Gardner's Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective, Volume II: The Western Perspective, Volume II (with CourseMate Printed Access Card)
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Jan van Eyck, Man in a Red Turban, 1433. Oil on wood, 1′ 1 1 –8″× 10 1 –4″. National Gallery, London.
The device admirably served his purpose of expressing maximum action within a limited space.
The similar poses of Christ and his mother further unify the composition and reflect the belief that Mary suffered the same pain at the crucifixion as her son.
but the younger painter’s fame eventually rivaled van Eyck’s. Rogier quickly became renowned for his dynamic compositions ...
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The reconsecration of this chapel took place in 1449, the same date as the Christus painting. Therefore, it seems probable the artist painted A Goldsmith in His Shop, which illustrates an economic transaction and focuses on the goldsmith’s profession, specifically for the guild chapel.
The small side room, however, has its own vanishing point,
By the mid-15th century, Flemish art had achieved renown throughout Europe. The Portinari Altarpiece (fig. 15-12), for example, is a large-scale Flemish work in a family chapel in Florence, Italy.
Bouts’s Last Supper is one of the earliest Northern Renaissance paintings to demonstrate the use of a vanishing point (see “Linear and Atmospheric Perspective,” Chapter 16, page 455) for creating perspective.
One of the earliest Northern European paintings to employ Renaissance linear perspective, this Last Supper includes four servants in Flemish attir...
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A Book of Hours,
During the 15th century, French artists built on the achievements of Gothic painters (see Chapter 13) and produced exquisitely refined illuminated manuscripts. Among the most significant developments in French manuscript painting was a new conception and presentation of space. Paintings in manuscripts took on more pronounced characteristics as illusionistic scenes. Increased contact with Italy, where Renaissance artists had revived the pictorial principles of classical antiquity, may have influenced French painters’ interest in illusionism.
These sumptuous books eventually became available to affluent burghers and contributed to the decentralization of religious practice that was one factor in the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century (see Chapter 18).
Without a dominant court to commission artworks, wealthy merchants and clergy became the primary German patrons during the 15th century.
This painting is one of the first 15th-century works depicting a specific, identifiable site.
Schongauer was the most skilled of the early masters of metal engraving. By using a burin to incise lines in a copper plate, he was able to create a marvelous variety of tonal values and textures.
T he Medici family of Florence has become synonymous with the extra ordinary cultural phenomenon called the Italian Renaissance. By early in the 15th century
Cosimo (1389–1464) became a great patron of art and of learning in the broadest sense. For example, Cosimo provided the equivalent of $20 million to establish the first public library since the ancient world. Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo (1449–1492),
Medici employed, perhaps the most famous today is Sandro Botticelli (1444–1510). His work is a testament to the intense interest that the Me...
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But the painting also sums up the Neo-Platonists’ view that earthly love is compatible with Christian theology. In their reinterpretation of classical mythology, Venus as the source of love provokes desire through Cupid. Desire can lead either to lust and violence (Zephyr) or, through reason and faith (Mercury), to the love of God. Primavera, read from right to left, served to urge the newlyweds to seek God through love.
Italians in elite circles embraced the tenets underlying humanism—an emphasis on education and on expanding knowledge (especially of classical antiquity), the exploration of individual potential and a desire to excel, and a commitment to civic responsibility and moral duty.
For the Italian humanists, the quest for knowledge began with the legacy of the Greeks and Romans—the writings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, and others.
Further, the invention of moveable metal type in Germany around 1445 (see Chapter 15) facilitated the printing...
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The humanists also avidly acquired information in a wide range of fields, including botany, geology, geography, optics, medicine, ...
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Humanists not only encouraged individual improvement but also rewarded excellenc...
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These individuals were in the best position to commission art. As a result, humanist ideas came to permeate Italian Renaissance art.
The bestknown Italian Renaissance art patrons were the Medici of the Republic of Florence (see “Medici Patronage and Classical Learning,” page 447), yet the earliest important artistic commission in 15thcentury Florence (map 16-1) was not a Medici project but rather a competition held by the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and sponsored by the city’s guild of wool merchants.
In 1401, the cathedral’s art directors held a competition to make bronze doors for the east portal of th...
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Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac and God’s sacrifice of his son Jesus to redeem humankind, Christians viewed the sacrifice of Isaac as a prefiguration (prophetic forerunner) of Jesus’ crucifixion. Both refer to covenants (binding agreements between God and humans), and given that the sacrament of baptism initiates the newborn or the convert into these covenants, Isaac’s sacrifice was an appropriate choice for baptistery doors. Contemporary developments, however, may also have been an important factor in the selection of this theme. In the late 1390s, Giangaleazzo ...more
associated with ancient Rome and to identify themselves with its spirit. To be a citizen of the Florentine Republic was to be Roman. Freedom was the distinguishing virtue of both societies.
Brunelleschi and ...
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Brunelleschi’s entry (fig. 16-2) is a vigorous interpretation of the theme and recall...
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to the elements, but they also represented a significant cost savings.
Ghiberti’s pride in winning the competition is evident in his description of the award, which also reveals the fame and glory increasingly
Ghiberti, the youngest artist in the competition, emphasized grace and smoothness.
Isaac, beautifully posed and rendered, recalls GrecoRoman statuary and could be regarded as the first classical nude since antiquity.
Ghiberti revealed a genuine appreciation of the nude male form and a deep interest in how the muscular ...
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spatial illusion. The rocky landscape seems to emerge from the blank panel toward the viewer, as does the...
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they turned to ancient Roman models for inspiration, but they did not simply copy them. Rather, they strove to interpret or offer commentary on their classical models in the manner of humanist scholars dealing with classical texts.
accentuates the movement of the arms, legs, shoulders, and
In this sculpture, Donatello took a fundamental step toward depicting motion in the human figure by recognizing the principle of weight shift, or contrapposto.
In contrast to earlier sculptors, Greek artists recognized the human body is not a rigid mass but a flexible structure that moves by continuously shifting its weight from one supporting leg to the other, its constituent parts moving in consonance.
Donatello’s Saint Mark is the first Renaissance statue whose voluminous robe (the pride of the Florentine guild that paid for...
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“rationalization of sight.”
The projection of measurable objects on flat surfaces not only influenced the character of Renaissance paintings but also made possible scale drawings, maps, charts, graphs, and diagrams—means of exact representation that laid the foundation for modern science and technology.
Commissioned about two years after the sculptor installed his statue in the niche, the relief marks a turning...
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The sculptor conceived the relief as a window onto an...
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linear perspective,
16-8 Donatello, Feast of Herod, panel on the baptismal font of Siena Cathedral, Siena, Italy, 1423–1427. Gilded bronze, 1′11 1 –2″× 1′11 1 –2″.  Donatello’s Feast of Herod marked the introduction of rationalized perspective space in Renaissance relief sculpture. Two arched courtyards of diminishing size open the space of the action into the distance.
The inventor (or rediscoverer) of linear perspective was Filippo Brunelleschi.
Ghiberti’s patrons moved his first pair of doors to the north entrance to make room for the new ones they commissioned him to make for the prestigious east side. Michelangelo later declared Ghiberti’s second doors as “so beautiful that they would do well for the gates of Paradise.”