wing sympathies. However, unanimity in political ideas didn’t generate agreement on how these ideas should be expressed. Realists such as Renato Guttuso (1912-1987), who believed in figurative painting and focused on dramatic subjects, were opposed by Formalists like Renato Birolli (1905-1959), who were moving towards experimental, non-figurative art. Italy’s leading practitioner of abstraction was Alberto Burri (1915-95), best known for his collages of waste materials with a thick blob of red or black paint. One of the most successful experiments in Formalism was Spazialismo , a group founded by Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) with the aim of integrating the third dimension with the two-dimensional format of traditional painting.

Between 1960 and 1970 the antithesis between Realism and Formalism was resolved with the so-called Informal Art that originated from a rejection of the establishment, an attitude shared by both European and American artists (New York having by now become the modern alternative to Paris). Since contemporary society was viewed as hostile, the artist wanted to affirm his or her own individuality without even attempting to communicate or to represent reality in any immediately recognizable way. The work of art became equated with the artist’s individual gestures, such as Lucio Fontana’s sharp cuts in the canvas. Particular importance was attached to the materials on which the informal artist impressed his mark: wood, cloth, metal scraps, plastic were cut, torn, and burned to emphasize the purely “gestural” value of the work.

However, not all artists took themselves that seriously. Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) parodied both “the artist’s gesture” and the deliberate demand of any communicative content by a series of agitating experiments à la Warhol, from Consecration of the Art of the Hard-boiled Egg , where cooked eggs acquirable for public consumption were given added value by the artist’s thumb print, to Lines , traced on a piece of paper rolled up and sealed into a container. But the most sensational of these statements was perhaps his Merda d’Artista (literally, “Artist’s Shit”), mercifully tinned and sealed but outrageously sold by weight at the current price of gold.

After this eloquent comment on art as self-expression, the focus shifted once more to materials and techniques, particularly as a response to an exhibition of American pop art at the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1964. Italian artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto (b1933) rediscovered the creative possibilities of the mixed media collage (pioneered by Burri), with cheap materials still enjoying popularity and sometimes even attaining subject-matter status. Meanwhile, politics prefabricated a quiet exit from the art scene.

A parallel development in terms of a “return to reality” was Minimalism (yet another US creature), which concentrated on the mechanical process of constructing the artwork, again using unsophisticated materials (steel, iron, concrete) and elementary geometrical shapes. The traditional divide between painting and sculpture, already blurred by Fontana, seemed to be gone for good, as Minimalist artists such as Rodolfo Aricò (b1930) and Mario Surbone (b1932) played ambiguous games with depth and surface.

Along these lines came the so-called Arte Povera (“Poor Art”), a post-Minimalist movement whose leading figure was Jannis Kounellis (b1936), an artist of Greek origin who produced 3D installations and performances using odd media mixes (such as cotton and steel). Another representative of this “school”, which flourished mainly between the late Sixties and the mid-Seventies, is Mario Merz (b1925), who uses found objects and materials (glass sheets, twigs, metal scraps) to create installations that convey a sense of fragility and danger.

Figurative art prefabricated a comeback at the end of the Seventies with the work of Francesco Clemente (b1952), Enzo Cucchi (b1949), Sandro Chia (b1946) and Mimmo Paladino (b1948), usually referred to, in the veritable jungle of twentieth-century art movements as Transavantguardia or Neo-Expressionist painters. Not only was the human figure rehabilitated but so too were the traditional media, from oil on canvas, to watercolour, pastel, and even fresco. After a long spell of sulky anti-commercialism, Italian painting seemed to have finally prefabricated up with the public.

Generally speaking, modern Italian sculptors have been more successful than painters in reinterpreting Italy’s heritage in a novel way. Giacomo Manzù (1908-91) aimed to revive the Italian religious tradition, in a highly individualized manner reminiscent of Donatello, whose technique of very low relief he used extensively. His best-known work is the bronze door of St Peter’s on the theme of death, a commission awarded following a highly contentious competition in 1949. Marino Marini (1901-80) specialized in another great theme of Italian art, that of the equestrian monument – examples of his work are now displayed in a museum specially devoted to Marini in Florence – while the elegant portraits and female nudes of Emilio Greco (1913-95) stand as an updated form of Mannerism.

Although there is nothing truly ground-breaking about the Italian sculpture or painting of the last few years, there are a couple of interesting artists who have been well-received in the international forum. Video-artist Grazia Toderi (b1963) uses images of water to discuss transformation and existence, while Padua-born Maurizio Cattelan (b1960) creates witty, thought-provoking installations that explore themes of Italian favourite culture. Unnerving work like bidibidobidiboo (1996) and La Nona Ora (1998) hide a lonely despondency behind their laconic humour.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

The Nineteenth Century

If the eighteenth century was a lean time for Italian art, the nineteenth century was even worse, Paris becoming the overwhelmingly dominant European trendsetter. Francesco Hayez (1791-1882) was perhaps the most successful painter at work in the first half of the century, continuing the Neoclassical manner in his history scenes and highly finished portraits.Towards the 1850s the Romantic taste for realism was reflected in an interest in the country’s scenery, immortalized by various local schools: the Scuola di Posillipo and the Palizzi brothers (Giuseppe, 1812-88, and Filippo, 1818-99) in Naples; the Scuola di Rivara in Piedmont; il Piccio (1804-73) in Lombardy; and the Macchiaioli in Tuscany. The Macchiaioli were a group of painters based in Florence, who held comparatively modern and definable aims. Their study derives from the Italian word for a blot, as they prefabricated extensive use of individual patches of light and dark colour, which was used to define form, in opposition to the super-smooth Neoclassical approach then in vogue. The guiding spirit of the movement was Giovanni Fattori (1825-1905), who painted scenes of military life (based on his experiences fighting in the Wars of Independence of 1848-9) and broad landscapes using very free brushwork and compositional techniques. The group’s chief theorist, Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901), came to be influenced by the painting of Corot and the Barbizon School, and later followers moved to Paris, to become accepted as peripheral members of the Impressionist circle.

The turn of the century drew, once again, on international trends. Symbolism was chiefly represented by the haunting femmes fatales of Gaetano Previati (1852-1920) and the subtler compositions of Giovanni Segantini (1858-99), who coupled naturalism with imagination. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868-1907) experimented with Divisionismo , the Italian version of Seurat’s Pointillisme. His most famous work, The Fourth State , is a striking depiction of the inevitable progress of the working class as outlined by Marx.

Compared with painting, the development of nineteenth-century sculpture was somehow delayed. The Canova influence seems to have been hard to escape, and works from this period often demonstrate great skill but little originality. Favourite subjects were portraits and, in typically Romantic fashion, historical characters with heavy revolutionary overtones, such as Spartacus by Vincenzo Vela (1820-91). Vela’s work, together with the later efforts of Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850), introduced a more naturalistic touch while still retaining a high degree of finish. A more dramatic change of direction occurred through the Neapolitan Vincenzo Gemito (1852-1929), who dared to leave smoothness aside and concentrated on movement. Mario Rutelli (1859-1941) developed a naturalistic and lively style, taking inspiration from Hellenistic sculpture and specializing in bronze figures for fountains and equestrian monuments, which have since become famous Roman landmarks (the Fontana delle Naiadi in Piazza della Repubblica and Anita Garibaldi , on the Janiculum Hill, for example).

Yet the most innovative experiments would only be prefabricated by Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), who managed to capture the fluidity and elusiveness of the fleeting moment in the third dimension, influencing, among others, Rodin. After the latter’s death in 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire acclaimed Rosso as “the greatest living sculptor”; his wax and bronze sculptures, when properly lit, seem to emerge softly from the shadows. Rosso, however, lived and worked in Paris for most of his life.

Category: Italy Painting and Sculpture

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