What Defines A Renaissance Painting
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- 15-09-2022
Have you asked: what defines a renaissance painting? We look at the origins of renaissance art and examples of this artform.
Renaissance Art
The Medieval paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance Period (1400-1600) are some of the most recognisable and revered pieces of European art anywhere in the world. This period of European history produced some of the most talented master artists proficient in all areas of creativity and the latest science, hence the term "Renaissance man".
They took inspiration from the aesthetic styles of classical antiquity masters in Greece and Rome and combined this with the latest developments in mathematical perspective, sculpting and oil painting techniques. They produced some of the most unique and fantastic art that we still marvel at today in our museums and art galleries.
The drama, intricate detail and realism of their work, combined with a subtlety of meaning and symbolism, have become the core tenets of all great artists ever since. It was also the first time artists broke away from their roles as craftspeople, previously placed alongside joiners and stone masons, to become figureheads of a city's or a country's culture and international prestige.
Defining features of Renaissance art
Certain features of Renaissance art help it stand apart from other artistic eras. These include:
A keen sense of the history of ancient architecture, art, classical learning, ancient sculpture and contemporary art, attempting to create a clear narrative of continuous development.
Focusing on the key elements of classical artistic movements and capturing a scientifically accurate representation of the human body and its proportions.
Monumental compositions with a focus on grandeur, tendencies toward the epic and drama of symbolism and posture using new techniques.
Attempting to combine Christian and pagan iconography while focusing on the human body and experience.
Wanting to create an emotional response in the artistic viewer through pathos, epic scales, and narratives.
Minute attention to detail, creating hyperrealistic compositions in all aspects, from portraits to landscapes to interior scenes.
Implementing scientific developments in art, primarily new mathematical theories surrounding perspective, such as the Golden Ratio.
Dramatic uses of light and shade in compositions, alongside using bright colours for theatrical effect.
Developments in the chemistry and use of oil paints, pigments and fine prints for surfaces.
Finding meaningful symbolism in the objects of everyday life and using nuanced shapes and designs to tell stories.
Improving the reputation of important artists. Elevating their status above other craftspeople as an intellectual movement with practical mastery of their art.
Origins Of Renaissance Art
When you think of the Renaissance, only one country springs to mind. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising to discover that the origins of the Renaissance period can be found in Italy.
The earliest iterations of Italian Renaissance values began in the 13th century, a period known as the "proto-Renaissance", between 1280 and 1400.
It was during this time that Italian Renaissance artists and scholars began to look back on the political and philosophical ideals, classical learning and artistic achievements of the ancient world.
Two of the first artists to take this approach to their work were Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375).
The former is credited with discovering letters by the ancient orator Cicero and kickstarting the entire Italian Renaissance proper.
Boccaccio, meanwhile, was a leading Humanist and writer of the 'Decameron', a book similar in sensibilities and cultural importance to Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'.
Ever since the fall of the Western Roman Empire roughly 500 years before, intellectual traditions, languages and culture had stagnated throughout the whole of Europe through the Middle Ages.
Therefore, these proto-Renaissance thinkers wanted to revive these glorious traditions by taking inspiration from the ancient Greek and Roman writers, artists and philosophers for their new art movement. They saw their achievements as ideals to be aimed at, but not without bringing contemporary advances in science, technology and Medieval art into the mix as well.
Of the masters of the visual arts during the proto-Renaissance period, Giotto (1267? -1337) is perhaps the most famous. Based in Florence, as almost all of the greatest Renaissance painters were, Giotto led the way in scientific precision and realism when depicting the human body.
While it's difficult to determine which works he created given the time period, it's thought that he created frescos in cathedrals all over Italy, from Rome to Florance, Naples, Assisi and Padua.
Early Renaissance Art (1401-1490s)
Towards the end of the 1300s, the progress of the Italian Renaissance faltered slightly, thanks to breakouts of plague and war across central and northern Europe. Its ideals and influences didn't come to the fore again until the early years of the next century.
This Early Renaissance era began when a competition to design the new bronze doors to the Baptistery in Florence Cathedral was won by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) in 1401. Given the re-emergence of Renaissance artistic standards, Ghiberti faced strong competition from contemporary young artists like himself.
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was a master architect, while a young sculptor by the name of Donatello (1386-1466) also faced Ghiberti for the top prize. The latter would go on to become the preeminent master sculptor of Early Renaissance Florence. Another master Florentine artist busy securing the city its place as the capital of the Early Renaissance was the Florentine painter Masaccio (1401-1428).
He worked in and developed the "Quattrocento" style and its linear perspective that would be the dominant style for artists throughout the era. His most famous pieces include the frescos in the Branacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine and the Trinity in the Church of Santa Maria Novella (1426 and 1427, respectively).
While he barely spent six years at his craft, Masaccio was renowned for the naturalism in the subject matter of his work and the intellectual rigour he applied to his art.
Florence In The Renaissance
In the days before and during the Early Renaissance, the Catholic Church was the primary patron of the visual and decorative arts throughout Italy.
From the Pope down to the prelates, monasteries and wider religious organisations, the Church commissioned hundreds of frescoes and sculptures from their favourite artists.
This was mainly due to the poor literacy rates amongst commoners at the time, with only the clergy and the wealthy being able to read.
Since religious services were mainly given in Latin, artistic depictions of Biblical stories and saintly lives were the only way most people would learn about their religion.
However, as the Italian Renaissance matured, increasing numbers of wealthy secular leaders, civil governments and royal courts also began to patronise the arts.
This became especially popular in Florence, hence its place at the head of the entire Renaissance, which brought a great sense of civic pride.
Of all the wealthy merchant families that furnished the artists of Florence with commissions, the most vital to the success of the Renaissance was the Medici family.
Despite officially being the "Republic" of Florence, the Medici banking family became the de facto kings of the city. The first of this dynasty was Cosimo de' Medici (1389-1464), but it was his grandson, Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), who established the family's reputation as "the" patron of the arts in Florence.
It's thanks to Lorenzo's visionary leadership of the city and his love of art that he was known amongst contemporary Florentines as Lorenzo "the Magnificent". After Lorenzo's death, the Medici were forced into exile by a coalition of republican parties under the leadership of the Dominican friar Savonarola.
They managed to return to the city in 1512 to lead another flowering of artistic beauty. Their main contribution at this time was a collection of sculptures that still decorates the Piazza della Signoria today.
High Renaissance Art (1490s-1527)
At the end of the fifteenth century, the Medici were moving even higher in the world. Being masters of Florence wasn't enough for the ambitious family, and when Lorenzo's son, Giovanni de' Medici (1475-1521), became Pope Leo X, they took their enthusiasm for the arts with them to Rome. This is the period we've come to know as the High Renaissance or Late Renaissance, and it's easy to see why when you learn which artists the Medici commissioned during this time.
Of the countless artists populating Italy during the High Renaissance, only three would dominate the age and become the true masters of Italian Renaissance art: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael Sanzio. While this period only lasted roughly 30 years, between Leo X's accession to the papacy and the sacking of Rome by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain in 1527, it produced some of the most famous pieces of work in the history of the western art world.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the first "Renaissance man" and perhaps the most famous artist of the entire Italian Renaissance. From painting and human anatomy to mathematics and engineering, no endeavour could fail to pique Leonardo's interests, and there was no area he could not turn his talents toward. His most famous works include The Virgin of the Rocks (1485), The Last Supper fresco (1495-98) and finally, the most famous Renaissance painting of them all, the Mona Lisa (1503-05).
All of these demonstrate his mastery of light and shadow, alongside his ability to create compositional harmony between human figures, animals, objects, landscapes and the natural world.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) drew inspiration primarily from the human body, creating astoundingly vast works. His most famous sculptures include that of the Virgin Mary, the Pietà in St. Peter's Cathedral (1499) and David (1501-04), found in Florence. While most master artists of the age had a workshop filled with other artists they could delegate tasks to, Michelangelo sculpted the entirety of David himself from a single giant block of marble, with the current statue standing over 5 metres tall.
While Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor foremost, he was also immensely skilled as a painter, completing the biblical scenes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508-12.
Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) was the youngest of the three great masters. Though he only lived a short life, he made a lasting reputation for himself regarding his sculptures, completed paintings and architectural designs. So much so that fine art history sometimes considers his death in 1520 as an alternative date for the end of the High Renaissance. Raphael honed his craft alongside Leonardo and Michelangelo, working on his fresco,
The School of Athens (1508-11) in the Vatican, while Michelangelo was working in the Sistine Chapel; it's easy to imagine how they may have influenced one another. Alongside these men, the era produced other great Italian Renaissance artists and Italian painters such as Bramante, Giorgione, Titian, Correggio, and Sandro Botticelli.
As the Northern Renaissance spread outside of Italy, we were given great artists and painters such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jan van Eyck, among other Netherlandish painters and court painters.
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