Early Renaissance Painting
A few words before we begin
• Fresco: mural painting on wet plaster
• Trompe l’oeil: “trickery of the eye,” illusion.
Painters covered
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Masaccio – short career >decade
Fra Angelico – Dominican monk meets painter
Andrea del Castagno: from Venice to Florence
Andrea Mantegna: influenced by Donatello
Perugino: from Umbria to Florence
Botticelli: commissioned by Medici family
Masaccio
• Painter’s guild in 1422
• Rome in 1427
• Understood Brunelleschi’s theory of ______?
Masaccio
• Painter’s guild in 1422
• Rome in 1427
• Understood Brunelleschi’s theory of
Perspective.
http://www.artbabble.org/video/ngadc/empire-eyemagic-illusion-trinity-masaccio-part-2
Trinity by Masaccio
Painted fresco in Church of Santa
Maria Novella, Florence Italy, 1428
Donors red garb suggests member
of Florentine council.
Trompe l’oeil with barrel vault in
linear perspective
Demonstrates Masaccio’s
knowledge of Brunelleschi’s
perspective
What different columns do you
recognize?
Interior of Brancacci
Chapel in the Santa
Maria del Carmine,
Florence, Italy,
fresco
Private Family Chapel
Differs from Flemish
Painters, how?
Created a new realism
with focus on mass of
bodies.
Cast Shadows
Expulsion from Paradise
Fresco from Brancacci Chapel, 1425
Instead of focusing on anatomy,
focused energy to depicting the
sheer mourning and emotion.
Tribute Money – Masaccio,
Brancacci Chapel in the Santa Maria del Carmine, 1427
Tribute Money (detail) - Masaccio
Continuous Narrative
Jesus and Peter in
middle, Peter on left
with coin and fish
(shown here), and
Peter paying on right.
• CONTINUOUS NARRATIVE!!
• Tribute Money is known for it’s integration of
figures, landscape, and architecture
• Linear perspective + intuitive perspective
• Look again at Tribute Money, and can you tell
what parts show linear perspective and what
parts show intuitive?
Tribute Money
Fra Angelico
Annunciation, 1438-45
Fra Angelico
• Annunciation, 1440-45
• Fresco in Monastery of San Marco
• Building style used by Brunelleschi during that exact
time of painting.
• Inspire meditation for monks
• Monk – Friar, Pragmatic and Austere (no life of
embellishment)
• Located at top of stairs in Monastery, where monks
pause before heading to their individual cells.
• PRISTINE CLARITY (HUMBLE CHARACTER’S – SIMPLE)
Fra Angelico
Jan van Eyck
Linear perspective opens
the room
Slender figures assume
modest poses
Natural light
Fra Angelico finished last
few painting years
painting the Pope’s
private chapel in Vatican.
Andrea del Castagno
• Last Supper
• Fresco, 1447, refectory (dining hall) of Convent of Sant’ Apollonia
• The convent for nuns
Andrea Mantegna
Mantegna, Frescoes in the
Camera Picta (“Painted Room”)
Located inside the Ducale
Palace in Mantua, Italy
Entered painters’ guild at 15,
highly influenced by Donatello
Painted mostly entirely for
Ludovico Gonzaga, ruler of
Mantua
Excelled in perspective,
integrating the figures into the
setting, and naturalistic detail.
influenced by Donatello
• Putti, or winged
baby angels, play
around the
balustrade. This
is a dome in the
chapel.
• Tromp l’oeil
(“deceives the
eye”)
• For-shortened
perspective
• 1st di sotto in su
(“from below
upwards”)
Dead Christ
Perugino
• Resolution of Great Schism 1417
• Rome was chosen for Papal residency
• Pope Sixtus IV summoned a group of artists to
come paint the new Sistine Chapel
• Perugino came to Rome to paint in Sistine Chapel
• Painted Christ Delivering Keys to St. Peter
– CHIAROSCURO – contrasting light and shadow….also
seen in the Tribute Money painting by Masaccio
• Teacher of Raphael
Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter
Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter
Fresco right wall of Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Fresco, 1481-1483
• Grid-like composition: vertical and horizontal, Perspectival recession, Atmospheric
perspective, Triangular form with Architecture
• Scene supports authority of the Popes over Roman Catholic Church
• Figures in foreground (“stage”) vs. Figures in middle ground
• The architecture in the background of this painting references ancient Rome. WHO?
Botticelli
• Studied in studio of Verrocchio (Equestrian
Statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni)
• Painted for Sistine Chapel
• Also painted for Medici family (bankers)
• Used tempera, not oil
Cupid
Mercury
Three Graces
Flora
Zephyr
Chloris
Botticelli, La Primavera (Spring), 1478
Medici Wedding
Aphrodite of Knidos, Praxiteles, Late Classical
SANDRO BOTTICELLI, Birth of Venus, ca. 1482. Tempera on canvas, approx. 5' 8" x 9' 1". Galleria degli
Uffizi, Florence
•
PAINTING KNOWN FOR IT’S GRACEFUL LINEARITY!
• COMMISSIONED BY THE MEDICI FAMILY
Annunciation where
Fra A_______
Angelico painted The A_________
• F____
Gabriel tells Mary she will be pregnant. This
St. G______
fresco
painting is a f______.
Venus for the
Botticelli painted B____
Birth of V_____
• B_______
Medici family (think banking). This painting,
M______
Venus in a
known for it’s graceful linearity, depicts V_____
contrapposto stance from classical antiquity.
c__________
Perugino painted C_____
Christ
• Teacher of Raphael, P______
Delivering the K_____
Peter
Keys to St. P______.
D________
The
architecture in the background of this painting
Rome
fresco is located
references ancient R______.
This f______
Sistine C_____,
Chapel which is in the V________
Vatican
in the S______
(where the pope lives)