Art History 2 Gardner Early Renaissance

Front 1

Filippo Brunelleschi
"Sacrifice of Isaac Duomo"
Gilded Bronze
1401-1402
Page 421

It was a baptistry commision
The Jury originally selected seven semifinalists amoung the widely advertised commission. However only two piece's survived. [Filippo Brunelleshi, and Lorenzo Ghirberti.
Both artists used the same French Gothic quatrefoil frames Andrea Pisano used for the baptistry's southern doors.They also depicted the same moment of the narrative.
Abraham suddenly appears to show courage needed to kill his son at God's command.
Abraham hunges forward, lunges with robes flying, exposing Isaac's throat with the knife.
On the left an angel is shown darting towards Abraham and is shown grabbing Abraham's arm to stop the killing.

Back 1

Donatello
Feast of Herod St. Mark
Guilded Bronze
1423-1427
Page 424

Donatello's mastery of relief scuplture is also evident in Feast of Herod.
A bronze relief on the baptismal font in Siena Cathedral.
Some figures are dancing around the lome [to the right] derive from classical reliefs. But nothing in Greco-Roman art can match the illusionism of Donatello'srendition of this New Testement scene.
In Donatello's relife, Salome has already delivered the severed head of John the Baptist
There's a kneeling executioner offers the head to King Herod.
The other figures recoil in horror in two groups. At the right one man covers his face with his hand.
At the left Herold and two terrified children shrink back in dismay.
This piece demonstrates rationalized perspective space, long prepared for in the 14th century Italian Art.

Front 2

Donatello
St. George David
Marble
1410-1415

Donatello's statue once helped a bronze sword and helmet.
The warrior stands defiantly ready to spring from his niche to defend Florence.
His sword would have faced the spectator.
The saintly knight stands proudly with his sheild in front of him.
The statue continues the Gothic tradition of depicting warrior saints on church facades, as seen in the statue of Saint Theodore on the south-transept portal of Chartes Cathedral. But here it has a civic role to play.
Saint George stands in a defiant manner ready to spring out of his niche to defend Florence against attack from another Visconti or Ladislaus.
His sword jutting out threateningly at all passerby.
The saint's body is taunt and the artist has given the saint a face filled with nervous energy.

Back 2

Lorenzo Ghiberti
Gates of Paradise
Gilded Bronze
1425-1452
Page 426

Ghiberti was one of the first Italian artists in the 15th century to embrace a unified system for representing space. His enthusiasm for perspectival illusion is evident in the doors.
In 1425 The church commisioned him to make something for the Florentine baptistry.
Three sets of doors provide access to the building.
Andrea Pisaco created the first set on the south side between 1330 and 1335.
Ghirbeti created his first set of doors in 1403-1424
The church officials moved the doors to the north entrance so the second pair of doors could be placed on the east side.
Ghiberti abandoned the quatrefoil pattern that frames the reliefs on the south and north doors and reduced the number of panels from 28 to 10.
Each panel contains a relief set in plain moldings and depicts a scene from the Old Testament.
Created the use of space through the use of pictorial perspective and partly by sculptural means.
Buildings were represented through a painters one point perspective contruction. But the figures [in the bottom of the relief, which actually projects slightly toward the viewers.] appear almost fully round with some of their heads points freely.
As the eye progresses upwards the relief progressivly flattens.
Ghiberti's figure style mixes a new realism with a gothic patterning of rythemic line, movement, and surface detail.
Trained as a gold smith.

Front 3

Nanni Di Banco
Quattro Santi Coronati
Four Crowned Saints
Marble/Scuplture
1411-1413
Page 422

Created four life sized marble statues of the guilds martyred patron saints.
These four Christian sculptors had defied an order from the Roman emperor Diocletian to carve a statue of a pagan deity.
In response the emperor ordered them put to death.
Because the saints placed their faith above all else these saints were perfect role models for the 15th century Florentines whom city leaders exhorted to stand fast in the face of the armies of Ladislaus.
Nanni's Four Crowned Saints is an early attempt to solbe the problem of integrating figures and spave on a monumental scale.
The artists positioning of the figures which stand in a niche that is in but confers some seperation from it's architecutre setting.
Process began with the 13th century to the west front of Reims Cathedral.
Between Or San Michele, the niches spatial recess permitted a new and dramatic possibility for the interrelationship of figures.
Placed in a semi circle. [Which helped establish their deep niche and relating them to one another by their postures and gestures as well as by their arrangement of robes.
Arrived at a unified spatial compostion.
A remarkable psycological unity also connects these unyeilding figures, whose bearing expresses the discipline to face adversity.
As the figure on the right speaks, pointing to his right, the two men opposite of him listen.
And the one on the right next to him looks out into spave pondering the meaning of the words and reinforcing the formal unity of the figural froup with cross referances.

Back 3

Masaccio
Tribute Money
Fresco
1424-1427
Page 432

Recall's Giotto's simoke grandeur but they convey a greater psychological credibility.
He modeled his figures with lighting coming from a source outside the picture.
Painted in the Brancacci family chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florance. Which was painted shortly before his death.
Depicted narratives from The Gospel of Matthew.
As the tax collector confronts Christ at the entrance to the Roman town of Capernaum, Christ directs Saint Peter to the shore of Lake Galilee which Christ foresaw.
Peter finds the tribute coin in the mouth of a fish and returns it to pay the tax.
The artist decided to divide the story into three episodes for the choice of the subject within the fresco.
In the center, Christ surrounded by his disciples tells Saint Peter to retrieve the coin from the fish, while the tax collector stands in the foreground his back to spectators and his hand extended, awaiting payment.
Ath the left, in the middle distance Saint Peter extracts the coin from the fish's mouth and, at the right he thrusts the coin into the tax collector's hand.
The light comes from a specific source striking the figures at a specific angle.
The figures are solemn and wealthy. They move freely and reveal body structure.
The figures are grouped in a circular path around Christ in a spacious landscape.

Front 4

Masaccio
Expulsion of Adam and Eve
Fresco
1424-1427
Page 433
The sharply slanted light from an outside source creates deep relief, with lights placed alongside darks and acts as a strong unifying agent.
Eve is crying which voices her anguish.
The Angel's don't force them physically with Eve. They stumble on blindly, the angel's will and their own despair driving them.

Back 4

Massacio
Holy Trinity
Fresco
1424-1427
Page 433

Painted on two unequal heights.
Above Christ is a coffered barrel-vaulted chapel reminiscent of a Roman triumphal arch.
The Virgin Mary and Saint John appear on either side of the crucified Christ.
God the Father emerges from behind Christ, supporting the arms of the cross and presenting his son to the worshipper as a devotional object.
The dove of the Holy Spirit hover's between gods head and Christ's head.
The artist even includes the donor's of the painting, Lorenzo Lenzi and his wife, who kneel just in front of the pilasters that frame the chapel's entrance.
Below, the artist painted a tomb containing a skeleton. An inscription in Italian painted above the skeleton.
The vanishing point of the composition is at the foot of the cross.
With this point at eye level, spectators look up at the Trinity and down at the tomb.
About five feet above the floor level, the vanishing point pulls the two views together, creating an illusion of an actual structure that transients the wall's verticality.

Front 5

Mechelozzodi Bartolommeo
Facade of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi
Architecture/1456-1470
Page 445

The Rucellai family commissioned Alberti to design the facade of the 13th century Gothic church of Santa Maria Novella in Florance.
It's in a Romanesque design that of the Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte.
Following his medieval model he designed a small pseudoclassical, pediment-capped temple front for the facade's upper part and supported it with a plaster-framed arcade that incororates the six tombs and three doorways of the Gothic building.
Alberti applied Renaissance principals.
The height of the Santa Maria Novella equals it's width so that the entire facade can be insrcivbed in a square..

Back 5

Leon Battista Alberti
West Facade of Sant Andrea
1470-1472
Page 452

It was to replace the 11th century church.
The artist designed two complete ancient Roman archtectural motifs the the temple fronts, and the triumphal arch.
There is no parallel in annuity for Alberti's design.
His concern for proportions led him to equalize the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the facade, which left the church behind it shorter.
The pilasters are the same height as those on the nave's interior walls, and the central barrel vault over the main exterior entrance, with smaller barrel vaults branching off at the right angles.
Artist believed arches shouldn't be used with freestanding columns, he abandoned the medieval columns.

Front 6

Andrea Mantegna
Ceiling of the Camera Degli Spossi
1465-1474
Fresco

Was painted in the duke's bedchamber and audiance hall.
[Camera Degli Spossi means Room of the Newly Weds.]
It took nine years to complete the extensive program.
Mantgetna produced the first completely consistent illusionistic decoration of an entire room.
By integrating real and painted architecture elements, Mantegna dissolved the toom's walls in a manner told later Baroque decoration.
Seen against the convincing illusion of a cloud filled blue sky several cupids strongly foreshortened, set the mood for the room.
The Newlyweds smile down on the scene.
The peacockis an attribute of Juno, Jupiter's bride

Back 6

Andrea Mantegna
Saint James Led to his Martydom [Dead Christ]
1500/Tempera on Camvas
Page 454

The artist was excellent at perspective.
Recorded under the name Foreshortened Christ at the time of Mantegna's death.
Strikingly realistic and foreshortened in appearance. But actually the artist reduced the size of the figure's feet.

Front 7

Written part of the review:

Buono fresco
Secco Fresco
3 Methods of printing
Humanism
Types of Perspective

Odalesque [I will add the review in a seperate section.]
[Harrow Girl]

Back 7

I'm including the audio as well fro this section in an email format.