Fra Angelico (1450) Annuciation I (tempera on panel)
Raphael, Central Italian, 1483 - 1520 The Alba Madonna, ( 1510) oil on panel transferred to canvas
Duccio di Buoninsegna Sienese, c. 1255 - 1318
The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, 1308/1311 tempera on panel
Jacopo Bassano c. 1510 - 1592 ( Venetian, 1545) The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, oil on canvas
Botticelli, Sandro (c. 1485 ) The Birth of Venus Tempera on canvas
Titian
Bacchus and Ariadne
1523-24
Antonio Allegri,
known as Correggio
1489?-1534
Venus, Satyr and Cupid
c. 1525
Canvas
Andrea del Sarto
Florentine, 1486 - 1530
Charity, before 1530
oil on panel
Titian
Venetian, c. 1490 - 1576
Venus with a Mirror, c. 1555
oil on canvas
Titian-Venetian, c. 1490 - 1576 Venus and Adonis (c. 1560) oil on canvas
Titian Venus of Urbino (1538) oil on canvas
Renaissance Painting: what’s different?
Secular topics, not solely religious
New Colors
New methods
New Colors
1. Especially in Venice, important port of trade, bringing
colorants from all over the world
- The Venetian Titian had larger palette
2. Symbolic value of certain expensive pigments
disappears
- ultramarine gets used in mixtures
- vermilion is used as under-painting
- gold leaf much less used
Titian
Bacchus and Ariadne
1523-24
Oil on
canvas
Number of
Hues
(pigments)
Greek topic
New Colors
1. Smalt
- From cobalt ores in Saxony; most important to
Flemish and German painters
- linnaeite Co3S4,
- cobaltite, CoAsS,
- smaltite, CoAs2
- Though Cobalt as an element not identified until
much later (1737)
- Cobalt from ‘kobold’ or ‘kobelt’ = evil sprits
from what mining did to miners (it)"eats away at their feet …
and hands.."
New Colors
1. Copper Resinate
-most generally copper salts (examples?) + plant resins (trees) also results
form reaction of verdigris + resinous varnish but eventually darkens to
brown: make a guess how/why?
2. Blue vs green verditers
synthetic azurite/malachite, but colors difficult to control.
Compare formulae: " basic- copper - carbonates"
Azurite: Cu3(CO3) 2(OH)2
Malachite: Cu2(CO3) (OH)2,
Azurite naturally changes to malachite; accelerated by water:
2 Cu3(CO3) 2(OH)2 + H2O 
3 Cu2(CO3) (OH)2 + CO2
New Colors
3. Red lakes: more valuable now than synthetic vermilion
coccineal (to make carmine) and brazilwood dyes sources,
both from New World
4. Yellows
Gamboge – a tree sap (Vietnamese);
toxic and poor lightfastness; especially in watercolor
Indian Yellow – cow cruelty in India
Both are no longer available
New Methods
Oil media -over tempera as glaze or alone, on wood and on canvas
Canvas - Venice leads canvas use as offshoot to sails made for ship-building
another example: Art evolution tied to larger culture
BIG CHANGES because:
1. Hues obtained differently because pigments behaved
differently.
-So Ultramarine is very dark in oil and must be lightened with white
2. Oil coats pigments
 prevents reactions that used to prohibit mixing two pigments;
pigments can be mixed of glazed
Examples of lakes glazed over grounds to produce desired hue:
Yellow + Black  greens
Red + black  purple-blues
3. Moratorium on mixing pigments dropped
Cima da Conegliano
Incredulity of Thomas
(cleaned and restored)
1504
Photomicrograph of blue mantle on Christ
Photomicrograph of mauve -blue drapes
Photomicrograph of opaque red robe
Renaissance:
The Age of Reason
Renaissance: The Age of Reason
‘Class Wars’: painters ≠ artists
similar to: alchemists ≠ scientists
Why?
The manual arts were of lower rank than
academic, intellectual fields
The “Good” Liberals Arts:
poetry, music, rhetoric, geometry were worthy of
study at universities
UNLIKE painting whose craft was passed along in
ateliers, shops, as apprentices
Leonardo da Vinci:
worked to change
low status of painting
His motivation was to
heighten painting to the
other liberal arts
His study of mathematics had the aim
of understanding the mathematics of
nature: Nature’s forms. And this was
so to be able to better paint "true to
Nature".
Mastering mathematics is good ….
Leonardo da Vinci
In general, reason, geometry and math were quite alive among
those whose hearts were in art because artists realized the path to
climb the social ladder was to:
- embrace abstract thought and reason and
- discard and distain efforts put the material aspects and
skills of painting.
Thus in the Italian school, they had ideas of a fundamental
division of art into line and color, disegno and colore.
And disegno was esteemed way above color.
In the Age of Reason, the elite attempted to be grounded in
reason and leave symbolism.
THIS is when alchemy veers away from the spiritual towards reason
Is this the origin of science and spirit split ??
As a result:
-high art painting leaves color for line
-art becomes aligned with mathematics so perspective becomes
important.
- art move away from religious subjects to nature and problems of
reproducing it in 2-d, as well as finding appropriate colors.
Ball: " By end of the 15th century, they had largely won their battle, but at the cost
of simply reinforcing the bigotry that they inherited from classical times.
Nowhere does Leonardo challenge the underlying hierarchy that values the
intellectual over the manual.” He also ignored the chemical / material aspects of
his art. Art fragmented into the "pure" and the "applied".
Or, Art and Technology
Mirror
“reflects”
interest
in optics
Quentin Metsys
1465/6-1530
The Banker and his Wife
1514
Ah, Leonardo …
“The definitive polymath, he had almost too many gifts, including superlative
male beauty, a splendid singing voice, magnificent physique, mathematical
excellence, scientific daring ... the list is endless. This overabundance of
talents caused him to treat his artistry lightly, seldom finishing a picture, and
sometimes making rash technical experiments. The Last Supper, in the
church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, for example, has almost
vanished, so inadequate were his innovations in fresco preparation."
So what’s the result when you reject and discard the manual
skills, and the art and knowledge of materials?
… if you neglect to “know your materials…”
Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper (after cleaning, 1498) tempera on plaster
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci,
known as Leonardo da Vinci
1452-1519
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
c. 1510
Wood