Renaissance painting

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Raffael : School of Athens , 1509–1510, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican State .

The painting of the Renaissance began around 1420 in Florence one ( Early Renaissance 1420-1500), reached its peak at the beginning of the 16th century ( Renaissance , 1500-1520) and worked in her later years in addition to the upcoming 1520/30 to Mannerism continued. Since the turn of the 16th century, forms of the Renaissance have been adopted by all European countries and modified according to their traditions .

Artistic painting is mainly found as painting of churches and monasteries and their altarpieces . Portraits , landscapes , everyday scenes and still lifes were added as art paintings very late in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Renaissance painting is the aesthetic epitome of grace and form on which much of the norms of modernity are based. Her influence on the painting of later generations was overwhelming. The main working techniques as well as the usual selection of topics and their representation matured and were developed in that era.

Origins

Italy

Giotto di Bondone : Pietà (detail), around 1300

Renaissance painting has its origins in the work of some unusually gifted forerunners in Italy in the late 13th century (Italian: Duecento ). After the legendary Florentine Cimabue , his fellow citizen Giotto di Bondone introduced revolutionary three-dimensional elements corresponding to reality and a bold expression of the human figure. He broke with the priestly symbolism of the Middle Ages and revived the art of frescoes . The fresco replaced the mosaic and became the preferred form of expression in the monumental paintings of the Renaissance. His contemporary Duccio di Buoninsegna in Siena still clung to Byzantine styles, as Simone Martini did to a considerable extent. The latter also produced the first non-religious painting that had a mounted condottiere on the subject. The young Ambrogio Lorenzetti , also from Siena, painted allegories of bourgeois life and made use of a realistic style.

Giotto's style of painting was continued in the 14th century (Italian: Trecento ) by his Florentine followers, who included Taddeo Gaddi , Gaddo Gaddi and Maso di Banco . However, Orcagna returned to a strictly Byzantine style in the third part of the century . The move wasn't just limited to Italy. The stylized elegance of the soft style (International Gothic), aristocratic and grotesque at the same time, spread in Western Europe at that time and had a very special effect on illumination . Her most prominent supporter in Italy was Gentile da Fabriano , followed by less influential artists such as Stefano da Verona and their mutual student Antonio Pisanello .

Flanders

It is not a chronological accident that the reaction of realism to the International Gothic occurred in both Italy and Flanders around 1425. In Bruges , Jan van Eyck combined a new technique of oil painting with elements of perspective and a penetrating eye for human facial expression. He started an influential new school. Rogier van der Weyden is considered to be his most talented successor ; Dierick Bouts , Hugo van der Goes and Hans Memling also stand out. The new forms of painting they introduced had a fruitful effect as far as Spain , Portugal and even the Italians. In Germany , their influence on painters of the 15th century such as Konrad Witz , Lukas Moser and Hans Multscher was noticeable.

France

In France , however, the situation was a little more complicated, as there was at the same time a strong tendency to continue the International Gothic and to absorb outside influences. This more conservative tendency is particularly in the illuminated manuscripts of the Limbourg Brothers and later with Jean Bourdichon noticeable. The famous Pietà by an unknown artist from the Avignon School (around 1450) is a masterpiece that combines sensitivity with realism. The works of Jean Fouquet and Enguerrand Charonton are related to those of Flanders and Italy. Despite everything, the future of European painting was being prepared in Italy.

Early renaissance

Masaccio let Giotto's realistic style flourish again in his frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel (1425-27) in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. He learned the principles of exact perspective from Filippo Brunelleschi and took over from Donatello his interest in classical forms and the nude . The strong gradation of light and shadow ( Chiaroscuro ), which gave his paintings a new three-dimensional sculptural design, was entirely his own work. His contribution to art was only partially noticeable in the elegant religious works of Fra Angelico , but he charmed Paolo Uccello and was imitated by Andrea del Castagno . Outside of Florence, Piero della Francesca and Andrea Mantegna were the two most influential masters in this type of painting. Mantegna, like Antonello da Messina , also made an important contribution to the rise of the Venetian school .

In the second half of the 15th century, Florentine painters continued to lead Italy through the quality of their work, with their emphasis on fine sketchwork and line shape. They began to be interested in mythological subjects, the first examples of which were the monumental works of Sandro Botticelli . But they also developed a better knowledge of human anatomy , as can be seen from the work of Antonio Pollaiuolo and Luca Signorelli . Her Madonnas in the manner of Filippo Lippi represented femininity and motherhood. Portrait painting became increasingly popular and strikingly naturalistic as in the work of Domenico Ghirlandaio and showed attempts at psychological representation.

High renaissance

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo

High Renaissance Italian painting took up a relatively short period of time during the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but it was abundant and fruitful. The achievements of Leonardo da Vinci , Michelangelo and Raphael taken together embody a style of classical beauty, harmony and grace that over time has been seen as the ultimate fulfillment of universal artistic ideals. In terms of technology, they surpassed all their predecessors, as is particularly confirmed by a glance at their drawings. In addition, each of them made a specific personal contribution - Leonardo da Vinci with his inventive design, Michelangelo with his heroic sculptures and Raphael with the balanced serenity of his compositions.

There was an abundance of smaller geniuses: Andrea del Sarto from Florence, the master of gentle posture, and Antonio da Correggio from Parma , whose lovely style and ceiling frescoes still inspired painters of the 17th and 18th centuries. The true heirs to the balanced style of the High Renaissance were the Venetians. In the late 15th century, Giovanni Bellini founded a school of painting that emphasized landscape, light and color. He was followed by Giorgione , master of the rural atmosphere, and Titian .

Late renaissance

Titian : Salvator Mundi , approx. 1570, oil on canvas, 96 × 80 cm, Hermitage , St. Petersburg

Due to his long life, Titian's period of activity extended well into the late Renaissance and he brought Venetian painting to the heights of perfection, which won it admiration from all over Europe. His style changed in the middle and late years and became darker and darker on the one hand, and the brushwork softer and softer on the other. He was followed by Paolo Veronese , who led the classical Venetian tradition with its decorative splendor to further peaks of the highest perfection.

In addition, the Mannerist style developed in the late Renaissance (see below).

The Renaissance in Northern Europe

In Germany, Albrecht Dürer became an avid supporter of the Italians and influenced an entire generation of artists. Lucas Cranach's take on the new direction remained more superficial, with ideals of the late Gothic still having an effect. But the natural human image of the Renaissance in the portraits of Hans Burgkmair the Elder is Ä. clearly and also recognizable in the paintings of Albrecht Altdorfer and his followers, the so-called Danube School . In his naturalistic portraits, Hans Holbein the Younger developed the dignity and calm of the High Renaissance and brought this type of painting to England.

The work of Jean and François Clouet is equally important for the courtly portrait of the Renaissance in France .

Around the same time, Flemish and Dutch painters under the guidance of Jan Mabuse , Quentin Massys and Jan van Scorel began to imitate Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo with varying degrees of success. Still, some of the best painters in the north resisted Italian influence and remained true to the Gothic tradition or to its personal expressiveness. This is especially true for Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä. in the Netherlands and for Matthias Grünewald in Germany.

mannerism

Saint Barbara of Parmigianino

At the same time, the generation that followed the masters of the High Renaissance developed individual tendencies in Florence and Rome around 1520 that were later referred to as Mannerism . The move away from the ideal of harmony in the works of Jacopo da Pontormo , Rosso Fiorentino , Giulio Romano and Parmigianino is partly an expression of their artistic interest in aesthetic effects, among other things. Agnolo Bronzino , a master of detached analytical portraiture, and the painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari were among the leading exponents of Italian mannerism.

In Venice Jacopo Tintoretto's mannerist-inspired and richly moving painting was an exception.

The new Italian maniera also influenced painters outside Italy. In the Netherlands , Frans Floris and Martin van Heemskerck are among the leading Mannerist painters. A center of late mannerism was the court of Rudolph II in Prague , where Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Bartholomäus Spranger worked. In Spain, El Greco's work reflects an intense religiosity and mysticism.

French painting from around 1530 under the influence of mannerism. Francesco Primaticcio and Rosso Fiorentino , leading representatives of the Fontainebleau School in France, helped develop a style that impressed above all with its elegance.

Hans Eworth brought the Mannerist style to England , and Nicholas Hilliard continued it there with his excellent miniatures.

Transition to baroque

By the end of the 16th century, European painting was ripe for a major change, and the new style, later to be referred to as Baroque , fused colors and shape into a grandiose unit that aimed to strongly appeal to the emotions of the viewer. The change began in Rome with the work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in the 1590s and the completion of the frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese by Annibale Carracci (1604). Important followers of Caravaggio and Carracci were Giovanni Lanfranco and Domenichino .

Probably the most famous representative of the early baroque is Peter Paul Rubens , who adopted the new style during his trip to Italy. In the first half of the 17th century, important centers of painting emerged with the Dutch , Spanish and French schools .

literature

  • G. Kauffmann: The Art of the 16th Century, 1970
  • O. Benesch : The Art of the Renaissance in Northern Europe, 1965
  • Heinrich Wölfflin : Renaissance and Baroque, 1926
  • Anna-Carola Krauße: History of Painting. From the Renaissance to the present day; Ullmann / Tandem Verlag
  • Herbert Alexander Stützer : Painting of the Italian Renaissance; DuMont Verlag
  • Rolf Toman: The Art of the Italian Renaissance; Koenemann publishing house
  • Andrew Martindale: The Renaissance Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Illustrations and Drawings; C. Bertelsmann Verlag
  • Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters: Venice - The art of the Renaissance. Architecture, sculpture and painting 1460–1590

Web links

Commons : Painting the Renaissance  - Album of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files